The encyclopedia · Strategy & Leadership · Strategic decision · 2015–2025
Decode, Korea's first luxury pre-order platform, shut down in January 2025
Korea's first luxury pre-order platform, Decode closed in January 2025 as four luxury platforms shut down within a year amid a luxury market downturn.
Encode (엔코드) · Decode (디코드) · 2025-01-16
What happened
Decode was Korea's first luxury pre-order platform, run by the fashion-tech startup Encode, founded in June 2015. Using a D2C model, it took customer orders before production and connected consumers directly with suppliers, letting them buy luxury items at pre-production prices. Revenue reached about ₩22 billion in 2022 — a strong run for a niche platform.
The tide turned quickly. Revenue fell to about ₩18.4 billion in 2023 with an operating loss of about ₩12 billion. The global personal luxury market shrank 2% to €363 billion in 2024 — its first decline in 15 years outside the pandemic period — and Korean platforms that had grown on the COVID-era boom were hit by accumulated losses and a frozen funding market, made worse by the July 2024 TMON·Wemakeprice settlement crisis that scared investors away from e-commerce.
Within one year four Korean luxury platforms stopped operating: Catch Fashion in March 2024, H Style in August 2024, Luxury Gallery — run by Eland Global — on 26 December 2024, and finally Decode, whose website operation ceased on 16 January 2025. Encode, the operator, closed down in March 2025.
Why it happened
- Decode grew during the COVID-era luxury boom and could not survive the downturn — luxury spending fell 2% in 2024, its first decline in 15 years outside the pandemic, and pre-order demand cooled.
- The model never reached scale or profit: revenue peaked around ₩22 billion in 2022 and turned to an operating loss of ₩12 billion in 2023, too small to absorb the downturn or fund a pivot.
- Funding froze: after the July 2024 TMON·Wemakeprice settlement crisis, Korean e-commerce funding dried up, and platforms reliant on investor money had no lifeline — four shut down within a year.
The lesson
A boom-born distribution model dies in the bust: Decode's pre-order pipeline worked while luxury spending surged, and the moment the market cooled the model could not cover its own losses.
Aftermath
Decode's website stopped operating on 16 January 2025, and operator Encode — founded in June 2015 — closed in March 2025. Decode was the last of four Korean luxury platforms to shut within a year: Catch Fashion (March 2024), H Style (August 2024), Luxury Gallery (26 December 2024, Eland Global) and Decode itself. The closures marked the end of the luxury platform boom that had started during the pandemic, as global luxury demand fell for the first time in 15 years and funding for e-commerce startups dried up after the TMON·Wemakeprice settlement crisis.
Sources
- biz.chosun — Luxury platforms in crisis: four shut down within a year (2025-02-04)
- cbiz.chosun — Luxury platforms in crisis: four shut down within a year (2025-02-04)
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