E-Land bought K-Swiss and Coccinelle on debt — then had to sell them to survive

E-Land, the Korean fashion group that started as a six-square-metre clothing shop near Ewha University in 1980, grew into a conglomerate with 60 brands and KRW 4.6 trillion in sales. In the 2010s, it went on an international acquisition spree: K-Swiss (the American tennis-shoe brand) for $170 million in January 2013, plus Italian leather-goods houses Mandarina Duck and Coccinelle, and the Italian outerwear brand Belfe.

The acquisitions were debt-funded, and by the late 2010s E-Land's leverage had become unsustainable. The group needed to deleverage, and its best asset was the one it could sell fastest. In August 2019, E-Land sold K-Swiss — along with its subsidiary E-Land Footwear USA Holdings — to China's Xtep International for $260 million.

The sale price exceeded the purchase price, but the six-year holding period consumed resources and management attention that E-Land's core Korean fashion business needed. The forced divestiture of Mandarina Duck and Coccinelle followed. E-Land survived, but the strategy of buying global brands on Korean debt had produced a decade of financial stress rather than the global fashion house it was meant to create.