A ‘big bang’ is taking place in the global fashion industry, led by four luxurious product companies LVMH, Kering, Richmond and Swatch, and three major specialty store retailers of Private label Apparel (SPAs), Zara, H&M and Uniqlo.

LVMH’s sales soared in ten years from 16.6 trillion won ($16.2 billion) in 2003 to 40.6 trillion won in 2013. Notably, after acquiring an array of French and Italian high-end brands, the company now owns over 60 luxurious brands.

The global top SPA Zara nearly quadrupled its sales in a decade from 6.6 trillion won in 2003 to 24.2 trillion won last year.

As a few global SPAs and luxury fashion brand companies scrambled to conduct mergers and acquisitions, diversifying their business areas, this has brought an ongoing globalization in the fashion industry, which used to be a heavily local sector, experts said.

“Like other industries, growth in the fashion industry has stalled as it entered a mature phase of growth since the financial crisis and the gap between big and small companies has widened,” said Park Nam-gyu, professor of business school at Seoul National University. “This has propelled large luxury goods companies and SPAs with vast capital to globalize, moving beyond domestic markets and entering a number of countries and business areas.” Conventional fashion companies are being pushed to crisis as a handful of SPAs and luxury goods makers are competing across-the-board in a struggle for hegemony from low-priced segment to highly-priced segment.

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