How Musinsa's founder built a fashion empire

At 43, Musinsa founder Cho Man-ho lives in one of Korea's most expensive apartments, paying a deposit of 8.1 billion won ($5.9 million) and monthly rent of 10 million won ($7,300) for a penthouse overlooking the Han River and Seoul Forest in eastern Seoul.

But real estate is a minor part of Cho's total wealth. Cho holds a 52 percent stake in Musinsa — over 105 million shares — and that stake is currently worth about 2.63 trillion won ($1.74 billion), based on the May 14 over-the-counter share price of 24,900 won.

If Musinsa achieves its goal of a "10 trillion won corporate value" through an initial public offering (IPO) in the second half of this year, Cho's wealth could grow larger than the roughly 3.13 trillion won held by HYBE chairman Bang Si-hyuk.

How did Cho, born in the 1980s, grow Musinsa to such levels of success?

From a low-floor desk to stardom

On August 31, 1983, Cho Man-ho was born in Taepyeong-dong, Tongyeong, South Gyeongsang, a coastal region in the southernmost part of the country.

As a boy, Cho looked out toward the boundless sea and nurtured his dreams. His love for his hometown ran deep. In 2022, 23 years after leaving home, he donated 10 million won and 50,000 KF94 masks, worth 36.6 million won, to the city of Tongyeong.

"As someone from Tongyeong, I hope to make a small contribution to keeping Tongyeong healthy to the very end," he said at the time, expressing his affection for his hometown. His speech still carries traces of the seaside Gyeongsang dialect.

When Cho was a first-year student at Tongyeong High School, he moved to Seoul with his widowed mother. He has never said so publicly, but it is understood to have been because of family circumstances. A small semi-basement home in Galhyeon-dong, Eunpyeong District, northern Seoul, became the mother and son's new nest. With villas packed tightly together on the slopes of Mount Aengbong and people hurrying down into the subway, the high schooler realized he was in Seoul.

Cho was deeply interested in shoes. "When everyone wears the same uniform, shoes are the only way to show your individuality," he later told those around him. "That's how I got interested in shoes."

In 2001, as a third-year student at Daeseong High School, he founded an online club called "Musinsa" on Freechal, an online forum that was popular at the time. The name meant "a place with an enormous number of shoe photos," and it was a community where he showed off photos of the rare shoes he owned.

As membership quickly grew into the thousands, the hobby became a business idea. After enrolling in Dankook University's Department of Fashion Design in 2002, he launched musinsa.com in 2003, offering street fashion and styling information. It was a site he ran from a single PC on the floor desk in his semi-basement home.

When Cho hesitantly brought it up to his mother, she handed over the money she had saved for his university tuition without hesitation. Cho also covered the server costs by selling his treasured shoes. As the community grew and Cho hired staff, his mother continued to support his business, even going as far as packing lunches for the site's employees. When Musinsa's first TV commercial aired in 2018, 15 years later, his mother is said to have wept with emotion.

What Cho Man-ho wears

The basic item Cho never skips is a cap. When he heads to Musinsa headquarters in Seongsu-dong, Seongdong District, eastern Seoul, he is often in a cap and denim shorts. He prioritizes harmony over luxury. Musinsa gives employees 100,000 won a month in fashion stipends. It is a workplace benefit meant to encourage staff to take an interest in fashion and try a variety of things.

One brand Cho particularly enjoys wearing is Polo Ralph Lauren. He often wears Polo x Musinsa collaboration caps, shirts and jackets. He can't stand seeing a brand he likes piling up in stock. "Musinsa buys Polo directly and resells them, and Cho would wear Polo clothes himself, saying he couldn't just sit and watch the inventory sit there," a Musinsa executive said.

For shoes, he often wears New Balance, Asics and Nike sneakers. "I've never seen him wearing luxury labels like Louis Vuitton," the Musinsa executive said.

Sometimes he has to wear clothes that don't suit him, especially at official events. When he met United Arab Emirates President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who paid a state visit to Korea in May 2024, Cho wore a silver suit with a blue tie.

