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| Trenbe's website / Screen captured from Trenbe's official website |
By Kim Jae-heun
The coronavirus pandemic has had both negative and positive effects on many businesses here.
In coronavirus pandemic has affected many businesses here both negatively and positively. In the fashion industry, market-leading Samsung C&T, LF and Shinsegae International have all failed to avoid a drop in sales.
As a result, Samsung will close 150 stores of its signature brand Beanpole by next February and LF will shut down 30 shops of its outdoor-clothing label Lafuma.
Online fashion startups, however, are thriving and some have successfully attracted huge venture capital investments in approval of their promising outlook.
Domestic fashion startup Must It drew a 15 billion won ($12.45 million) Series A investment on July 21, bringing a surprise to the industry. It is unusual for fashion companies that have been operating for less than three years to attract more than 10 billion won in funding.
The large investment in Must It shows high expectations for online luxury goods platforms.
Through this case, the fashion startup's corporate value rose to 100 billion won in the market.
Its gross merchandise value reached 150 billion won last year and in the first half of this year it has already exceeded 100 billion won.
On July 15, another luxury goods platform Trenbe received an 11 billion won Series B investment. Trenbe uses artificial intelligence to find the cheapest prices for luxury items around the world.
Last year, it attracted investments worth 7 billion won in recognition of its high-tech searching system and fast-growing sales.
Trenbe now receives 2.5 million users monthly and has 1.5 million luxury products available online.
Recently, it held online exhibitions in collaboration with global fashion houses Louis Vuitton and Celine ― selling items that are not available in existing domestic markets.
Brandi, a mobile fashion application service, also secured 21 billion won from the Korea Credit Guarantee Fund this year. Established in 2016, Brandi has been offering a fast delivery service based on its advanced logistics system, which helped it to record over 300 billion won of accumulated gross merchandise value.
Brandi brings various items to its online platform from social media markets, online shopping malls and fashion brand stores.
However, its biggest strength lies in the fulfillment service that adopted information technology to form a distribution supply chain based in Dongdaemun, a large commercial district in Seoul with shopping centers for wholesale and retail goods.
Over 390,000 people use the mobile application on a monthly basis and it has attracted 35 billion won in investments.
The success of Musinsa, one of the largest fashion retailers here, inspired huge investments in domestic online fashion platforms.
Last year, U.S. venture capital firm Sequoia Capital invested 200 billion won into Musinsa, which helped the fashion retailer to become a unicorn startup with a corporate value of 1 trillion won. This led many venture firms to search for the next Musinsa.
Startup Alliance Korea said there are 47 firms in the fashion and beauty sector here that received 1 billion won in funds and 15 firms that received over 10 billion won.
