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Why Would a Department Store Open a Pop-Up Overseas?
Have you noticed Korean department stores announcing overseas expansions more and more often lately? Shinsegae Department Store recently opened a K-brand showcase pop-up called “K-Experience Fair” at CentralWorld in Bangkok, Thailand. Running from July 6 to 31 on the ground floor of CentralWorld — Bangkok’s largest shopping landmark — the event was organized in partnership with Central Department Store, Thailand’s leading retail company.
This isn’t a one-off pop-up that opens once and disappears. Shinsegae is running it through its own global retail platform, “Shinsegae Hyperground,” which is built specifically to support promising domestic brands expanding overseas. This marks the company’s third showcase of this scale in Thailand alone, following its first pop-up at Siam Discovery in 2023.
Curious Which Brands Took Part?
Seven Korean brands across fashion, beauty, and food and beverage participated in this showcase. On the fashion side: Tanat, Latigen, and 3TIMES. In beauty: Dear Dahlia, Tone28, and Berrisom. Rounding it out was wellness coffee brand SANS, together forming a complex space meant to capture Korean lifestyle as a whole.
Rather than simply filling out storefronts, the pop-up included experiential content like makeup demonstrations and photo zones. An opening event invited roughly 20 local influencers, generating far more buzz than any single brand could have created launching independently overseas. It’s a fundamentally different approach from an individual brand opening its own overseas flagship on its own.
Why a Department Store Builds a ‘Curated Store’
There’s a practical logic behind a department store bundling multiple brands together for overseas expansion this way. For an emerging brand going it alone overseas, there’s simply a lot to handle — export customs, interior design, marketing, and more. When a major retail company steps in instead, it can draw on local distribution networks and operational know-how to sharply lower those upfront costs.
Brands benefit too — they can build local awareness quickly while also getting a chance to meet local buyers. Park Sang-eon, Shinsegae Department Store’s head of new retail, said of the event, “We will keep strengthening our role as an incubator so competitive K-brands can be recognized and take root in global markets.” That’s a department store explicitly taking on the role of incubator for individual brands.
It’s Not Just Shinsegae
This isn’t a strategy unique to Shinsegae, either. Lotte Department Store recently launched a platform called “Next Lab,” starting with Hanoi, Vietnam, as its first hub to support K-fashion brands expanding overseas. Hyundai Department Store, meanwhile, opened the first flagship of “The Hyundai Global” in Tokyo’s Omotesando this month, playing a similar role.
The reasons all three major Korean department store groups are accelerating overseas pop-ups and platform businesses at nearly the same time come down to slowing domestic consumption and the continued global popularity of K-content. Testing market response through a pop-up first, rather than opening a full store directly, also carries a much lighter cost burden — another factor fueling this trend.
The Next Destination Is North America
Shinsegae Hyperground said it plans to use this Bangkok pop-up as a springboard to expand its partnerships into North America going forward. Last year the platform also ran K-fashion and K-beauty pop-ups at Isetan department store in Tokyo and Printemps department store in Paris, respectively — a trajectory that’s now extending beyond Asia into Europe and North America.
If any of the participating brands caught your eye, it’s worth keeping an eye on Shinsegae Hyperground’s future pop-ups in other regions. Brands that build strong local traction through these pop-ups can end up landing permanent store placements down the line — so a brand you’re noticing now might show up on a bigger stage later.
Source: The Fact (Yoo Yeon-seok), “Shinsegae Hyperground’s Third Mega K-Brand Pop-Up in Thailand,” July 6, 2026; Newsis, “Lotte Department Store Launches Next Lab for Global Expansion, Hyundai Department Store Opens ‘The Hyundai’ Flagship in Tokyo, Shinsegae Supports Overseas Expansion via Hyperground,” July 23, 2026.
