South Korean clothing company LF Corp. said on Monday that its street fashion brand Dunst will build an offline presence in China in partnership with local peer E-Land World Ltd. to increase its market share in the neighboring country.
Dunst was launched by CTdots Corp., a former in-house venture of LF. Since its founding in 2019, Dunst’s revenue has shot up 10-fold. In 2023, its revenue exceeded 40 billion won ($30 million), up 56% from the year prior.
In its first business year of 2019, Dunst debuted on China’s e-commerce platform Tmall Global, a unit of Alibaba Group. It runs a separete brand shop within the platform.
In November last year, the Korean fashion brand ranked as the most-sold women clothes and accessory product company on Tmall Global.
Buoyed by its successful debut on the Chinese platform, it recently announced to establish a subsidiary in China. It will start its offline business there with fall/winter collection this year.
On Monday, Dunst’s Chinese arm became the first tenant of the Korea-China business center in the E-Land Innovation Valley in the Wujing district of Minhang, Shanghai.
Last year, E-Land completed the E-Land Innovation Valley, measuring a total floor area of 350,000 square meters, the size of 60 soccer fields, to house several Chinese and Korean companies in various sectors.
The Korean fashion and retail company hopes to act as a strategic and financial partner for local peers’ entry into China, levering three decades of experience and networks it has built in South Korea’s largest trading partner.
The Innovation Valley houses E-Land’s Chinese headquarters, smart factory logistics center, R&D center, filming studio and live commerce studio. It will also offer shared office spaces for Korean companies.
Wujing, equivalent to South Korea’s Pangyo Techno Valley near Seoul, is where E-Land first settled when it entered China in 1992. E-Land had converted a doll factory in Wujing it purchased into a trousers-manufacturing factory and launched its business in China.
Dunst has also explored overseas markets both online and offline in partnership with department stores in 20 countries, including the US, Canada, Italy, France, the UK, Hong Kong and Japan.
To strengthen its online presence in China, it will market products on other e-commerce platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Douyin, a sister company of a short-form video-sharing app Tiktok.
Write to Sul-Li Jun at [email protected]
Yeonhee Kim edited this article