South Korea’s leading fashion retailers are going all-out to win marketing licenses of luxury import brands that are expected to help them earn stable revenue with reduced marketing and operating costs thanks to their well-established brand power.

Handsome Co., fashion unit of the nation’s leading retail company Hyundai Department Store Group, is competing against its peers to win the license of French luxury brand “Rochas,” an unnamed official at Handsome said, adding that the winner will be decided within this year at the earliest. The firm earlier went after an Italian designer brand “Emilio Pucci,” but lost the license to LeeNHan Co., the importer of Belgian fine leather luxury goods brand “Delvaux.”

Emilio Pucci, the Italian label launched in the late 40s starting with ski garb on the slopes in Switzerland, has grown to a fashion mogul that sells a wide range of fashion goods including ready-to-wear, swimwear and shoes famous for a variety of iconic prints such as swirls, filigrees, arabesques, geometric figures, kaleidoscopic and mosaic patterns. Its devoted fans were big names such as Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Talyor, Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly and many others.

Rochas, a French fashion house founded by Marcel Rochas and his wife in 1925, expanded its offerings to include fragrances, started with perfume business. This is known to be beloved by many renowned Hollywood celebrities.

If Handsome wins the license of the French label, it would help to bolster its portfolio of import brands. It recently lost its sales rights of French luxury brand “Chloe” to Shinsegae International Co. and needs an alternative. Shinsegae International is another major retailer that has been expanding its import brand portfolio. LeeNHan Co. is also purportedly trying to win a license of “Nina Ricci,” which was previously imported by Cheil Industries Inc., currently Samsung C&T Corp.’s fashion unit.

Amid unfavorable market conditions, the Korean fashion houses are betting on import brands to earn more stable income instead of launching new own brands because such well-established luxury brands can lure consumers without big spending on marketing and operation efforts, industry experts said.

By Park Eun-jin

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business News Korea & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]