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Whether you've noticed more street style from Seoul Fashion Week on your Instagram or an increased volume of articles from the front rows by editors, the buzz around Korean brands in Europe and America is palpable in the fashion industry right now. And with good reason - the country's homegrown luxury market was recently estimated at around $10.6 billion. Just to put that in perspective per head of the population, China’s is estimated to be $18.5 billion with 1.4 billion citizens versus South Korea's 50 million.
In short, this is a country that's seriously interested in style - so it's little wonder that Korea's powerhouse menswear brands are now looking to replicate their success overseas. And no label is taking this more seriously than Solid Corporation, led by COO Caroline Kim.
Founded 30 years ago, Solid Corporation is one of Seoul's most established fashion houses, made up of two men's labels: Solid Homme and its cool, luxury-focussed younger brother Wooyoungmi (founded in 2002 and now designed by co-creative directors Madame Woo and her daughter, Katie Chung). Having shown every season in the French capital since 2003 and broken into the western market with high-end stockists such as Selfridges in London and Bon Marché in Paris, Wooyoungmi has established itself arguably as the flagship Korean men's brand in Europe. Now Kim has decided it's time for the label's older brother to replicate this success.
And it's off to a solid start. Globally, Solid Homme's annual revenue has increased 70 per cent in 2016 versus 2015, with a projected growth rate of 75 per cent for 2017.
As the new season of Solid Homme prepares to drop at Harvey Nichols in London, we talk to Kim about the opportunities and challenges presented to a Korean company here in Britain, why it's taken 30 years for the brand to arrive on our shores, and the key men's markets she wants to conquer next.
Caroline Kim: Our first offering, Solid Homme (celebrating its 30th anniversary next year) appeals to the contemporary fashion customer, whereas the newer offering in Wooyoungmi appeals to the luxury designer market.
In aesthetic terms, Solid Homme offers classic wardrobe staples, elevated through the fabric construction with a clean, minimal aesthetic interspersed with graphic elements and sophisticated colour. In contrast to this, central to the design of Wooyoungmi is the unique perspective that comes from female designers creating menswear. The brand is known for its escape of the mundane and often its futuristic shapes. The latest collection shown during Paris Men’s Fashion Week saw the Wooyoungmi man take inspiration from artist Sol Lewit’s wall paintings, which at first look rigid and masculine, yet through the co-creative director eyes of Madame Woo and Katie Chung, transform into a more gender-fluid offering of softer shapes and silhouettes twinned with vivid checks, stripes and prints.
As a business venture, Solid Homme is, and has always been, the leading menswear brand in South Korea. Therefore, at first the business aspiration was to be the number one Korean brand. Now our strategic aim for Solid Homme is to expand the brand on a global scale where it competes with the leading contemporary menswear brands.
In contrast to this, Wooyoingmi has always been a global brand. Since the launch it has been available at the leading designer and concept stores and boasts two flagship stores, one in Gangnam, Korea and one in Rue St Claude, Paris.
Solid Homme is the number one Korean brand and every stylish Korean man between 25 – 35 will own a piece from the brand. It truly is written into the culture. With this and the appetite for forward-thinking menswear being so large in Korea it is possible to be hugely successful, in number terms, by solely supplying the internal market and thus that has been the case for Solid Homme over the last 30 years. However, with the success of Wooyoungmi and the demand from international stylists, media, buyers and retails stores for Solid Homme, we now feel it is the right time to take it global.
Korea has been a leader in contemporary fashion for years, and globally menswear has seen a huge upshift in recent years - therefore we are just reacting to the demand. It was an easy and natural decision.
Given how established the menswear market is in Korea, Korean men are now certainly more confident than the European buyer in the way they shop, they take more risks with their choices are more experimental in their styling.
Solid Homme, however, is such an established contemporary brand it is more in-keeping with the European offering currently in the market, thus our Korean customers are looking for the same as our European buyers. The minimalism, cuts and shapes are so unique that an educated buyer whether European or Korean will look to us for their clothing.
There is of course a plethora of other contemporary brands, Korean or otherwise, which offer much more outlandish colours, styles and shapes where there would be a greater difference seen in buying and shopping trends between the two distinctly separate areas. However, despite being the originator of Korean contemporary wear we are often seen as a 'European' offering. Therefore, our buyers are quite similar in terms of what they are looking for no matter where they originate. The main difference we see is in the styling.
As with any brand launching into a new market it takes a huge amount of investment and man power, yet given our experience with Wooyoungmi, we understood some of the challenges that we would face. This twinned with our great relationships with some of the leading global retailers made the whole process far easier. The backing of these leading retailers certainly aided our launch as the consumers have complete trust in these leading stores. If they feel Solid Homme is right for them, this is a great endorsement.
Yes. We currently have 31 standalone stores in Korea, and further concessions in Hong Kong and China. By Autumn/Winter 2017, Solid Homme will be available in Korea, China, Hong Kong, UK, France, Canada, US and the Middle East - quite a remarkable achievement for a single brand whose global expansion only commenced from S/S '15. We plan to open 10 Solid Homme stores in China by 2020. London, however, would be our strategic location for the next flagship store for Wooyoungmi [as opposed to Solid Homme] to continue the success we have witnessed from our Paris and Seoul stores. We are currently evaluating our company’s long term business plan to include such a possibility.
Has the Brexit vote affected your business here in the UK at all?
Thus far, the Brexit decision has not been significant to the sales performance. All our launch retailers - Harrods, Harvey Nichols and Mr Porter - have been performing phenomenally well. We hope this continues, but of course we will be keeping a strong eye on how this might affect the consumer buying trends in the UK.
What is next for the brand? Are there any other menswear markets you think are ready for Solid Homme – the Middle East for example?
As detailed above, we have large aspirations for the SOLID HOMME brand. We feel the brand is one of the global leaders in contemporary menswear and thus will continue to expand our brand business until we achieve our long term strategy. In the meantime, we are all excited about our immediate S/S '17 opening in Canada with Holt Renfrew and our strategic alliance with Saks, starting from F/W '17 which will give a good indication of how Solid Homme will be performing in the North Americas.
Solid Homme is available now at Harrods, Harvey Nichols and mrporter.com