Bungaejangter's offline secondhand special store BGZT Lab at The Hyundai Seoul on Yeouido / Courtesy of Bungaejanter

By Kim Jae-heun

Lotte, Shinsegae, Hyundai and other department stores are opening special stores for used items and investing in online secondhand marketplace apps to attract younger customers, according to industry officials, Friday.

Department stores used to deal mostly with brand-new, up-to-date and pricey merchandise to differentiate themselves from other retailers, but due to young customers' increasing demand for used items, they have started selling secondhand fashion items and luxury goods.

Hyundai Department Store in Sinchon, western Seoul, has turned its whole fourth floor into a secondhand marketplace, opening various stores selling used clothes and luxury watch and handbags.

"Many secondhand items on sale at Hyundai Department Store are neither new nor best-selling products, but it doesn't matter because luxury goods are mostly timeless pieces. They are mostly more than half the price of new products, so it attracts young customers who do not make as much money as those in their 30s or 40s," a 25-year-old college student surnamed Kim said.

The Hyundai Seoul on Yeouido also saw the accumulated number of visitors to BGZT Lab, an offline special store of popular online marketplace app Bungaejangter, surpass 400,000 last month.

In January, Shinsegae Group's corporate venture capital Signite Partners invested a total of 82 billion won ($57.17 million) in Bungaejangter. In August, the company collaborated with Bungaejanger to open BGZT Collection, its luxury goods store, in the retailer's online shopping mall SSG.com.

Lotte Department Store in Busan also opened a pop-up secondhand store to sell clothes from both domestic and international brands at discounts of up to 70 percent.

"There have been major changes in young consumers' recognition of used goods recently. Their purchasing power is not so big at the moment, but considering that they will become our main customers in the near future, local department stores will keep making efforts to attract them," a local department store official said.

According to global consulting firm Bain & Company, sales in the secondhand luxury market here soared 65 percent last year compared to 2017. The sales of new luxury goods increased only 12 percent in the same period, falling far below the sales of used luxury items.