Goyard bags high on SE Asians’ shopping list in S.Korea

Goyard outlets in Seoul bustled with shoppers on Friday, especially from Southeast Asia, looking for the French luxury brand’s popular bags: Goyard Saint Louis and Goyard Anjou bags.

This summer holiday season they are sparing no effort nor expense to fly to Seoul or Busan, the country’s two largest cities, to buy the coveted bags with the Y all-over pattern.

The handmade bags are less available in Southeast Asia, where the designer brand runs only one flagship store in Singapore.

In South Korea, they have opened four boutiques, a little more than one-tenth of their 35 stores around the world. This is a very small number, especially when compared to another luxury French brand Louis Vuitton, which runs 35 outlets in South Korea alone.

“Some Southeast Asian customers purchased several (Goyard bags) at once,” said a luxury industry official.

Goyard does not open outlets within duty-free shops, nor in outlet malls. It does not sell online, either.

The Saint Louis GM bag, in the biggest of the Goyard lines, retails for about 2.2 million won ($1,720). The prices of the Anjou mini bags differ by color, ranging between 2.5 million and 3 million won ($1,952 to $2,340).)

The companys's founder, Edmond Goyard, was born in France in 1853. The company marked the 170th anniversary of his birth this year. Goyard's legacy is as long as two other French luxury brands: Hermes and Louis Vuitton.

Goyard opened its first boutique in South Korea in 2007 after signing an exclusive sales rights contract with Galleria, a department store in Seoul.

Since then, it opened three more outlets in the country all within department stores, one in Busan, after it set up a South Korean subsidiary in 2015.

With Asia’s No. 4 economy emerging as the world’s seventh-largest luxury market, Goyard has unveiled new collections in South Korea ahead of other countries.

Last April, it showcased the Claire-Voie in India collection of the Goyard Saint Louis line in a pop-up store within Shinsegae Centum City, a department store in Busan, for the first time in the world.

In September of last year, it unveiled the Jetblack Special Edition of its flagship bag in Shinsegae Department Store Gangnam before its official launch.

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


Yeonhee Kim edited this article.