LF’s fashion brand Dunst teams up with E-Land for China push

South Korean clothing company LF Corp. said on Monday that its street fashion brand Dunst will build an offline presence in China in partnership with domestic peer E-Land World Ltd. to increase its market share in the neighboring country.

Dunst was launched by CTdots Corp., a former in-house venture of LF. Since its founding in 2019, Dunst's revenue has shot up tenfold. In 2023, its revenue exceeded 40 billion won ($30 million), up 56% from a year earlier.

In its first business year of 2019, Dunst debuted on China’s e-commerce platform Tmall Global, a unit of Alibaba Group. It runs a separate brand shop within the platform.

The Korean fashion brand ranked as the most-sold women clothes and accessory product company on Tmall Global as of last November.

Buoyed by its strong debut on the Chinese platform, it recently announced it will set up a subsidiary in China. It will launch an offline business there this year with its fall/winter collection.

 
On Monday, Dunst’s Chinese arm became the first tenant of the Korea-China business center in the E-Land Innovation Valley in the Wujing area of Minhang district, Shanghai.

Last year, E-Land completed the E-Land Innovation Valley, spanning ​​350,000 square meters, the size of 60 soccer fields, to house Chinese and Korean companies in various sectors.

The Korean fashion and retail company hopes to act as a strategic and financial partner for domestic peers seeking entry into China, by leveraging three decades of experience and networks it has built in the country, Korea’s largest trading partner.

Innovation Valley houses E-Land’s Chinese headquarters, smart factory logistics center, R&D center, film studio and live commerce studio. It will also offer shared office space to Korean companies.

Wujing, equivalent to Korea’s Pangyo Techno Valley outside Seoul, is where E-Land first settled when it entered China in 1992. E-Land converted a former doll factory in Wujing into a trousers factory to launch its business in China.

Dunst has also explored overseas markets, both online and offline, in partnership with department stores in 20 countries including the US, Canada, Italy, France, the UK, Hong Kong and Japan.

To bolster its online presence in China, it will market products on other e-commerce platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Douyin, a sister company of the video-sharing app Tiktok.

Write to Sul-Li Jun at sljun@hankyung.com
Yeonhee Kim edited this article