In the Dapsimni E-Land speed office in Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul, sewing machines hum and whir in endless motion. The fashion industry typically plans and produces products on a large scale six months to a year in advance. But this office churns out products that will be displayed in stores in two days.
This is E-Land’s ‘two-day, five-day’ system, where small batches of 30 to 200 pieces are produced in two days and displayed in stores, and then, based on consumer reactions, large-scale production begins in Vietnamese factories within five days. E-Land, a South Korean fashion and retail company, took a leaf out of local fashion market Dongdaemun’s fast-fashion system to create its own production method. Dongdaemun has operated a self-sufficient system encompassing design, production, and sales since the 1960s.
E-Land has recently expanded the Dongdaemun-style rapid-fire production system to China. The company built a ‘mini Dongdaemun’ in the heart of Shanghai, stocked with Dongdaemun’s original garments and materials, to make products that appeal to Chinese consumers. E-Land has further upgraded Korea’s two-day, five-day system to create a ‘ten-hour, seven-hour’ strategy in China. Since March, the company operated a lightning-fast system where products are produced and posted online within ten hours and hit the shelves in Shanghai stores in the next seven hours.
E-Land began implementing the two-day, five-day system in 2022 through partnerships with two domestic manufacturers. The company established manufacturing centers that produce small batches of products, which are then displayed in SPAO stores in Gangnam, Yeongdeungpo, Hongdae, and Myeongdong. This allowed the company to quickly gauge customer preferences, predict which products will sell and how much, and plan production accordingly.
“By analyzing customer purchasing patterns over the weekend, we can predict how much of the product will sell,” said an E-Land official. “This is a strategy for a no-inventory business, which we are aiming for in the long run.”
E-Land was able to replicate the two-day, five-day system in China because the company completed building an industrial park called E-Innovation Valley late last year on land in Shanghai, which the company purchased from the Chinese government in 2012 under a 50-year lease. The company sends raw materials from Dongdaemun to the Shanghai Industrial Park directly by air every two weeks. These materials are then placed in the E-Land Shanghai office within the industrial park, a space that the company calls ‘mini Dongdaemun.’
The company then makes small batches of clothing using raw garments from Dongdaemun at its factory in the industrial park. It takes less than 10 hours to make the clothes, take pictures of the clothes, and upload them online. Within seven hours, the products are displayed in stores near Shanghai’s E-Innovation Valley.
“We have offices, factories, studios, and logistics centers within a three-minute walk of each other, which makes this super-fast process possible,” said an E-Land official. “By immediately identifying and responding to customer needs and trends, we can reduce inventory and simultaneously increase sales and profits.”
