CJ Olive Young said on Sunday that cumulative spending by foreign customers at its domestic offline stores topped 1 trillion won as of August this year. It reached the 1 trillion won mark in August, three months earlier than in November last year. The cumulative number of transactions from January to August was 11.01 million, equivalent to roughly one foreign purchase every 0.9 seconds based on store operating hours.

The top five purchasing countries on a cumulative basis this year were the United States, Singapore, Japan, China and Thailand. Foreign customers bought an average of 6 items, and 1 in 3 were counted as high-value buyers who pay 100,000 won or more at a time. Nationalities of foreign customers who received tax refunds totaled 192 countries based on Global Tax Free data. The share of foreign customers in total offline sales also rose to 33 percent as of August this year from 2 percent in 2022.

The increase in foreign sales at stores outside the capital region stood out. Olive Young's total foreign sales from January to August rose 47 percent from a year earlier. Over the same period, stores in Gangwon rose 105 percent, Gyeongju 88 percent, Daejeon 80 percent and Jeonju 62 percent, all above the national average. The number of nationalities among foreign customers visiting the Gangwon area rose to 85 countries this year from 76 last year, while Gyeongju rose to 100 from 88.

Foreign tourists tended to visit stores in multiple regions along their travel routes rather than staying in specific commercial areas such as Seoul. Olive Young explained that this was the result of expanding large 'town' stores averaging 200 pyeong or more outside the capital region and specialized stores reflecting local characteristics. In a survey of foreign visitors to its global tourism commercial-area stores conducted over May, it found that each person visited an average of 2.8 stores. Olive Young has designated commercial areas with a high concentration of foreigners as "Olive Young global tourism commercial areas" and has assigned staff who can speak foreign languages and provided multilingual guides. As of August this year, there were 151 such stores nationwide, accounting for more than 10 percent of the total.

Olive Young said it plans to continue increasing stores that highlight local characteristics outside the capital region. It will expand large-scale renewals and region-specific stores in major hub cities such as Busan and Jeju. Its "AI Shopping Assistant" service, introduced in June at some stores in Seoul, supports 8 languages including Korean, English, Japanese, Chinese, German, Russian, Thai and Indonesian.

An Olive Young official said, "As we enter the era of 20 million inbound tourists, we will strengthen our role as the 'infrastructure of the K-tourism industry' by leveraging large stores and specialized stores that highlight local characteristics not only in Seoul but also outside the capital region." The official added, "In Korea, we will introduce K-beauty and K-wellness to foreign tourists, and in the United States to local consumers, while contributing to industry development by fostering emerging brands."