Kim Sung-joo, the business maverick who built a fashion empire on a backpack

“I was brought up in Seoul and the house was magnificent. Donamjang was built by the last lineage of the Joseon dynasty in Chinese oak, using the construction and design principles of royal palace buildings,” says Kim Sung-joo. The South Korean entrepreneur is speaking of the home where she is being photographed for HTSI with bags and dolls made by her brand, MCM Worldwide. “For a short time it was home to the first president of South Korea,” she continues of the house, which now belongs to her brother. “We slept on an Ibuzari [futon] on the floor, and were surrounded by really nice old paintings and screens.”

Kim was born in 1956, and her father, Kim Soo-keun, an energy magnate, moved the family from the city of Daegu to the capital when she was just three. There, she was raised with three brothers and two sisters against a backdrop of political and economic transformation. But the owner of the Sungjoo Group and MCM Worldwide, the global luxury leather-goods and lifestyle brand, is not nostalgic about the past. The petite, fresh-faced 68-year-old – who cuts a sharp figure in a trouser suit, with cropped hair – is an advocate for modern South Korea. “We are witnessing the emergence of an Asian renaissance. K-pop, K-beauty… Young people are excited about it, and not just in the east,” she says of the country’s emergence on the world stage. 

Kim is a product of Seoul’s ethos of ppalli-ppalli (hurry-hurry). She lives a transient lifestyle – “mostly on planes” – between homes in Korea, London (“my daughter studied at Westminster School so I bought a place to look after her”), and a new residence in Switzerland, where MCM Worldwide now has its headquarters.

She purchased the brand in 2005. It was founded in Munich, Germany, in the ’70s by fashion designer Michael Cromer. “It had super-success in Hollywood, in the US market, and then in Japan and Hong Kong before I took over, and was still popular in Korea,” she says. She quickly took it in a new direction, hiring former Adidas creative director Dirk Schönberger in 2018 – he is now the global brand officer – and partnering with celebrities such as Billie Eilish, Cara Delevingne and K-pop star Rain to align MCM with “the global and digital nomad generation”. Kim’s target consumer is young people keen on travel and flexibility, and more relaxed about communicating their values through brands. Collaborations have been key: in 2019, MCM teamed up with Japanese streetwear brand A Bathing Ape (Bape) for a ready-to-wear clothing collection; a capsule followed in 2024. The brand has also negotiated licence agreements with Italian eyewear company Marcolin, and Paris- and New York-based Inter Parfums to distribute its perfume. 

“We are now in 40 countries with 650 stores – 150 of which are directly operated, with the rest as wholesale – and, of course, we have a big online presence,” Kim says. The bag offering ranges from its Visetos pouch, for £410, to backpacks that start at £650 and go up to £3,000. It also creates made-to-order hardware luggage, from £5,000 to £20,000. Worldwide sales revenues currently stand at $500mn. Its biggest market is in Asia, which accounts for 50 per cent of sales. 

My team told me I was crazy, but I saw a paradigm shift

The brand’s fortunes pivoted on one simple idea: a backpack. “To go global, I had to secure China, which has 1.5 billion people,” says Kim. “I had nothing there around 2009, and had to be brave. We couldn’t do another croc bag, so we invented a backpack. My team told me I was crazy, nylon backpacks were everywhere and I could not sell a luxury one for more than $1,000. But I have a social science background, and I saw a paradigm shift. Younger people were travelling and had mobile phones, and they needed their hands to be free. For me, luxury is about function, convenience and freedom.”  

Luca Solca, a senior analyst at Bernstein covering global luxury goods, says this stance has made MCM Worldwide “a serious contender for the aspirational luxury segment. Top brands have increased prices a lot and this has created a huge umbrella for the likes of MCM.”

Kim has also widened MCM Worldwide’s global reach through splashy cultural pop-ups. In 2023, the brand collaborated with British-Nigerian artist-designer Yinka Ilori at Frieze Seoul art fair, presenting a kaleidoscopic exhibition of chairs. Last year, it landed at Milan Design Week with a mammoth takeover of the 17th-century palace Palazzo Cusani, and a futuristic vision – taking its multifunctional designs into the metaverse. “I told the Italian designer Alberto Biagetti that I wanted to showcase ‘wearable casa’,” she smiles. “He asked me if I was joking! But he did an amazing job.” Biagetti’s collection included portable lamps with lampshade “hats” and a Gufram-style tech-enabled Chatty sofa.

