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However, what Coupang hasn’t done yet is grow much internationally. He pointed out that the company recently registered a brand name dedicated to selling used cars, and in its application, “they mentioned that they are considering expanding their business to car rental,” he said. “I think will evolve into every industry, even travel and car rental,” said Lee. Coupang is also working in the fintech space through its in-development Coupang Pay and has a food delivery service called Coupang Eats. Lee pointed to the company’s creation of the Coupang Media Group, an in-house advertising platform that mirrors Amazon’s and Walmart’s growing retail ads businesses. And some reports have indicated that Coupang has ambitions to deliver for companies unaffiliated with the e-commerce giant, the way a traditional carrier would - an escalation that Amazon has not yet committed to matching.Ĭoupang is rapidly investing in other industries, too. While Coupang previously relied on a coalition of subcontractors to ship and deliver orders, it now handles the deliveries. More recently, in January, the company rolled out Coupang Logistics, which is bringing its vast fulfillment network in-house.
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The company has also honed plans to build out a livestream shopping business. In December, Coupang launched a video-streaming service called Coupang Play, the company’s equivalent of Prime Video. In just the last year, Coupang has expanded to become much more than an e-commerce business. Eighty percent of Koreans live in cities, and 95% own smartphones (well above the U.S. For instance, part of the reason that Coupang has become such an effective e-commerce player is that South Korea is uniquely receptive to e-commerce companies: It’s one of the most densely populated countries in the world, with a high rate of mobile and internet adaption.
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The comparison to Amazon also isn’t a one-to-one ratio. Coupang didn’t provide specific stats about its grocery segment, but in its S-1, it claimed to be the biggest online grocer in Korea, noting that online grocery is a much bigger business in Korea than in other countries. And the sheer speed of its deliveries, paired with the pervasiveness of its warehouses, has helped the company break into online grocery much faster than Amazon. Unlike Amazon, it doesn’t have any physical stores yet. Because of its low cost of delivery, its overall margins on most goods tend to be thin, but Coupang is making a bet similar to Amazon’s on the value of first-party products: “They make someone addicted to Coupang, and they try to get the margins from their private labeling,” Lee said.īut Coupang isn’t exactly an Amazon lookalike. And recently, the company has expanded its private-label lines in the apparel, beauty and electronics space. Thirty-two percent of customers currently pay for the Coupang Wow Rocket Membership, the company’s equivalent of Amazon Prime. Like Amazon, Coupang has come to rely heavily on its membership system. Coupang noted in the S-1 that its “total net revenue remains a very small percentage of the total retail, grocery, consumer foodservice, and travel spend in the Korean market.” And while it’s the dominant e-commerce company in Korea, capturing 24.6% of the e-commerce market when numbers were last reported in April 2020, the company does not yet have the same market saturation as Amazon. It says that at least 200,000 third-party sellers are signed up to sell on the platform. A report in Rest of World last fall said that the company promoted “a business ethic that prioritizes rapid delivery over employee safety,” and workers complained of long, grueling hours on the job.Īccording to its most recent filing, Coupang claims around 15 million active customers, making it much smaller than Amazon. All of that efficiency has taken its toll on workers. that morning - a speed that even Amazon has not matched. In 2019, the company introduced Dawn Delivery, where customers who order before midnight would be guaranteed a delivery by 7 a.m. It also says that 99.3% of its orders are delivered within 24 hours of purchase. Its warehouses are so ubiquitous that the company claims 70% of all Koreans live within seven miles of its “over 100” fulfillment centers, according to the company’s S-1. Those investments allowed Coupang to balloon into a 50,000-employee business in 11 years.Ī central component of its pitch to customers is its speed. investors, followed by $3 billion in 20 from SoftBank. The company quickly raised $300 million in 2014, largely from U.S. In its short life, Coupang - which started as a kind of Groupon for South Korea before expanding to an e-commerce marketplace within its first three years - upended competition in the country.