Korean leggings brands expand into Japan as demand grows

[Photo provided by Andar]

Korean athleisure wear brand Xexymix and Andar are making strides with their expansion efforts into Japan after their successful ventures into China and Singapore. Xexymix has already entered the Japanese market, and Andar’s recent pop-up store in the country is intensifying the competition in the Japanese leggings market.

According to sources in the fashion industry and Andar, Andar operated a pop-up store at Hankyu Department Store Umeda Main Store in Osaka until Tuesday. This marks Andar’s second pop-up store, after it operated its first in Tokyo in September 2022. The response from Japanese female customers, who had a keen interest in Andar, was overwhelmingly positive, with reports of customers purchasing ten items simultaneously, visitors coming from different regions after hearing about the pop-up store, and first-time visitors returning with friends.

The recent pop-up store was essentially a trial to assess demand before officially opening an offline store. The company said its official online store in Japan, launched in 2022, has seen substantial growth, with cumulative sales totaling 3 billion won by the third quarter of 2023, with fourth-quarter sales up over four times from a year ago.

[Photo provided by Xexymix]

Xexymix is another key player in the leggings market who entered the Japanese market before Andar. Brand X Corporation that operates the brand established its first overseas subsidiary in Japan in October 2019, and the company has been accelerating its strategy, operating 19 pop-up stores in major cities such as Tokyo, Osaka, and Fukuoka, since then. The company is also considering opening official stores in Japan later in 2024, and Xexymix’s sales revenue from its Japanese subsidiary grew from 2.5 billion won in 2020 to 6 billion won in 2022, with an estimated cumulative revenue of 5.5 billion won by the third quarter of 2023.

The motivation behind Xexymix and Andar’s focus on the Japanese market lies in its substantial size, estimated to be more than nine times larger than the Korean market and with an estimated value of around 800 billion won.