Korea's top fashion platform Musinsa is showing rapid growth, recently surpassing a cumulative 10,000 brands. Among these, the number of domestic brands reaches 8,000, earning the platform praise for serving as a gateway for small and medium-sized fashion brands.
Musinsa explains that its management policy prioritizes 'joint growth' with the partnering brands as its top value. Musinsa provides a range of benefits to partner brands, including interest-free production funding, consulting across product planning and production, and various growth support programs. Starting next month, it aims to also assist with overseas expansion.
According to Musinsa on the 28th, the number of brands on the platform has rapidly increased in recent years, with over 6,000 brands in 2021, over 7,000 in 2022, over 8,500 in 2023, and over 10,000 expected in 2024. Thanks to this increased scale, the revenue surpassed 1 trillion won last year, achieving an operating profit of 102.8 billion won, marking the highest performance to date. Musinsa actively attracts new brands and provides various benefits to help partner brands grow.
Since 2015, Musinsa has operated a program that lends interest-free production funds to brands struggling to secure smooth financing. This customized support reflects the fashion industry's unique 'produce first, sell later' structure, which requires significant production funding before generating sales. Last year alone, Musinsa supported over 90 billion won through this program, with a cumulative support amount exceeding 330 billion won.
Musinsa also offers online and offline training services for partner brands. New brands receive training on the basics of marketing and advertising to help them easily register products and generate sales in a short period. Subsequently, Musinsa provides formal education courses that support growth in various aspects such as sales increase, brand sensitivity maintenance, and brand recognition enhancement. Support is also available for tax, accounting, and labor-related training to help resolve difficulties encountered while operating brands.
Recently, Musinsa introduced a dedicated online channel for supporting partner brands, called 'Musinsa Partner Stage.' This consolidated the communication channels with partner brands, which were previously operated individually across platforms like Musinsa Store, 29CM, and Musinsa Global Store. The plan is to gather and share successful strategies from various platforms and strengthen support content.
Marketing-related support is also active. Musinsa produces over 200 detailed pages for fashion and beauty brands every month. In this process, the apparel section provides fit guides reflecting various body types, while the footwear section includes practical information such as width comparisons and appearance size.
In fact, these detailed pages play an important role in enhancing customers' purchasing experiences. Last year, the average monthly purchase conversion rate for customers who viewed detailed pages supported by Musinsa was about 2.35%. This means that out of 10,000 visitors, about 235 made actual purchases.
Musinsa also offers marketing opportunities linked to fashion creators. Partner brands can easily sponsor products with approximately 4,700 fashion creators through Musinsa's 'Creator Marketplace' with just a few clicks.
Musinsa creators are only eligible for support if they have over 1,000 Instagram followers or over 100 Musinsa Snap followers. Partner brands can easily sponsor products, and creators grow as influencers by sharing photos of themselves wearing the products in a 'win-win' structure.
Musinsa plans to actively support the overseas expansion of partner brands starting next month. The plan is to provide a 'partner linking system' that enables brands in domestic stores to easily sell products in global stores.
The global store, which has been operating since the second half of 2022, supports services in 13 regions, including Japan and Thailand, with plans to expand into China and Europe and the Middle East in the future. The global store is growing rapidly, with an average annual transaction volume increasing by 260%.
Musinsa recently received designation as a 'specialized trading company' from the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and the Korea International Trade Association, gaining momentum for its export mediation business. A specialized trading company is an entity that professionally represents the exports of small and medium-sized enterprises lacking export experience and overseas networks, and will receive various benefits related to tariff payments and insurance discounts for export shipments over the next three years.
A Musinsa official noted, 'We will continue to provide tailored strategies in all areas necessary for global business, including distribution, operations, and marketing, to expand support for Korean fashion brands' overseas exports and to build expertise as a partner that small and medium-sized enterprises can first think of.'