LF Converts Former Street Stores to LF Mall Stores

Establishing a Win-Win Business Model with Dealerships

[Asia Economy Reporter Yujin Cho] Lifestyle culture company LF (CEO Oh Gyusik) is promoting the mid- to long-term expansion of the O4O concept 'LF Mall Store,' which maximizes the synergy effect between its official online shopping mall LF Mall and offline distribution, to all street stores in order to revitalize street-level stores, while also actively opening new stores in major commercial districts nationwide.

LF has long been considering ways to establish a business structure that can create organic synergy with offline stores to overcome the limitations of online distribution, which does not provide sufficient experiential value. Accordingly, in October last year, the GS Gangnam Tower store, a representative comprehensive street-level store in the Gangnam area of Seoul, was renewed and reopened as the new integrated online-offline store brand LF Mall Store with the slogan "Comfortable in-store, cheap online, fast at home." Since then, 20 LF street stores nationwide have been converted to LF Mall Stores.

These stores recorded an average sales growth rate of around 100% compared to the same period last year, even amid the severe impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The company explained that this achievement "proves the potential for evolution into a new O4O business model."

LF Mall Store’s biggest advantage is that, in addition to existing brand products, customers can directly experience LF Mall’s online-exclusive private brand (PB) products such as Piz, JSNY, Ilcorso, and Jill by Jill Stuart in-store, and receive personalized styling suggestions from store staff?offering customer experiential value that is impossible through the online mall alone.

Additionally, when ordering from LF Mall, customers can pick up products at their desired base store, and upon in-store pickup, they can enjoy free returns and exchanges after fitting, as well as free basic repairs and premium gift wrapping services on-site.

Furthermore, to provide a more convenient and advanced customer experience, LF has introduced LG Electronics’ premium clothing care device ‘Styler’ and 3D virtual fitting solution ‘ThinQ Fit’ to LF Mall Stores, and has set up customer convenience facilities such as rest areas and on-site payment kiosks to allow comfortable online ordering in-store.

In particular, considering that most LF Mall Stores are operated as consignment agencies, LF encourages differentiated MD* compositions reflecting regional characteristics for each store to support agency owners who are suffering severe management difficulties due to the ongoing decline in street distribution trends and the COVID-19 pandemic. To this end, LF supports region-specific marketing based on individual commercial district and consumer-related data.

Agency owners operating LF Mall Stores can select brands that fit the characteristics of the local commercial district from among the 6,000 lifestyle-related small and medium-sized brands in fashion, beauty, and living sectors that are listed on LF Mall, and open them in their stores in the form of pop-up stores to differentiate their stores and maximize sales.

LF Executive Director of Sales Operations, Taehan Ahn, explained, “LF Mall Store provides ‘experience’ as a new value to LF Mall customers, ‘steady profit generation through store differentiation tailored to regional characteristics’ to agency owners operating LF Mall Stores, and ‘opportunities to enter offline distribution’ to small and medium lifestyle brands listed on LF Mall, creating a win-win, symbiotic business model for all.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.