Eland closed its SPAO flagship on Garosu-gil and pivoted to online as tourism dried up

SPAO, Eland's fast-fashion brand, launched in 2009 and hit 100 billion won in annual sales within three years, 300 billion won by 2016. Its five-story Garosu-gil flagship — a 'ferocious battlefield' against H&M, Zara and Eight Seconds — lived on foreign shoppers. COVID-19 took them away, and stay-home rules made store visits feel unnecessary: growth stalled at 320 billion won in 2020. Eland shut the store, leaving well before its February 2023 contract end; Shoopen, the shoe brand on the building's first two floors, withdrew with it.

The response was a push online. Eland signed a memorandum of understanding with Musinsa, the country's largest online fashion mall, to run a campaign for millennials. From June 2021 it planned to offer lifestyle curation through Eland Pay, an online-and-offline integrated service that analyses customers' bio information and shopping patterns to suggest clothes, available on subscription as well.

The shake-out also reversed a divestment. Eland had run a preliminary bidding in March 2021 to dispose of womenswear brands MIXXO and Roem after COVID hit their sales, but disagreed with bidders on price. As restrictions loosened and shoppers returned, MIXXO's sales rose 302% and Roem's 171% on March a year earlier. 'There is no reason to sell the brands at a low price. We are going to focus on selling more women's clothes again,' an Eland official said.

MIXXO sales up 302% and Roem up 171% on March a year earlier by April 2021 — Eland called off their sale and kept both brands

Garosu-gil's customer base was mostly foreign tourists; COVID-19 cut international arrivals sharply and gutted store traffic.

Rent on a five-story flagship became hard to justify with tourists gone, and the contract ran to February 2023.

Fast fashion sells low-priced items at high volumes in stores — stay-home quarantine rules broke that model.

Online fashion grew through the pandemic; Musinsa gave Eland Korea's largest online mall and a millennial audience.

MIXXO and Roem rebounded as restrictions loosened, removing the case for a discounted divestment.

When a flagship's traffic depends on customers who vanish, the lease is a liability: exit early, follow demand online, and never sell recovering brands in a panic.

Eland kept MIXXO and Roem and said it would focus on selling women's clothes again rather than sell into a weak price. The online push continued with the Musinsa campaign and Eland Pay, the curation and subscription service due from June 2021. The Korea Times report, from April 2021, gives no figures for what the early exit cost or how the online business then performed — the pivot's payoff is asserted, not yet measured, in this source.