The battle for basics: Musinsa vs. Uniqlo

Musinsa regains top spot in card spending as rivals take their battle to Seoul's busiest shopping districts

Musinsa reclaimed the lead in card payments among South Korea's fashion retailers in June, overtaking Uniqlo just a month after the Japanese giant briefly held the top spot, in the latest sign of an intensifying rivalry.

Data from WiseApp Retail shows Monday that Musinsa recorded an estimated 347.3 billion won ($228 million) in card payments in June, up 27.3 percent from a year earlier and representing a 30.9 percent share among the country's 10 largest fashion retailers, including Uniqlo, Zara, Ably and Samsung C&T Fashion Group.

Uniqlo ranked second with a 20.2 percent share, after topping the ranking in May, when its estimated spending surged 93 percent on-year to 323.5 billion won.

The rebound owed much to Musinsa's large-scale midyear promotions, with its 11-day Summer Black Friday campaign alone generating more than 265.8 billion won in cumulative online sales.

Yet, industry officials say the monthly jockeying for first place signals a broader contest, with Musinsa and Uniqlo increasingly competing for market share online and in Korea's busiest shopping locations.

Most recently, Uniqlo returned to Myeong-dong with its largest Korean store in May, five years after leaving the tourist-heavy district where Musinsa already runs a full-line store and a Musinsa Standard shop. Musinsa plans to open a second Standard store there in September, offering services tailored to the foreign shoppers who are starting to return.

The rivalry is just as sharp at Yongsan I'Park Mall, where Musinsa opened a large store, including a section for its private label, directly across from Uniqlo on the same floor in January.

That kind of face-off has become a familiar pattern as Musinsa expands offline, with nearly three-quarters of its shop-in-shop Standard stores now sharing a building with a Uniqlo outlet. As of June, Uniqlo operates 133 stores in Korea, while Musinsa runs 49 Standard stores across Korea and China, some of them located inside its 13 multi-brand stores.

"Musinsa keeps gaining ground with younger shoppers, while Uniqlo holds firm with an older crowd," one industry official said. "More consumers are now weighing Uniqlo against Musinsa Standard for everyday basics. The fight over prime shopping districts and retail space is only going to intensify."

According to the data, nearly three-quarters of Musinsa's customers in June were in their teens through 30s, while Uniqlo maintained a stronger following among shoppers in their 40s and 50s, who accounted for 45.3 percent of its customer base.