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Tag: Myeong-dong

  • Lotte Signs Blackpink Jennie as Foreign Spending Drives Record Department Store Profits

    Lotte Signs Blackpink Jennie as Foreign Spending Drives Record Department Store Profits

    Lotte Department Store signed Blackpink singer Jennie for a yearlong campaign. The deal follows foreign shoppers pushing international sales past 1 trillion won for the first time.

    The agreement gives South Korea’s largest department store operator its first brand ambassador in seven years. It covers 31 domestic branches and four outlets in Vietnam and Indonesia.

    Promotions launch in October across central transit hubs, including Incheon Airport and Seoul Station. Shinsegae Department Store counters without a formal contract. The rival chain, which operates 13 locations nationwide, features rookie group Allday Project member Annie on the digital screen outside its Myeong-dong flagship through Oct. 18. She is the daughter of Shinsegae Inc. Chair Chung Yoo-kyung.

    Foreign Footfall Rewrites Merchandising Strategies

    Department store operators across East and Southeast Asia spent years phasing out celebrity-driven advertising in favour of direct luxury brand partnerships. Rising tourist traffic reversed that playbook in Seoul. Floor plans evolved from standard retail halls into cultural destinations for international visitors.

    Foreign visitors spent 14.02 trillion won ($10.5 billion) on credit cards across South Korea from January through August. That represents a 48.5 percent increase from a year earlier, according to the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. Overseas visitors now generate almost 30 percent of total sales at the Myeong-dong flagships of both Lotte and Shinsegae. That share stood at 15 percent in 2024.

    “By combining our ambassador’s global influence with Lotte Department Store’s brand value, we will widen our reach to customers worldwide,” said Lotte Department Store CEO Jung Hyun-seok.

    Flagship Showdowns in Myeong-dong

    Concentrated tourist demand inside central Seoul creates intense pressure on prime retail real estate. Lotte built a dedicated hall for domestic fashion labels that draws most of its volume from inbound travellers. Shinsegae consolidated K-pop merchandise, packaged snacks, and domestic apparel labels onto a single tourist floor.

    Competition extends directly to the street. Shinsegae uses its building-scale outdoor digital media screen to display cultural and pop music content. Lotte plans to counter with an even larger outdoor display panel on its own building facade in December.

    Surging Operating Profits Across Both Chains

    Record quarterly and half-year earnings followed the spending surge. Lotte generated roughly 640 billion won in sales to overseas shoppers during the first half. Shinsegae collected 580 billion won from the same demographic.

    Second-quarter results set new records. Lotte’s department store division reported revenue of 891.2 billion won, lifting operating profit 84 percent to 119.7 billion won. Shinsegae posted store revenue of 738.5 billion won, up 17.5 percent, while operating profit jumped 53.5 percent to 108.8 billion won.

    First-half tallies confirmed the trend. Lotte expanded six-month operating profit by 54.8 percent to 295.9 billion won on revenue of 1.69 trillion won. Shinsegae grew first-half operating profit 39.7 percent to 249.9 billion won as division revenue reached 1.48 trillion won.

    Southeast Asian Footprint and Year-End Targets

    Across Southeast Asia, the celebrity campaign supports a retail footprint of four department stores in Vietnam and Indonesia. Cross-border brand recognition directly affects footfall in those assets. Korean lifestyle and beauty concepts drive the tenant mix at each location.

    Lotte had not used a single advertising model since actress Shin Min-a fronted its promotions in 2017. Its Myeong-dong flagship alone generated approximately 520 billion won of the retailer’s 1 trillion won in foreign sales this year. The chain focuses on maintaining foreign customer volumes into the final quarter.

    Both department store chains turn next to year-end campaigns for the winter travel season, led by the December opening of Lotte’s expanded media wall in Myeong-dong.

  • Myeong-dong ranked as world’s 8th most pricey retail area

    Myeong-dong ranked as world’s 8th most pricey retail area

    Seoul’s Myeong-dong street was ranked the eighth most expensive retail street in the world, according to a report by real estate service company Cushman & Wakefield Thursday.

