SwatchOn connects fabric wholesalers to overseas fashion designers

“We had the overseas market in mind from the get-go,” global fabric sale platform SwatchOn’s CEO Lee Woo-seok told The Korea Economic Daily this week. “The idea was to connect the iconic offline platform known as the Dongdaemun wholesale fabric market (in Seoul) with fashion brands in North America and Europe.”

Lee said he believes there is more room for innovation in sectors into which technology has yet to deeply permeate. 

The startup sells fabric available at South Korean wholesalers to fashion designers in the West. 

SwatchOn makes some 200,000 fabrics at domestic wholesalers available on the platform for foreigner designers to browse and purchase online. To this end, the platform has digitized product information from around 18,000 brands.

A whopping 80% of their revenue comes from North America and Europe.

The founder explained that smaller designer brands in the West had difficulty securing the necessary fabric in their home countries. The business idea was to help both overseas fashion entrepreneurs and fabric vendors in South Korea’s fashion wholesale district alike.

After founding the startup in 2017, Lee used to visit vendors in Dongdaemun to receive samples and promised to help them gain exposure to overseas buyers. 

He would also attend fashion weeks around the globe to give fabric samples to industry insiders to promote his company. Perhaps not surprisingly, he was sometimes kicked of the week-long fashion galas for handing out swatches. 

“Visiting fashion capitals around the world for sales helped a lot in the beginning to get clients,” recalled Lee. “SwatchOn is well-known among famous brands in our target regions.”

DIGITIZATION 

SwatchOn raked in some 7 billion won ($5.5 million) in sales last year; and hopes to extend the figure to 15 billion won by the year’s end. 

The next digitization task for the budding startup is to work on search engine optimization that allows users to purchase the exact fabric used in a particular outfit just by having the information on that piece of clothing.

For instance, if a buyer wants to purchase the fabric of a coat shown at a Dior fashion show, a photo of the coat alone would lead to the material used to make it. 

“Oftentimes, designers abroad ask for ‘the type of fabric used in this particular outfit’ as opposed to the exact name of the textile,” Lee said. “If they can figure out which fabric they need only with the visual information, more designers will frequent the SwatchOn platform.” 

The company has ventured into the digital fashion market as well.

The latest database has digital swatches that mimic the physical fabric to a tee. 

SwatchOn is currently collaborating with brands that are keen to explore the three-dimensional fashion industry to co-produce items to be used in the digital space, i.e. virtual or augmented reality. 

“Whereas three-dimensional design was used to improve offline design projects in the past, digital design has recently become a product in and of itself,” said Lee.

Write to Eun-Yi Ko at koko@hankyung.com
Jee Abbey Lee edited this article.