Even in that awkward outfit, Cho is said to have clutched a paper bag bearing the "Musinsa Standard" logo. Because of this, the industry buzzed with speculation about what was inside. The answer? A 19,900-won plain white T-shirt. Word has it the paper bag delivered plenty of brand promotion on its own.

Misandry controversy

Cho poured all his attention into the business rather than his studies, which is why it took him 10 years to graduate from college. Thanks to that, Musinsa grew rapidly. By 2010, musinsa.com had about 300,000 members. He began envisioning a platform where users could discover fashion trends and shop in the same place. He told brand stories in text through Musinsa Magazine, which launched in 2005, and added e-commerce on top of that with the launch of Musinsa Store in 2009. It was a string of successes.

In 2012, Cho launched his own brand Paperism, now Musinsa Standard, and expanded his territory in the online fashion market by discovering and nurturing new brands, such as Covernat. Because cash flow was strong, he took outside investment only when needed and only as much as needed, at the right time. In 2019, he attracted his first investment of 200 billion won from Sequoia Capital and was valued at 2 trillion won. In one stroke, Musinsa became a unicorn, a private company valued at over $1 billion.

 "From the early days of Musinsa, when it was a community of people who loved sneakers, I have watched up close as people created their own brand names and logos and launched their brands," said Cho in a 2021 email sent to staff.

However, an unimaginable trial was on the horizon. In March 2021, the company was engulfed in a controversy proclaiming that "Musinsa hates men." The problem was that it issued three discount coupons of 12, 15, and 19 percent twice a month, but only to female members. Male members rebelled against a policy that offered discounts only to women while selling unisex products, calling it "reverse discrimination against men." On top of that, the company poured fuel on the fire by suspending the accounts of protesting male members for 60 days. Consumers fumed at Musinsa's failure to apologize.

When the backlash did not subside, the company issued an apology under Cho's name and barely put out the fire by "providing all customers with a 20 percent discount coupon usable within March." At a time when gender conflict was severe, Musinsa, at the center of the misandry controversy, seemed to have weathered the crisis well, but that was not the end.

Two months later, an even bigger incident erupted. A photo of a hand shape that some online communities consider a gesture demeaning to men appeared on a Musinsa advertisement. The misandry controversy that had barely been put out flared up again. Musinsa's response was clumsy this time as well. To consumers demanding an explanation on app store review boards, the company repeatedly posted the same reply, that "there was no intent whatsoever," drawing even criticism that the response was just "copy-paste."

As Munsinsa, a company where 55 percent of its 8.4 million members were men, received more accusations of discrimination against and hatred for men, male members left in droves. As customers left, the Musinsa app's rating fell to a middling 2.4 out of 5, though it has since bounced back to 4.3.

Cho, who had built a commerce business visited by millions starting from a community, is said to have been deeply shocked during this incident. In the end, he stepped down as CEO on June 3 that year. It was his way of taking responsibility.

As a letter announcing the resignation of a CEO, it was unusually long, at 9,155 characters. Complex emotions ran through the text. For someone who had run along the road of success, it must have been a wrenching first failure. The painful part was being hated by the males in their teens and twenties who had been Musinsa's fans.

In the email, Cho confided that "whenever I saw people on the street wearing clothes bearing the logos of Covernat and thisisneverthat, brands carried by Musinsa, I wanted to avoid them and hide." He added that "it took tremendous courage even to log into the comment system or to clear the number of notifications on my messenger."

Despite Cho stepping down, the aftermath continued for months.

"Even after the founder left, the image of 'Musinsa equals misandry' didn't fade easily, so we struggled with marketing," a current Musinsa executive said. "But as we strengthened content monitoring to prevent a recurrence, the controversy gradually died down."

Diverging paths

After stepping down as CEO, Cho took the role of chairman of the board. It would be hard to say he withdrew from management entirely, but his involvement clearly decreased. Until then, Cho had personally directed everything from design to service planning, development, sales, operations, marketing and logistics. Musinsa was Cho Man-ho, and Cho Man-ho was Musinsa.