    (Cushman & Wakefield)

    Cushman & Wakefield’s “Main Streets Across the World 2016/2017” priced real estate in Seoul’s shopping district Myeong-dong at $908 per square foot (0.093 square meter) per year, with an outlook to further rise. Although consumers in South Korea are increasingly turning online for shopping, the report said the “inflow of Chinese tourists” is supporting the demand for shop units.

    Other major shopping streets noted in Korea were around Gangnam Station and Garosu-gil, as well as the trendy Hongdae district.

    The Nature Republic cosmetics store in Myeong-dong has been the most expensive plot of real estate in Korea for the past 12 years, according to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport this year.

    According to the Cushman & Wakefield report, the most expensive shopping district in Asia is Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay at $2,878 per square foot, followed by Japan’s Tokyo Ginza district at $1,249. The most expensive shopping street in the world is Upper 5th Avenue in New York City, at $3,000 per square foot.

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  • Seoul retail rents fuelled by food frenzy

    Seoul retail rents fuelled by food frenzy

    In the backstreets of Seoul, hipster culture is flourishing, and specialist cafés and eateries are jostling with big brand names to gain exposure in so-called “hot” neighborhoods. And as the crowds grow, so too do the retail rents.

    Just 10 years ago, Seoul wouldn’t have been the first city that came to mind as hip. As its economy picked up, a new class of Korean consumer has emerged and many are well travelled, knowledgeable and have discerning tastes, reports JLL Retail Views.

    Nick Kim, head of retail advisory & marketing in JLL’s Seoul offices, attributes the popularity of backstreet food and beverage (F&B) outlets to the fact that locals are always looking for “new, trendy, different places”.

    “They enjoy the blending of Korean and international cultures,” he says, and find cultural innovation on the backstreets, where prices are cheaper and the atmosphere is more casual.

    The rapid rise of artisan eateries and stylish bakeries in these alleyways was aided by the gentrification of districts such as Hongdae and Itaewon – formally avoided because of their association with crimes and drunkenness. F&B entrepreneurs typically set up shop on the back streets for good reason: real estate is far cheaper in the alleys than on the main roads.

    The pull of South Korean cool

    Thanks to promotional efforts by the government and the huge international success of South Korean pop music and television shows, the country’s cultural exports have gone beyond Kimchi and Psy’s global hit Gangham Style.

    According to Food Industry Asia, ‘Seoul Food’ is enjoying an international renaissance. Korean food tops the list of foods purchased at foreign specialty stores in China, is the most prominent emerging style of restaurant and cuisine in Singapore and is among the most popular cuisines for Australian consumers in 2014. his proliferation of modern Korean culture has led to a surge in the number of visitors to South Korea, from the region, notably from mainland China.

    As retail sales growth averaged about 2 per cent in recent years, a rising number of local fashion brands and F&B outlets have contributed to the steady rise of retail rents in Seoul’s prime submarkets.

    One example is Garosugil, one of Gangnam district’s most renowned enclaves, where rents have almost doubled over the past five years. The high street shops in Myeong-dong, the city’s prime shopping district, command the highest rents in South Korea at $6,244 per square meter per annum. Myeong-dong ranked third in Asia Pacific’s high street rents in the second quarter of this year, behind Hong Kong’s Russell St and Tokyo’s Ginza.

    However, when a backstreet turns into a main street, often following the entry of big brand names or retail chains, some diners move on. This sometimes leads to the creation of other alleyways, which is what happened in Garosugil, once known for its unique eateries. After big names such as H&M and Starbucks moved onto the street, newer, authentic outlets started to spread along many vertical roads nearby, says Kim. This has given Serosugil, a series of small alleyways near Garosugil, a new lease of life.

    In recent years, Seoul’s food culture has not only spilled over from its backstreets to Asia’s retail malls but has also hit the streets of London and New York. Following in the footsteps of K-pop, K-beauty and K-movies, K-food is increasingly gaining prominence in Western markets.

    There are already signs of a growing trend towards Korean fusion restaurants such as the American-Italian-Korean cuisine offered at Piora in New York City’s West Village and Jin Jiu in London. Key to the success of K-food culture overseas is the strong advocacy by the country’s Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, which has been actively organizing food fairs in Indonesia and Malaysia and has even opened Korean culinary classes in universities in Vietnam and China.

    So far it’s been a winning strategy – and the appetite for all things Korean is far from sated.

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