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  1. Warehouse Style

    Korea runs a lot of warehouse format stores and there is a reason they keep appearing. Bare racking, concrete floor, stock stacked in the boxes it arrived in. The format is the message. Before anybody reads a price…

  2. Twenty Two Minutes

    Everything you can see in the photo. Twenty two minutes. I timed it because I did not believe it while it was happening. A Mongolian buyer, one phone, standing in front of the pallets and talking into it in Mongolian…

  3. Twenty Four Pallets

    Twenty four pallets of Crocodile sneakers. I walked the rows for a while before deciding they were not going overseas. The size curve and the styling both read domestic, and I would rather sell a thing where it fits…

  4. Twenty Dollar Down

    Season off goods stay attractive for one reason. A proper goose down jacket can be put in front of a customer at around twenty dollars and still work as a deal for everyone standing in the chain, which is not a…

  5. Twelve Trucks

    DAKS, VALENTINE and LOVCAT. Mostly small women's wallets with some bags mixed in. Twelve eleven ton trucks, around 170 pallets, all of it into our own warehouse. Wallets travel well. They are light, they stack, and a…

  6. Traders, Before Opening

    Display finished at an Emart Traders store. Traders runs on bulk, wide aisles and high stacks, so apparel has to be built to be understood from a distance and picked up without a conversation. I have walked through…

  7. Three Hours

    A general grocery store this time. Smaller footprint, tighter aisles, and a customer who came in for food and will look at apparel only if it does not slow them down. Three hours from the truck arriving to the last…

  8. Thirty Years Of Sewing

    Out to a sewing factory owned by an old friend of our director. He buys his fabric abroad himself and has been producing in house for thirty years, including long runs for a number of high end labels. He asked for the…

  9. The Market Comes Back

    Another event floor, another set of fixtures out of the truck. This one has been busier than the numbers I had in my head when we signed for it. Domestic apparel distribution in Korea has been recovering since the…

  10. Sold Out In Three Days

    MASSIMILIANO INCAS bags, imported from Italy and now in the warehouse. The original plan was the usual split, some to wholesale and some to broadcast. We put a small quantity into a first test broadcast to see how it…

  11. Snowed In

    Heading out to a site in the provinces when the snow made the decision for me. Not a light fall. The kind where the lane markings disappear and the cars ahead start moving at walking speed with their hazards on. So I…

  12. Short Lease In Daegu

    There is a practice here called kkalsae. You find a piece of idle land, agree with the owner for two weeks or a month, put up a floor and sell on it. Short term rental, nothing more complicated than that. This one was…

  13. Seven Thousand Backpacks

    Seven Thousand Backpacks Seven thousand OLYMPIA backpacks, unloaded and counted. Bags come in clean compared with footwear. No size runs to reconcile, so the count goes fast. Bags move well toward Russia and Mongolia…

  14. Rest Stop

    A highway rest stop in Korea. These carry far more foot traffic than most people assume, and the traffic has a particular shape. Everybody is already out of the car, already walking, already spending fifteen minutes…

  15. Racked To The Ceiling

    Whenever a shipment comes from the E.LAND group it arrives as a mix. Several brands at once, never one clean line, and you find out what you actually bought while you are unwrapping it. Five eleven ton trucks. Around…

  16. Pallet Day

    No inbound today. We went out instead. Pallets leave with every shipment and they do not walk back on their own, so every so often a truck goes around the partner sites and collects what has piled up. One truck holds…

  17. One Month Lease

    About 10,675 square feet inside a Korean shopping centre, taken for one month. Move in, build the floor, sell, strike it, leave. This is the event team's normal rhythm and there is no second act to plan for. Five…

  18. Mud

    Heavy rain. There is a hill behind our warehouse and civil works have been running on it, so the mud came down with the water and packed our storm drain solid. The yard alone is over 35,583 square feet. With the drain…

  19. More Fixtures

    Another Emart Traders store, another apparel setup. Same format as the last one, different city, largely the same build. Racking up, rails in, sizes out, signage last. By now the crew could do it without me standing…

  20. Made In Italy

    A twenty foot container of handmade bags is coming in from Italy. The brand is not one anyone would recognise, and at this price it does not need to be. The unit cost is low enough that the origin can carry the sales…

  21. Inside The Store

    Emart again, but not the event hall this time. We agreed with the person in charge to set up on the grocery floor, among the food, which is not where apparel usually goes. Customers approach stalls sitting outside the…

  22. I Lost Count

    Twenty eleven ton trucks. I decided to count them myself, one at a time, feeling organised about it. Somewhere around the middle the number left my head entirely and I had to go and ask somebody. Twenty is not a…

  23. Hungry At Traders

    Another Emart Traders store, another night build. These floors only become ours after the last customer has gone home, so the fixtures go up under half the lights with the whole place to ourselves. Quiet, efficient, no…

  24. Hong Kong Route

    Authentic Nike, Adidas, New Balance and Converse apparel and footwear, imported from Hong Kong and checked in this week. For season off goods there are two serious sources in the world, Italy and Hong Kong. Both have…

  25. Five In The Morning

    Display day at an NC Department Store site. Fixtures, stock, signage, the whole floor built from empty. Night work is standard for department store sites. The floor only becomes ours after the last customer leaves. We…

  26. Event Hall

    Selling out of the event hall of an Emart store. The hall sits where the traffic has to pass, which is the entire reason these spaces command what they command. If somebody asked me where the heaviest foot traffic in…

  27. Cutting Boards

    Thirty pallets of kitchenware. Lacquered end grain and mahogany cutting boards, which is not a category this warehouse was built around, and yet here they are next to the apparel. End grain boards are heavy, so thirty…

  28. Boots Going North

    Winter sheepskin boots from O'MY SOLE, checked in and stacked. Boots take longer to receive than most categories because the sizes come mixed and every carton has to be opened to know what is actually in it. This is a…

  29. A Drive In Autumn

    I work seven days a week and take maybe one day off a month, if that. It is not discipline at this point, it is just how the years have arranged themselves. First job was handing out flyers in the second year of middle…

  30. Event Hall

    The hall was empty when we got there. A floor, a ceiling, and our truck outside with about 10,000 LECAF pieces in it. We built it up from nothing. Fixtures, then hanging, category first and size after. It took longer…

  31. Move

    Until last year we ran 500 pyeong in Gonjiam, Gwangju. The new building is in the same city, 3,000 pyeong. The move came out of volume. Domestic demand recovered after COVID and our intake grew with it, a little at a…

  33. One 40HQ, Chosen in Person: A First Order from Mongolia

    Most first orders in the Korean overstock trade are small on purpose. A buyer takes a few cartons, checks whether the goods match the photos, and decides from there. That is sensible, and we usually expect it. This…