Photo: Matin Kim Myeongdong Flagship Store
Matin Kim will open a select shop in Senegal in the second half of this year after a local distributor approached the brand with the proposal, Hago House said in August, making it the first Korean fashion brand to enter the country.
The brand had 26 overseas stores as of the end of July, according to the company. It opened its first in Hong Kong in October 2024, added Taiwan and Macau that year, and has since entered Japan, Thailand and, in May, Mongolia. First stores in mainland China and Vietnam followed in October.
Hago House, an affiliate of Daemyung Chemical, acquired Matin Kim in 2021 and has run an aggressive overseas strategy since.
What the company calls entering a market covers several different things, and the distinction matters more than the headline number.
In Senegal the brand will reach customers in select-shop form, leading with logo accessories alongside short-sleeved T-shirts and light outerwear, adjusting sizing and silhouettes later based on local response.
Europe works the same way. Matin Kim placed its bag and wallet lines into the Bulgarian select shop Scandal in October 2025 and said it would extend from there into the Czech Republic and the Balkans, building distribution around local retailers rather than its own stores. It opened an official Amazon storefront in the United States the same month.
So the estate is mixed: owned stores concentrated in greater China and Southeast Asia, wholesale placements in Eastern Europe and Africa, and an American presence that is a marketplace listing.
That mix is the actual shape of Korean fashion’s route outward, and it looks nothing like the one the industry discusses.
Korea had two houses on the Paris spring 2027 calendar, both presentations, with no runway slot at all. Seoul Fashion Week’s trade show recorded $7.57m in order consultations in September, up 0.4% on the previous season, with buyers from 20 countries against 23 a year earlier.
Matin Kim is also a contemporary label selling logo pieces and accessories, which travels on a different mechanism to a runway brand and always has.
Senegal is not an arbitrary choice. Chanel staged the first sub-Saharan African show by a major luxury house in Dakar in 2022, and the city hosts Dakar Fashion Week, the oldest fashion event in Africa.
Hago House said the Senegal expansion came about because a local distributor made the first approach.
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