Get a look inside downtown Fayetteville's newest store, dedicated to all things K-pop

Downtown Fayetteville’s newest shop, Sori K-Pop Shop, stocks all things related to Korean pop music.

Owner Isabella DePietro said Tuesday that the new shop, which opened March 29 at 308 Hay St., is the first of its kind in the area.

At the pint-sized 160-square-foot space between Blue Moon Cafe and A Bit of Carolina, where MinxDiva Essentials once operated, DePietro, 24, sells K-pop albums, accessories and merchandise alongside Japanese stationery.

In the last several years, K-pop shops have popped up in bigger cities and attracted fans from miles around, DePietro said.

“I was sick and tired of driving up to Raleigh, and I know other people were, too,” she said.

The K-pop community in Fayetteville is bigger than most locals realize, she said. So, after graduating from the University of North Carolina at Pembroke with a degree in business management last year, she decided to open her own shop.

Named for the phonetic spelling of the Korean word for sound, the store carries music from South Korean bands like Stray Kids, ATEEZ, BLACKPINK and BTS, the latter of which is largely responsible for the rise in K-pop popularity in the states over the past few years.

DePietro said that PSY’s 2012 hit, “Gangnam Style,” was one of the first K-Pop hits to take off in the U.S., and just a few years later in 2017, seven-member boy band BTS struck a chord with American audiences.

“PSY introduced the culture, but BTS had pretty boys,” the Hope Mills native joked.

BTS has earned five Grammy nominations and seen six songs reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart — the first of which was the 2020 single "Dynamite," which was No. 1 for three weeks and remained on the chart for 32 weeks.

DePietro, a Northwood Temple Academy graduate, said she was introduced to K-pop culture by her Korean grandmother, who listened to ‘90s K-pop bands like S.E.S. and H.O.T. Later, as a teen, she took to modern bands like the ones whose albums she sells in her store now.

Though it's rare for K-pop groups to perform in North Carolina, she said, her store has everything you might need to attend a K-pop concert, including light sticks. Such battery-powered and Bluetooth-enabled LED accessories are specific to each band. BLACKPINK's for example, is shaped like a hammer with a pink heart-shaped head.

Light sticks cost around $40 to $60 and sync with the concert venue to light up in different colors in unison as fans cheer on their favorite groups. The phenomenon is a high-tech version of raising lighters or cell phone flashlights in the air, DePietro explained. She also carries tassels and trinkets that fans can use to customize their light sticks.

Fayetteville K-pop store owner aims to bring events for fans to the area

With the store off the ground, DePietro said she hopes to work with local fans to host so-called “cup-sleeve” events at area boba shops, to celebrate milestones like band member birthdays and album releases.

Such gatherings typically feature drinks created to match the theme and specialty cup sleeve designs that depict an idol or a group's picture and the name of the event.

Some fans travel far and wide to collect cup sleeves. A cup sleeve event at Fayetteville's Queen Bee BoBa earlier this month, which DePietro said was the first event of its kind in the All-American City, brought attendees from as far as three hours away.

She also plans to host photocard swaps, where fans can trade collectible pictures inserted at random in K-pop albums and merchandise.

“It’s very much like Pokemon cards or baseball cards,” DePietro explained.

Meanwhile, she said, she’s working to set up online ordering for pickup and looking forward to bringing in new customers as downtown foot traffic picks up during the busy summer festival season.

“I love this location,” DePietro said.

Food, dining and culture reporter Taylor Shook can be reached at [email protected] or on Facebook. Want weekly food news delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the Fayetteville Foodies newsletter. 

This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Hope Mills native opens Sori K-Pop Shop in downtown Fayetteville, NC