Fans of Supreme rush into the label's 1st Korean store

The US street fashion brand “Supreme,” which has a global fandom with a brand name written in white in a red box, opened its first store in South Korea on Saturday.

The "Supreme Dosan” store near Dosan Park in the upscale Gangnam area of Seoul is its 16th flagship store in the world. Korea is its seventh global outpost and second in Asia after Japan.

Supreme Dosan had taken advance reservations online in preparation for large crowds. As soon as the reservation system opened, it closed and a long line of people formed several hours before the doors opened on Aug. 19.

Supreme was founded in New York in 1994, positoned as a fashion brand for skateboarders.

It has been dubbed the “Chanel of the back alley” because of its identity as a nonmainstream label.

Supreme crosses boundaries in its collaborations with other brands. It collaborates with Nike and Lacoste, as well as luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton.

It launches not only clothes and shoes, but also unusual collaborative products such as bricks, axes and subway cards. They sell out almost as soon as they are released.

The saying, “Anything with the Supreme logo will sell,” is well known in the fashion industry.

Its marketing strategy of releasing a small quantity of new products every Thursday draws the attention of its competitors.

This so-called “drop marketing” is intended to increase the brand’s scarcity.

Every “Drop Day” when a product is released, there is an open run at its offline stores around the world. Limiting the number of stores is also part of its scarcity marketing strategy.

Thanks to its scarcity value, the resale prices of some Supreme products are higher than those of the originals.

For example, its trademark box logo T-shirt sells for $40-$50. But on Korea's resale platforms, it sometimes trades for more than 200,000 won ($150) — three to four times its original price.

To celebrate the opening of the Seoul store, Supreme has released a limited-edition T-shirt with a photo of the rose of Sharon, Korea’s national flower, imprinted on it.

This shirt, priced at about 70,000 won ($52), is available on a resale platform for about 300,000 won ($224).

“Until now, you could only buy [Supreme products] in other countries, or through resellers," said a fashion industry official.

“Now we have an official sales channel here and their resale prices could go down.”

Write to Ji-Yoon Yang at yang@hankyung.com
 

Yeonhee Kim edited this article