A selection of duty free retail stores have now asked the government to allow them to temporarily sell their backlog of wares in department stores and other retail outlets as business at duty free stores has sharply declined in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, Lotte Duty Free said.
Duty free operators including Shilla, Shinsegae and Lotte have requested a temporary suspension on sales regulation that bars duty free items from being distributed in the domestic market. The regulation also stipulates that stock that have not been sold must be discarded.
“Expanding the sales routes to department stores and outlets will help duty free operators handle stock. There needs to be people to generate sales, but there are hardly any travelers. Seventy to 90 percent of duty free sales have been lost, so naturally, our stock has piled up,” said Do Young-kwang, a Shinsegae Duty Free spokesperson.
“The situation is serious. We usually keep our stock at a distribution center in Incheon but have temporarily borrowed a separate distribution center in Yeongjong Island [on the west coast of Incheon] for storage,” said Park Seok-in, a spokesperson for Lotte Duty Free.
