[Courtesy of Musinsa]
Musinsa made a foray into South Korea's fashion industry in 2003 as a small online fashion community. The startup company opened an online shopping mall in 2009 and garnered popularity among young consumers for affordable and fashionable items. Musinsa's policy of offering hefty shopping benefits for customers who upload product reviews including photographs attracted more consumers.
The online apparel giant with more than one million monthly active users became South Korea's tenth online startup unicorn, a company that reach a valuation of $1 billion without being listed on the stock market, in 2019. Musinsa also opened two offline stores -- in the western Seoul district of Hongdae in 2021, and in the southern district of Gangnam in 2022 -- targeting people who visit the capital city's fashion and entertainment districts.
Musinsa said that the company recorded consolidated sales of 708.3 billion won in 2022, up 54 percent on-year. The company analyzed that the increased sales were affected by strengthened marketing that targeted both online and offline customers. Other than its two flagship offline stores, Musinsa has subsidiaries like 29CM, an online fashion item shopping mall, which opened a handful of offline stores across the country.
"We did not hold back from preemptively making investments into new businesses in order to accelerate the growth of our company," a Musinsa official said in a statement on April 13. The official said that Musinsa will expand its investment strategy to foreign and domestic brands and reinforce offline marketing.
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
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