SEOUL, April 16 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korean online shopping site operators continued to report losses in 2017 amid fierce market competition, regulatory data showed Monday. Coupang Inc. suffered a combined net loss of 673.5 billion won (US$628.5 million) last year, up 20 percent from 561.8 billion won reported a year earlier, the company said in a regulatory filing. Its sales jumped 40 percent on-year [...]
SEOUL, Jun. 1 (Korea Bizwire) — Coupang, South Korea’s No. 1 online marketplace, has come under fire for allegedly sacking nearly a tenth of its delivery staff, adding further woes to the money losing startup that won kudos for its bold investment in logistics, industry sources said Wednesday. On Tuesday, some 75 former and current [...]
SEOUL, May 31 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korean online shopping giant Coupang is facing criticism over massive staff cuts in the wake of allegations of labor rights abuses that emerged yesterday. Coupang is widely known for its next day delivery service dubbed “Rocket Delivery”, but despite the popular policy that ships all items ordered before midnight [...]
SEOUL, April 14 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea’s online shopping site operators continued to report operating losses last year from a year earlier, as more market competition hurt their profitability, regulatory data showed Friday. Coupang Inc. suffered a combined operating loss of 560 billion won (US$490.8 million) in the January-December period of 2016 compared with [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 14 (Korea Bizwire) – Despite the ballooning volume of e-commerce, deficits for online shopping malls are also bloating with even a rough estimate pointing to over 1 trillion won (US$876.88 million) last year, industry officials said Tuesday. Industry records showed the country’s three leading social commerce sites — Coupang, Ticket Monster and WeMakePrice [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 12 (Korea Bizwire) – Social commerce companies are putting an end to competing each other with free delivery services as operating losses continue to soar. Coupang doubled the minimum purchase required for free delivery (Rocket Delivery) from 9,800 ($8.73) to 19,800 starting Tuesday. Rocket Delivery is the company’s ambitious service that offers delivery within [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 31 (Korea Bizwire) – With Koreans increasingly likely to prefer online shopping over the physical experience, parcel delivery services are among the rapidly prospering businesses in Korea. Tuesday’s decision to abolish the Supply-Demand Regulation Policy, which made it difficult for service companies to increase their use of smaller trucks (1.5 tons and less), [...]
SEOUL, June 22 (Korea Bizwire) – While the social commerce market has been growing rapidly in Korea, the Korean Fair Trade Commission (FTC) has begun investigating unfair trade practices at Korean social commerce businesses. According to an industry expert, Coupang and Ticketmonster are being accused of violating the Large Scale Distribution Law, which triggered the FTC’s [...]
SEOUL, May 12 (Korea Bizwire) – Coupang, a Korean e-commerce website, is expanding its platform to an open market, offering direct sales and purchases between consumers and suppliers. Coupang is a social commerce platform that previously focused on curated commerce in the form of special ‘deals’. It’s an attempt to make up for its weakness in product [...]
SEOUL, April 18 (Korea Bizwire) – The lines between types of retailers are blurring, with open markets and social commerce businesses broadening their horizons to retail brokerage services. The industry is leaving no stone unturned in a push to attract consumers to mobile shopping markets. Large offline discount stores are building logistics centers for [...]