But by then the limits of running things that way were clear. The founder's ideas were carried out without sufficient review and criticism. In his resignation email, he gave his reason for stepping down: "I came to the conclusion that my own existence could become one of the unhealthy legacies hindering Musinsa's bigger, healthier growth going forward," adding that "Musinsa and I need to be separated."

Afterward, Cho entrusted management to three managers in succession.

The first one he handed authority to was Han Moon-il. In 2021, Han was co-CEO alongside Kang Jung-gu, and in 2022, Cho elevated him to sole CEO. Born in 1988, Han graduated from KAIST's Department of Management Science, now the School of Business and Technology Management, before working as a business development director at the fintech company Finda, among other roles, before joining Musinsa in 2018. Installing someone in their fifth year at the company as sole CEO was unconventional. 

But Cho's trust did not last long. In March 2024, just four months after returning as overall CEO. Cho dismissed Han. The industry points to the worsening performance of the resale platform SoldOut, which Han had pushed forward in 2020 and which posted an operating loss of 28.1 billion won in 2023, as one cause.

The second professional manager was Park Jun-mo, appointed in March 2024. Born in 1977, Park previously served as CEO of 29CM, a subsidiary of StyleShare, which Musinsa acquired in July 2021. He was a seasoned veteran of the IT and retail industries, having served as head of the retail and finance division at Google Korea's advertising business and as the Korean head of Amazon Global Selling. Cho chose a stability-focused appointment for the timing of his own return to management. Park stepped back to an advisory role in the December 2025 personnel reshuffle.

Musinsa then appointed Cho Nam-sung, born in 1972, as co-CEO under a divided-representation system. Under the arrangement, Cho Man-ho serves as the CEO overseeing the business, and Cho Nam-sung serves as the CEO overseeing business support. The idea is to delegate support functions such as legal affairs, finance, human resources, and external relations to Cho Nam-sung, who has handled HR and labor at major domestic and international corporations including Qualcomm, Coupang, and SK On, while Cho Man-ho himself focuses only on "selling clothes well," the essence of Musinsa's business.

At the same time, Cho created one more title for himself: Chief Detail Officer. A source at Musinsa said it means "he personally attends to even the smallest details related to the business, one by one."

A fashion-industry insider familiar with Musinsa's situation said the late-2025 reorganization is "a structure optimized for Musinsa's current situation that 'Manho-nim,' as Cho is called internally, arrived at after several rounds of trial and error," adding that "it means the founder takes on what he does well and focuses on Musinsa's growth."

The insider continued, "To bring in the best talent Musinsa needs right now, it would be efficient to have an HR expert like Cho Nam-sung serve as a co-CEO."

What Cho Man-ho dreams of

"With Korea's strong production systems, sophisticated and refined design capabilities, competitive prices, and a mature fashion market, Korean fashion brands can now fully succeed in the global market as well," said Cho in a 2021 email to staff.

Media interviews are extremely rare, but Cho's public remarks suggest he has no intention of stopping. He relentlessly pursues growth.

The assessments of people who have met him or even spoken with him briefly are largely consistent. Rep. Song Jae-bong of the liberal Democratic Party, who had requested Cho as a witness over platform commission fees during the 2025 parliamentary audit, recalled, "We talked for about an hour, and he had a clear vision for the business."

"The founder describes himself as a 'merchant.'" said a current Musinsa executive. "He focuses on 'how to sell products well' rather than on a flashy image. He really knows nothing but work. He can't even drive, so he has no interest in things like luxury cars."

What Cho dreams of is a fashion empire. Spending 330 million won to have "Musinsa" added as a co-name to Seongsu Station on Line 2, and buying Magazine B, published by B Media Company, which has put out more than 100 brand books over the past 15 years, are all among the many flags he has planted for the Musinsa empire.

Cho does not just sit in his office on the 10th floor of Musinsa's headquarters. He rides around in a Carnival limousine, visiting the various pop-up stores Musinsa runs and constantly checking on the billboards of the brands it carries. For Cho, who has devoted half his life to building Musinsa, the real race may only be beginning now.

BY KIM HYO-SEONG, JANG JOO-YOUNG [[email protected]]