K-fashion is flocking to Southeast Asia. In its October 12 Monday feature, Test Is Over, Capture the 700 Million: K-Fashion's Rush into Southeast Asia, Fashionbiz reports that the players have shifted from large corporations such as LF and F&F to emerging brands, and the categories have widened to womenswear, accessories and athleisure. The markets the article covers are Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam.
The article's backdrop is that growth in Korea's apparel market has slowed while Japan and China have entered a period of stability. What is interesting about this wave, though, is not where brands are going but how. Unlike in the past, when brands opened their own stores, nearly the same sequence repeats: borrow a local retail partner's network, test reaction with a pop-up first, then move to a permanent store. This piece places the cases from the article on top of that formula and points out where the gaps remain.
Demand Is There — What the Overseas Hallyu Survey Shows
The "2026 Overseas Hallyu Survey" (reference year 2025), released on March 30 by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korea Foundation for International Culture Exchange (KOFICE), is an online survey of 27,400 local residents aged 15–59 in 30 countries and regions. It ran from November 13 to December 12, 2025. The figures from the survey that help gauge the demand base for Southeast Asian expansion are as follows.
| Item | Figure | Note |
|---|
| Favorability toward Korean cultural content (overall) | 69.7% | Down slightly from 70.3% a year earlier |
| Favorability — Philippines | 87.0% | Southeast Asia |
| Favorability — Indonesia | 82.7% | Southeast Asia |
| Favorability — Thailand | 79.4% | Southeast Asia |
| Respondents saying the Korean Wave influences purchases of Korean products and services | 64.8% | Up for three straight years |
| Average monthly spending by category — fashion | USD 33.9 | Highest of all categories; beauty at USD 29.7 |
Two caveats are in order. The favorability figures refer to Korean cultural content as a whole, not fashion. And the USD 33.9 fashion spending figure is based on all 30 countries and regions, so it is not a Southeast Asia-only number. KOFICE's press release did not include fashion experience rates or country-level fashion figures for Southeast Asia, and the full report could not be checked directly. The survey's countries, samples and questions also change from year to year, so simple comparisons with prior-year figures should be made with caution.
Country-level figures for fashion alone are available in the previous year's "2025 Overseas Hallyu Survey" (reference year 2024, 28 countries). According to TIN News's coverage of that survey, the K-fashion experience rate averaged 57.4% across the 28 countries, with Southeast Asian countries near the top: Thailand at 85.4%, the Philippines at 80.4%, Vietnam at 79.2% and Indonesia at 78.5%. The same survey named difficulty of purchase (29.9%), limited size variety (25.1%) and high prices relative to quality (22.0%) as factors holding back favorability toward K-fashion. Over the past year, purchase channels ranked as local websites and apps (52.6%), global websites and apps (50.5%) and local offline stores (41.0%).
These numbers confirm that demand is ample, but they also suggest that the bottleneck is access and fit rather than demand. That a notable share of respondents say purchases are hard and sizes don't fit, despite high favorability, can be read as a clue to why using local retail partners and localizing products — both discussed below — became the common formula. This is, however, an interpretation that overlays a survey from a year earlier on the emerging-brand cases; the survey does not directly explain the brands' decisions to expand.
Three Patterns That Repeat Across the Cases
Simplified, the entry routes of the brands in the article look like this. The results are the brands' own accounts as reported in the article and have not been independently verified.
| Brand | Entry route | Early indicators in the article |
|---|
| Matin Kim | Five-year contract with Central Group through 2030; shop-in-shops and a flagship in Bangkok | Sales target of about KRW 60 billion; some 300 visitors on flagship's first day |
| Studio Tomboy · VOV | Pop-up in Singapore's Paragon, then formal entry at Metro Department Store | Over 10,000 visitors in 11 days of the pop-up; target exceeded about two weeks after opening |
| Gloni | Pop-up at M Sphere in Bangkok | About KRW 600 million in local retail terms, March–July |
| Carlyn | Partnership with Siam Piwat; stores at Siam Discovery and ICONSIAM | Initial stock sold out on opening day |
| Stand Oil | KREAM as distributor in Indonesia; stores in Jakarta and Surabaya | Second pop-up sales up more than 50% over the first |
| Marhen.J | Switched to direct entry in Indonesia; local retail partners elsewhere | Positive conversion and repurchase rates in online pre-testing |
The first is borrowing a partner's retail network. By tapping the infrastructure of local retailers such as Central Group, Metro Department Store (two stores in Singapore, 17 in Indonesia) and Siam Piwat, or of Korean distribution companies such as KREAM and Lotte Department Store's NextLab, the threshold has come down for small and emerging brands that lacked both information and upfront capital, according to the article.
The second is that pop-ups effectively work as an admissions screen for entry. Studio Tomboy and VOV were reportedly offered formal entry by Metro Department Store after their Paragon pop-up last September. Stand Oil held two pop-ups, confirmed that sales at the second were more than 50% higher than at the first, and only then moved to a flagship. Validating reaction before committing to a large permanent investment has become something of an established practice.
