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Coming soon: Shilla’s massive Louis Vuitton store starts to take shape at Incheon International Airport |
SOUTH KOREA. Lotte Duty Free has withdrawn its legal challenge to an agreement between The Shilla Duty Free and Incheon International Airport Corp (IIAC) to open a Louis Vuitton store at the airport, The Moodie Report reliably understands.
The agreement, first revealed to the industry by The Moodie Report on 30 November 2010, aroused enormous controversy in South Korea’s travel retail sector. Lotte Duty Free, which had itself pitched hard to secure an agreement with Louis Vuitton, was bitterly disappointed at the Shilla breakthrough and launched a legal challenge to the deal, alleging breach of contract.
 Every picture tells a (Vuitton) story |
| It [the store site] is absolutely enormous. Unbelievable. |
| The Moodie Blog |
Its injunction requested Incheon District Court to prohibit the airport corporation from signing the contract with Shilla. That injunction has now been withdrawn, we understand.
The Vuitton store will span 550sq m – probably the biggest single-brand boutique in an airport anywhere – and is currently under construction in Incheon’s central Departures area, in new retail space that The Moodie Report understands has been created especially to house the store. Sales in year one are expected to hit US$100 million, according to IIAC and Shilla.
The next issue of The Moodie Report Print Edition, to coincide with the TFWA Asia Pacific exhibition in May, will feature an in-depth report on Incheon and the South Korean market’s leading retailers.
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The Shilla Duty Free’s complex in downtown Seoul features a Louis Vuitton boutique among other leading brands |
