A concept rendering of the pop-up store for Musent, a K-streetwear brand and the first participant in Lotte Department Store's Next Contents Lab [Lotte Department Store]
A concept rendering of the pop-up store for Musent, a K-streetwear brand and the first participant in Lotte Department Store's Next Contents Lab [Lotte Department Store]

Lotte Department Store announced Tuesday the launch of "Lotte Department Store Next Lab," a global expansion platform designed to help K-fashion brands break into overseas markets. As the only South Korean department store operator with stores abroad, Lotte said it plans to go beyond incubating promising brands and support their formal entry into its overseas locations.

Next Lab will scout high-potential K-fashion brands and serve as a launchpad for their international expansion, providing support across the full process — from export customs clearance and interior fit-out to marketing — that individual brands would struggle to handle on their own. The platform will also partner with prominent overseas retailers to facilitate pop-ups for K-fashion brands, with top performers given the opportunity to open permanent stores at Lotte Department Store's directly operated overseas locations, including in Vietnam, over the medium to long term.

The first destination is Lotte Mall West Lake Hanoi in Vietnam. Opened in 2023, the mall is Lotte Department Store's third overseas store in Vietnam and is on track to post cumulative sales of 1 trillion won ($674 million) this year. Lotte plans to use the mall — now a landmark in a market with strong appetite for K-fashion — as its first overseas base for supporting smaller brands going global.

K-streetwear label Musent will kick things off. The brand has recently held pop-ups in Japan and France, and this will mark its first foray into Vietnam. Musent will showcase its signature items at a pop-up running Friday through Aug. 4. Following that, a total of five K-fashion brands — including Setter and Nomanual — will run pop-ups through the end of the year. Lotte is also pursuing pop-ups at major shopping complexes in key commercial districts of Tokyo and Osaka.

Next year, Lotte plans to open dedicated K-fashion zones under the "Lotte Department Store Next Lab" name at Lotte Mall West Lake Hanoi and its other overseas stores, including in Japan. The initiative will be led by Next Contents Lab, an independent in-house unit established earlier this year. The two-team organization is pursuing a range of projects, including planning differentiated retail spaces and developing content tied to intellectual property.

"We will mobilize the full strength of our overseas store infrastructure and global capabilities — unique among domestic department stores — to make Lotte Department Store a solid foundation from which promising K-fashion brands can grow into global names," said Lee Hyeok, head of Team 1 at Lotte Department Store's Next Contents Lab.

Lotte Mall West Lake Hanoi, named as the first overseas base for Lotte Department Store's Next Lab platform [Lotte Department Store]
Lotte Mall West Lake Hanoi, named as the first overseas base for Lotte Department Store's Next Lab platform [Lotte Department Store]

soho0902@heraldcorp.com