The third is tailoring products to local conditions. For the hot and humid climate, Carlyn increased the share of fabric and quilted materials in place of leather, while Studio Tomboy and VOV put linen blends and lightweight knits at the front. The earlier large-company entrants are also reportedly refining limited-edition strategies with country- and store-exclusive products.
Worth Noting — Korean Stores Have Become the Lab for Overseas Expansion
The part of the article I read with the most weight is "reverse inflow." Consumers who encounter a brand in Southeast Asia visit Korea and seek out flagships in Seongsu, Hannam, Hongdae and Dosan, and as a result Thai and Indonesian tourists' share of sales at domestic stores is rising, according to the article. It points to a virtuous cycle in which those customers' purchase data is used as the basis for overseas business direction and new product R&D.
The cases show the cycle also running in the other direction. Tanat saw the number of Southeast Asian tourists rising at its Hannam flagship, confirmed the potential, and held its first pop-up in August at CentralWorld in Bangkok. At Carlyn, a local celebrity posting the Carlyn bag on social media right after its Hongdae flagship renovation reportedly led to more Thai tourist visits. In these cases at least, the starting point for going overseas was not local market research but foreign-customer purchase data from Seoul stores.
This point also matters for how we look at duty-free and inbound retail. A Seoul flagship is now both a place that sells to tourists and a sensor that measures overseas demand. The article, however, gives no concrete figures for this rise in sales share. How large the share has grown, and whether pop-ups or permanent stores contribute more, cannot be confirmed.
Still Small — How to Read the Numbers
The article calls this wave "test over," but judging by the figures disclosed, it still looks closer to a trial stage. The cases with concrete sales figures are Gloni (about KRW 600 million in local retail terms, March–July) and Matin Kim's five-year target of about KRW 60 billion. As a simple calculation, Matin Kim's target averages about KRW 12 billion a year, but it is a target and a figure covering the entire contract period.
For comparison, in our earlier analysis of Samsung C&T Fashion's first-half earnings, first-half exports were KRW 3.7 billion, 0.3% of total sales. That export figure is the company-wide export revenue, while Gloni's is pop-up local retail sales, so the bases differ and the comparison is best treated only as a rough sense of scale. Even so, the direction is clear. While a large company's export share stays at 0.3%, emerging brands are opening overseas stores quickly by borrowing partners' networks.
One more point deserves mention. Outside Thailand, Carlyn hands exclusive sales rights to local companies. A partner-centered model reduces the investment burden but means sharing margin and ceding some brand control. Marhen.J's decision to end its existing partnership in Indonesia and switch to direct entry can be read as an attempt to rebalance that trade-off. Whether the partner model is sustainable will be decided by profitability after brands move from pop-ups to permanent stores.
Business Impact
In practical terms, the trend carries two implications. First, as the cost of entering overseas markets falls, competition in the K-fashion market is extending from Korea to overseas. As emerging brands compete with large companies for the same local partners, partners gain more choice, and brands' bargaining power over terms of entry may shift. Second, as foreign-customer data from domestic flagships becomes a leading indicator for overseas strategy, inbound tourist demand has become a variable that sets the order in which fashion brands expand abroad.
That said, the article carries no direct quotes from company officials, and most of the performance figures remain opening-period visitor counts or sell-out stories. Until sustained sales and profit are confirmed, it is more accurate to say the trend is clear but the results are not yet proven.
✦RIT's Insights
As the Southeast Asia formula standardizes around pop-ups and partners, differentiation will come not from getting in but from repurchase after the pop-up. The indicators disclosed so far — visitor counts and opening-day sell-outs — can be produced by curiosity-driven buying, so whether the same reaction appears in the second season is the real test. What I want to confirm is how large Southeast Asian tourists' share of sales at Seoul flagships actually is, and whether more brands than Marhen.J step out of the partner model and return to direct entry.
Sources
- [Monday Feature] Test Is Over, Capture the 700 Million: K-Fashion's Rush into Southeast Asia (Fashionbiz, 2026-10-12 — background and methods of expansion, brand cases, reverse-inflow structure)
- Matin Kim signs KRW 60 billion sales contract in Thailand (Dailian — five-year Central Group contract, sales target of about KRW 60 billion through 2030)
- Samsung C&T Fashion Rebounds on Stronger Own Brands and Global Brand Expansion (CEO Score Daily, 2026-10-12 — Samsung C&T Fashion first-half exports of KRW 3.7 billion, share of sales)
- 2026 Overseas Hallyu Survey press release (KOFICE — survey overview: 30 countries and regions, 27,400 respondents, Nov 13–Dec 12, 2025; average monthly fashion spending USD 33.9)
- 7 in 10 Hallyu-experienced respondents "like Korea" — BTS ranked most influential star (Newsis, 2026-03-30 — overall favorability of 69.7% and figures for the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand; 64.8% purchase influence)
- 6 in 10 "have experienced K-fashion" (TIN News, 2025-04-16 — fashion experience rates, favorability barriers and purchase channels from the 2025 Overseas Hallyu Survey (reference year 2024))
- Matin Kim's average of about KRW 12 billion a year is simply the five-year KRW 60 billion target divided by five; it is not a year-by-year target presented by the company. Early indicators for each case are the brands' own accounts as reported by Fashionbiz and could not be independently verified.