This week, the brand returned to the Milan fair with a smaller but equally novel presentation at the arts events space Giardino delle Arti entitled MCM x Pet Therapy, plugging into new buying trends and a global pet accessories market estimated to be worth $47.23bn by 2033. “I like Salone because it is a place of open ideas, and that is what we are about,” Kim says. 

With her ambitious projects and partnerships, Kim has become known in the industry as a maverick. She has had to reinvent herself several times in her lifetime: much of her personality was shaped when her father cut her out of the family following her refusal to accept an arranged marriage. “I felt that my basic human rights to choose had been taken away, so I said no,” she says. She arranged to marry her Canadian Harvard-student boyfriend within a week. “We went against my parents’ wishes and I was completely exiled.” Kim only reconciled with her father before his death in 2001, but says being disinherited taught her how to be independent. “I had to get a job. Luckily I shared a family friend with the chairman of Bloomingdale’s, Mr Marvin Traub,” she recalls. “I learnt everything about retailing from a great leader. Eventually he became a good friend. When I left and he retired, he became my adviser, later helping MCM enter America. The fact that I worked with him has been an amazing reference in the fashion industry.”

Looking back, she sees these twists of fate as valuable experiences. “I have my father’s head for business but I learnt nothing from him. He was a gentleman but also a Confucian who was very conservative and believed that women should be subservient and obedient,” she says. “When he died, his empire was divided between my three brothers, with the eldest inheriting the house. Our duty was to marry into another big family. I knew that lifestyle. It held nothing for me and I rebelled against it.”

Kim is a product of Seoul’s ethos of ppalli-ppalli (hurry hurry)

Kim’s life as an entrepreneur started in earnest when she moved back to Seoul to recover from an illness. “In 1988, after the success of the Korean Summer Olympic games, the Korean government suddenly liberalised the import of luxury goods – and I started getting calls,” she says. “I set up the Sungjoo Group and secured the franchise for Gucci in 1990, followed by others, such as Sonia Rykiel and Yves Saint Laurent. Then there was a second wave, which included Marks & Spencer. I had the biggest M&S franchise in Asia at that time.” A decade later, disaster struck. “I lost everything in the big financial crash of 1998 and the only way to rescue my business was to sell the most successful franchise, Gucci, back to Gucci,” she continues. “But events often happen for a reason. I spotted MCM, which was then a small licence business. In 2005, it had 70 people; now there are 1,200 full-time colleagues, and this is my 20th anniversary of ownership.”

Being a woman has not made Kim’s journey easy. “When I first started my business there were few female CEOs. Whenever I went into meetings, they would look at my legs first and then me,” she says. “There was all sorts of discrimination I had to overcome. And besides being a woman, I was also a working mother who couldn’t go to those evening meetings where everyone was drinking.” But she remained positive (a trait she says she learnt from her mother). “That’s why we became an early adapter of technology. If you can’t make deals through traditional relationships, it is better to be more accurate, faster and more fun.” 

Kim has also become an exponent of women in business. The team at MCM is 70 per cent women, with Tina Lutz Morris and Katie Chung leading its design and creative direction. “I like to say women are untapped resources often overlooked by big companies – they dedicate their hearts and go the extra mile,” Kim says. “As we have expanded, it has helped that we are predominantly the end user. My daughter even worked with us for a few years. She has an MBA from business school and was the one who integrated all the digital e-coms globally – that is how we survived during the pandemic.”

In 2015, Kim was awarded an OBE for her contribution to strengthening bilateral ties between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Korea – the first female Korean to receive the title. She is most proud, however, of serving as the president of the Korean Red Cross from 2014 to 2017. “I have a Red Cross heart, and when I retire I would like to be ready to help women and children in North Korea if I am needed,” she says.

As for the future, she has her sights on Saudi Arabia – and is presenting plans for an “end-to-end digital transformation in retail” via her new avatar. “Ours will be a 360 consumer experience: omnicommerce to store to the metaverse,” her virtual persona says, when she shares it with me as a preview. Then, with a nod of the head, she signs out.