Five years of online, pop-up and brand retail diversification in Japan

Partnerships with local distributors in three Southeast Asian countries

Shoppers browse products at the Musinsa Station in Harajuku pop-up store. [Musinsa]
Shoppers browse products at the Musinsa Station in Harajuku pop-up store. [Musinsa]

Musinsa is expanding its global footprint into China and Southeast Asia, building on five years of steady growth in Japan. The move signals a strategy to establish a medium- to long-term foundation using the experience the company has accumulated in the Japanese market.

Since setting up its Japanese subsidiary, Musinsa Japan, in 2021, the company has grown its presence there in stages — from online sales and offline pop-ups to partnerships with local platforms and distribution of K-fashion brands. Japan has since become the largest market on Musinsa's Global Store by both transaction volume and membership.

In its early days in Japan, Musinsa built its customer base through its own platform, the Musinsa Global Store, capitalizing on demand for K-fashion. It then expanded offline by opening pop-up stores in Tokyo and other major cities, linking the two channels so that shoppers who discovered brands at pop-ups could continue buying through the online store.

Last year, purchases were made from all 47 of Japan's prefectures on the Musinsa Global Store. The "2026 Musinsa Tokyo Pop-up Store," held in April, also drew visitors from all 47 prefectures across the country.

Transaction volume in Japan more than quintupled in 2025 compared with 2023, representing a compound annual growth rate of 136 percent over the past three years. Transaction volume for roughly the first seven months of this year has already matched the full-year figure for last year — reaching last year's annual total five months ahead of schedule. New memberships and transaction volume in the first half of this year each more than doubled compared with the same period a year earlier.

Musinsa has also broadened its sales reach by partnering with major local retail channels. It opened a Musinsa store on Zozotown, Japan's leading fashion platform, giving South Korean designer brands a direct route into the Japanese market. Once a brand stocks its products at Musinsa's domestic logistics center, Musinsa handles international shipping, customs clearance and local delivery — allowing individual brands to enter Japan without setting up their own distribution networks.

The Musinsa Zozotown store now carries more than 2,100 South Korean brands and over 280,000 products. The number of brands on the platform grew fifteenfold in the seven months after the official store opened, and in June it recorded its highest monthly transaction volume since launch.

More recently, Musinsa has moved toward directly operating local businesses for individual K-fashion brands. Matin Kim is a prime example: after initially entering Japan through shop-in-shop formats at Miyashita Park in Tokyo and Parco in Nagoya, the brand opened a standalone flagship store in Tokyo and has since expanded to Osaka.

In China, Musinsa has established a joint venture with Anta Sports to develop both online and offline operations. It currently runs a Musinsa store in Shanghai, and Musinsa Standard has opened stores at three locations in Shanghai and one in Hangzhou, with a new store in Shenzhen set to open in September.

In Southeast Asia, Musinsa is preparing to launch offline operations centered on Musinsa Standard through partnerships with local retail companies — the Ayala Group in the Philippines, MAP in Indonesia and ACFC in Vietnam.

"Global business is an area that requires sufficient time and investment to build an understanding of each market, earn customer trust and develop a business structure suited to local conditions," a Musinsa official said. "Just as we grew our business step by step in Japan over the past five years, we will focus not on short-term results in China and Southeast Asia, but on building markets where K-fashion can grow over the medium to long term."


andy@heraldcorp.com