46 new stores this year alone, visitor numbers top 100 million

Customers browse products at Musinsa Megastore Seongsu. [Musinsa]
Customers browse products at Musinsa Megastore Seongsu. [Musinsa]

Musinsa, which started as an online fashion platform, is rapidly expanding its footprint in the offline retail market.

According to industry sources Monday, Musinsa is on the verge of operating 100 brick-and-mortar stores — 93 in South Korea and seven overseas. The 100th store, Musinsa Beauty Seongsu, opens Wednesday in Seoul's Seongsu-dong. Adding four Champion stores whose domestic distribution rights Musinsa acquired in 2025, the total number of offline locations it operates reaches 104.

The pace of expansion has been accelerating. Musinsa opened its first store in 2021, added six more in 2023 to test the potential of its offline business, then opened 31 stores in 2025 to shift into a higher gear. This year it has opened 40 new stores through the 100th location — roughly one every eight days on average.

Customer traffic has grown just as quickly. As new stores opened in rapid succession this year, the 75 domestic locations — spanning Musinsa Store, Musinsa Standard, Musinsa Megastore, Musinsa Empty and 29CM — drew 92 percent more visitors from January through October compared with the same period last year. Foot traffic at the eight Musinsa Store locations rose 84 percent, while Musinsa Standard stores saw a 49 percent increase.

Foreign shoppers have become a particularly notable presence. At three Musinsa Store locations in Seongsu-dong, Hongdae and Myeong-dong — areas popular with international tourists — foreign customers accounted for 52 percent of all orders during the same period. At Musinsa Standard stores in those same districts, foreign customers made up 42 percent of orders.

Musinsa has rolled out stores by assigning distinct roles to each brand and format. Musinsa Standard, which has led the expansion, has focused on high-traffic retail channels such as department stores and mixed-use shopping complexes. The brand has pushed beyond Seoul and the greater metropolitan area into major regional cities including Changwon, Cheonan and Gwangju.

Musinsa Store, a multi-brand fashion edit shop, has concentrated on establishing anchor locations in key commercial districts such as Seongsu-dong, Hongdae and Myeong-dong to broaden the connection between its partner brands and consumers. The company has complemented these with category-specific stores — Musinsa Beauty, Musinsa Kicks and Musinsa Bag & Cap Club — tailoring its store mix to the character of each neighborhood.

29CM has targeted the lifestyle retail corridor around Seongsu-dong and Seoul Forest, leading with its living edit shop Igu Home and kids edit shop Igu Kids. Starting with Igu Home Seongsu in June last year, the brand expanded to eight stores in just over a year.

Musinsa is also accelerating its push into overseas markets. The company entered the international market last December by opening two stores in Shanghai, and has since added locations in Hangzhou and, on Oct. 31, Shenzhen. In less than a year, it has grown its China store count to seven.

Six more stores are set to open before year-end, which would bring this year's new openings to 46 and the total number of operating stores to 110. "Going forward, we plan to expand our overseas stores from China into Japan and Southeast Asia, taking the offline model we have proven domestically into global markets," a Musinsa official said.


siuu@heraldcorp.com