Apr 18, 2022 / No. 157
These days, the resell market is becoming popular as purchasing, reselling, and investing in luxury or limited-edition products has become a trend. As a result, online resell platforms are growing, and these platforms conduct brokerage business between sellers and buyers by closely examining the authenticity and quality of products. However, in January 2022, a T-shirt from Musinsa, a famous apparel platform, was found to be fake on Kicks Rule Everything Around Me (KREAM) of Naver, a famous resell platform, causing controversy.
Musinsa and KREAM are platforms with good reputations in their respective fashion fields. Musinsa is the largest online select shop in Korea and manufactures, imports, and distributes products from various brands. It guarantees that the products in circulation are 100% genuine, so consumers can use this platform with trust. Customers of KREAM also show consumer confidence. KREAM conducts brokerage business in the form of carefully inspecting limited-edition products sent by sellers and sending them to buyers. That is why KREAM is very sensitive about the authenticity of products. However, a T-shirt called “Essential” from Fear of God, which was sold by Musinsa, was found to be fake in KREAM. The incident is connected to a battle of pride between the two platforms, which were already sensitive to authenticity, and eventually, they even confronted each other in court.
What can be seen from this incident is that many fashion platforms value consumer confidence. In particular, this is a highly sensitive issue for resell platforms whose main task is to check the authenticity of products. Currently, KREAM, MUST’IT, and soldout of Musinsa are growing as big resell platforms in Korea, and they are building credibility around the young generation who value scarcity and are interested in the brand itself. Furthermore, as the development of mobile devices promotes the interindividual transaction platform, this generation is actively using resell platforms to easily trade with anyone. Therefore, many resell platforms are putting a lot of effort into building consumer confidence and allowing consumers to trade safely. In this process, competition is also taking place among these resell platforms, where Musinsa and KREAM are also in a competitive position. Musinsa has its own resell platform called soldout and is competing with various benefits to keep up with the overflowing resell platforms. Therefore, soldout of Musinsa and KREAM are growing by conducting detailed inspections and providing fast services to attract many consumers, including the young generation.
As such, the argument between Musinsa and KREAM is unlikely to end. On April 5, Musinsa eventually lost the argument on whether the T-shirt was genuine. Despite this, the resell market will grow even larger, so the two fashion platforms will continue to be in a competitive position. This leads us to the question, what should these platforms do to build consumer confidence? They need to be honest first. Instead of building pride for the brand image, they should thoroughly identify any errors in the distribution process and notify consumers of them. They will need to run the platform carefully so that they no longer experience a crack in consumer confidence.
By Lee Ga-eun, AG Reporter
dlrkdms2231@ajou.ac.kr
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