Fashion retailing, where and how to purchase

  We often discuss whether the source of any fashion product is a design lab and a sewing factory, or a market to meet consumers. The issue of debate is whether it is a push on the supply side or a pull on the demand side. In fact, accounts differ.   Of course, designers’ creative designs, production in sewing factories, and supply and shipment to the wholesale market are made according to the consumer needs or preferences, and their desires. Some of suppliers, however, act as a driving force to stimulate and induce fashion consumers’ preferences and willingness to buy.   In Dongdaemun market, many designers, entrepreneurial wholesalers, and many small and medium-sized sewing factories scattered in Gangbuk, Seoul, as well as shops of an innumerable number of textiles and various fashion parts, are focused mainly on supply- side management.   They make decisions together or separately. They are partners, but sometimes competitors. Business behavior between these partn...

  LPGA Korean golfer, Lee Mi-rim became a winner, nailing a birdie on the first playoff hole at the 2020 ANA Inspiration to beat Canadian Brooke Henderson and the USA’s Nelly Korda, all tied at -15. Lee shot a final-round 67, sparked by birdie chip-ins at 6 and 16, and an eagle chip at the final hole to jump to the top of the leaderboard.   “Lucky or not, she showed a lot of fortitude to stick with her game.” +   Mr. Steve Eubanks, Managing Editor for the LPGA, saw her victory and commented above.    Similar to these sports competitions, it is a widely accepted general view that business success is 80% skill and 20% luck. In response, Chief problem solver at Tov Furniture, Bruce Krinsky, argued that business success is 10% skill and 90% luck, and said. “You create your luck trough your work. If you do not do the work, you will miss opportunity.” ++   CEO of Sugar Bowl Bakery, Andrew Ly, also said “The harder you work, the luckier you get. There is not any o...

  In the late 1700s, Park Ji-won, a scholar of the Silhak school wrote the novel ‘The Story of Heo Saeng’. As a servant of King Jeongjo of the Joseon Dynasty, he, like other Silhak scholars, criticized the old feudalistic notion that ignored the prosperity of commerce.    Unfortunately, many feudal scholars, Seonbis + have held the view that commerce in which some goods are bought cheaply and sold at high prices is an immoral act of making money easily without working.   At that time, however, scholars of the Silhak school thought that commerce was productive like agriculture and manufacturing, and it compensates for the excess and shortage of production and consumption areas through exchange, and further increases national wealth with the surplus.   The main character of the novel, Heo Saeng, who was poor, first asked Mr. Byeon, a man of large property in Seoul, to borrow business funds to make money through commerce. Unreasonably, he asked the man of wealth to...

  Jeju, the largest island in Korea is known as a place where many foreigners want to go sightseeing. It is also a place that is widely praised for its fantastic scenery as if the gods stayed there.   Anyone who goes there will be able to see traces of a female merchant doing moral commerce in the late 1700s. Now, there is a tourist attraction where wealthy residents live, but the place where the poor farmers and fishermen lived 200 years ago was rough land.   According to records, in 1795, after a long drought, many residents of Jeju island starved and the number of deaths increased day by day. The old people said,   “Poverty cannot be saved by even a king.”   Especially in Jeju, an island far from Seoul, it would have been more difficult to rescue all of them even if many residents were dying due to drought.   At that time, the merchant princess Kim Man-deok disposed of all the money and property she had earned throughout her life, purchased large quantit...

  The 4Ps of marketing is one of strategies that has been widely adopted in the business world since the 1960s. According to 4Ps theory for marketing, the strategic tools are product, price, place, and promotion. Since then, some companies have been pursuing the 5Ps marketing mix including ‘people’ as a new strategic alternative.   In addition, the spread of discussions such as the 7Ps marketing mix has continued as well. And, in the end, new strategies such as the 20Ps marketing mix have been proposed. +   The marketing mix of 20Ps includes not only 4Ps, but also new strategic elements such as people, planning, persuasion, publicity, passion. As to the rest, the 20Ps marketing mix includes important elements such as push-pull, packaging, profit, power, partnership, productivity, positioning, perception, positivism, professionalism, personality as well.    Many of these strategic tools will help any fashion company achieve its marketing performance.   On th...

“The Korean New Deal is the architect to design the Republic of Korea’s new century.” President Moon Jae-in said in his speech. + He explained that the government has selected 10 signature projects for the ‘Digital New Deal’ and ‘Green New Deal,’ two pillars of his Korean New Deal roadmap, including eco-friendly mobility, a smart healthcare infrastructure, green energy, and the digitization of social infrastructure. With a budget of about US $13 billion over the next five years, the Korean New Deal is an amazing investment plan. In particular, like the chorus of people from all over the world, “Let’s save the one our Earth!”, the Green New Deal will be an opportunity to advance the sustainable growth of the Korean economy. In the endless fashion revolution of the world, the Korean Green New Deal should also     stimulate and support the sustainable growth of K-fashion business. The manifesto for the world’s fashion revolution is widely sympathetic. “We love fashion. B...

  In Dongdaemun market, there are a total of more than 100,000 fashion designers, including wholesale and retail full-time designers and other freelancers or apprentices.   As we have the same view, those Dongdaemun designers are a very important human resource in the sustainable growth path of the Dongdaemun fashion cluster, along with the CEOs of wholesaling shops and employees and the labor force of the sewing factory in Gangbuk, Seoul, and other market people, etc.   Amid of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, Dongdaemun designers faced difficulties in the workplace because of the reduced in design work. It is obvious that designers’ work has been drastically reduced as the sales of wholesalers fell sharply. Among those Dongdaemun designers, most of the irregular workers or apprentices suddenly became unemployed. They are more serious because they have no other income due to their professional nature and are not beneficiaries of employment insurance.   In the meantim...