BUSAN — Fans who once traveled from store to store in search of their favorite content will soon have a single place to gather in Busan's Seomyeon district. It is Lotte Department Store's first intellectual property, or IP, specialty hall, bringing animation, games, characters and figures together under one roof. The move extends the department store's reach beyond selling goods toward creating a space where fans linger and mingle.
Lotte Department Store's Busan main branch will open the 1,785-square-meter "Fandom Space" on the first basement level on the 30th. Subculture content that had been scattered by genre was consolidated into a single destination store aimed at fandom.
The choice of Busan rather than Seoul for the debut reflects shifting dynamics in the Seomyeon commercial district. Sales to shoppers in their 20s and 30s at the Busan main branch rose about 15% in the January-September period from a year earlier. The pop-up venue "Kinetic Stage," which drew younger customers and out-of-town visitors and put the Busan branch on travel itineraries, was another sign of the district's potential.
Tourism demand also supports the plan. Foreign visitors to Busan totaled 3.43 million through August this year, up 45.9% from the same period last year, according to the Busan Metropolitan Government. The city's steady calendar of content events, including an international film festival and game expos, dovetails with the fandom hall. Lotte Department Store plans to validate the model in Busan before expanding to major sites such as Lotte World Mall in Jamsil.
Tenants include Animate, which sells Japanese comic and animation merchandise; the Bandai Gashapon Official Shop, where visitors can find capsule toys from a range of popular IPs in one place; and Ichiban Kuji, known for character draws in which every ticket wins. Products from Rilakkuma and Sumikko Gurashi, characters from the leading Japanese brand San-X, will also be offered, along with Best Hobby, a specialty store for plastic models and figures. The lineup spans everyone from fans shopping for goods to collectors of figures and plastic models.
Seven pop-up stores will open alongside the launch. They include the One Piece Mugiwara Store and Harry Potter Mahou Dokoro, both making their Busan debuts, a pop-up combining LaLiga with webtoon characters, and others featuring Crayon Shin-chan, Hinakuu and Panggomi. Stamp tours and character greetings are scheduled for the opening weekend, and the finals of a cosplay challenge will be held on Nov. 8. Projection mapping featuring characters and Christmas imagery will run on the exterior wall at the main entrance of the Busan branch through the end of the year.
The space is seen as an attempt to treat fandom not as something confined to a particular genre or age group but as commercial district content linking shopping, experience and tourism. "We prepared the space based on fandom demand among customers in their 20s and 30s," said Jin Seung-hyun, head of the Busan main branch. "We will grow it into a cultural venue for Busan."