Nearly all of luxury items Shinsegae Group put up for sale online after the government authorized duty-free stores to domestically divest their stocks in emergency relief for their business idled from standstill in air travel were sold out within hours.

Its online shopping site went down even before the opening time for the luxury goods inventory sales as more than 150,000 shoppers flocked to the online shopping site of Sinsegae International nearly simultaneously in the morning to grab the chance to buy bags, wallets and other leather goods of global luxury brands.

Shinsegae held the event to prop up sales in the duty-free business grappling with losses from a plunge in travelers amid the virus-led hiatus in air travel. The move comes after the Korea Customers Service in late April decided to relax regulations on the sale of duty-free goods outside of tax-exemption outlets to help local travel retail shop operators.

At Shinsegae International’s site, a total of 200 items became available at a discount of up to 50 percent from 10:00 a.m., and some popular products such as Saint Laurent’s Loulou Monogram women’s chain shoulder bag were sold out immediately.

Most expensive item – Bottega Veneta men’s Intrecciato briefcase priced at a 27.5 percent discount of 2,931,000 won ($2,407.19) – was sold out in just three hours of the site opening.

“Some of the popular items, currently out of stock, will soon be back in stock,” said an official at Shinsegae International.

Upon the announcement of the sale fiesta, membership registration of Shinsegae International online mall surged 1,000 percent on June 1-2 against a week ago and downloads of its mobile app up 1,500 percent.

Shinsegae Group’s integrated online marketplace SSG.com also joined the event and began offering of 85 duty-free luxury items at a discount of up to 47 percent from 9:00 a.m. Wednesday. About 30 percent were sold out as of 4:00 p.m., and more products of other brands will be added.

By Lee Yoon-jae, Shim Sang-dae, Kim Tae-sung and Lee Ha-yeon

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]