The NBA is widely considered the most stylish sports league in America—*30 for 30 music plays*—but what if I told you there’s another country that takes NBA style even further? An entire country that embraces NBA fashion, and a population that dresses every day like they’re Russell Westbrook? As it turns out, South Korea is a haven for NBA style, and the country’s official stores are stocked with the type of fashion-forward apparel that makes it feel like we’re still sitting comfortably in the tall tee era here in the U.S.
If you take a look at American merch versus product from South Korea, the differences are immediately evident. One of South Korea’s most recent lookbooks stars Got7, a seven-member boy band in South Korea. In the lookbook, the members gnaw on gold jewelry and model monochromatic outerwear with faux-fur-lined hoods, stylish bomber jackets, and basketball-print shirts similar to the ones released by Givenchy a couple years ago. And if it feels like many of the pieces are the work of a designer and not some massive sports-first corporation, that’s because, well, it sort of is.
Five years ago, the NBA handed over merch design in South Korea to MK Trend, an established apparel maker in South Korea. With MK Trend at the helm, the NBA loosened the reins and allowed the company to create trendier, more casual, lifestyle-focused items, according to a spokesperson from the league’s Asia office in Hong Kong.
Entrusting MK Trend to handle design—rather than force its traditional T-shirts, hats, and jerseys onto a market it can’t fully understand—was a brilliant move on the NBA’s part. The partnership was created because MK Trend is well versed in the fashion trends happening in South Korea. And while the league makes sure to approve each item, it remains pretty hands-off during the design stages.
Since the pairing, the popularity of NBA merch in South Korea has skyrocketed. They are now opening up their 107th NBA Shop in South Korea. If you’re looking for an official NBA Shop here in the U.S., your only option is the one on Fifth Avenue in New York City.
The collections with MK Trend don’t just appeal to a diehard 76ers fan who wants to buy a Ben Simmons jersey—currently the most popular search on the NBA’s official U.S. webshop—in preparation for the new season. The Korean assortment also appeals to the customer that really only cares about fashion and, in turn, have made NBA-branded items fashion-forward choices, much like the recent concert merch trend in the U.S. If the merch is stylish enough, you can feasibly dress like a Lakers fan for a day, then a Clippers fan the next.
The best-selling items in South Korea come from exactly the squads you’d expect: Bulls, Lakers, and Knicks, all teams with worldwide visibility and a recognizable brand name. League-wide merch with the NBA’s Jerry West logo also does well. Teams on the rise, according to sales figures, include the Memphis Grizzlies (earn that money, Mike Conley!), Brooklyn Nets—whose classic black-and-white colorway you can see consistently throughout the Got7 lookbook—and the New Orleans Pelicans. Sales for the two teams that made it to this year’s finals, the Cavaliers and the Warriors, have also been up. And “up” is the keyword for this whole partnership, as sales have consistently increased during this five-year partnership.
The merchandise undoubtedly also benefits from the undeniable cool associated with the NBA at home and abroad. The NBA is recognized for having the most stylish celebrity athletes, and that pays big dividends when marketing the clothing to the fashion-conscious population of South Korea.
The boom of NBA style has been so big in South Korea, that it’s started to bleed over to other Asian countries, like China. In 2014, MK Trend and the NBA started selling its clothing in China. Just two years later, the NBA is opening up their 100th store in the country—that’s a one followed by two zeroes. It deserves being said again: It took just as long for the NBA to open 100 stores in China as it took to make Suicide Squad. And that’s all based on the success South Korea has had in a relatively short half-decade. “MK Trend is a great partner of NBA China and shares our vision of engaging style-centric fans through one-of-a- kind NBA lifestyle apparel,” NBA China CEO David Shoemaker said via a press release.
And while this sort of partnership could succeed in the U.S., we are probably still a ways away. The current header on the U.S. NBA webshopfeatures team USA gear: shorts, a jersey, and a grey T-shirt printed with “USA Basketball” in plain lettering—a far cry from what you see on the South Korea’s NBA homepage. Maybe one day we’ll see tastemakers and influencers in American NBA lookbooks, but until then there’s always massive shipping fees to get the good stuff direct from Seoul.
