Aaron Conant  0:18

Happy Tuesday everybody. My name is Aaron Conant. I'm the Co-founder and Managing Director here at BWG Connect, and networking and knowledge sharing group with 1000s of brands. And we do exactly that we network and knowledge share together to stay on top of newest trends and strategies that are shaping digital. I spent a lot of my time just talking to brands 20 to 30 a week to stay on top of those trends. When the same topics come up over and over again, we host an event like this. And Joe and I were just talking beforehand and the team of Mamenta around the Korean marketplace as a whole and how much interested their interest there is there. But what is the first step and is the juice worth the squeeze. And so we're just going to have an awesome conversation today. Around that as a whole if you have any questions, drop in the chat, drop into the q&a, email them to me, Aaron, Aaron@BWGconnect.com. With that, you know, I'll kind of kick it over to do quick roundtable intros here. Tommy, I'll kick it over to you first, if you want to jump in and brief intro on yourself and Mamenta. And then we go kind of around the screen here. Sound good?

Tommy Vogtman  1:16

Sure. Sure. Yeah. Thanks, Aaron. So yes, I'm Tommy Vogtman, Senior Director of APAC Operations and Mamenta. Just quick background, I've been working in the apex space for over 25 years. I was born and raised in Japan involved in partnership development go to market strategies for the enterprise. And, you know, many, you know, business ventures, bringing us global companies, products, solutions technologies into the APAC markets, as well as bring in Asia and senior director of APAC on the US market. So today's topic, as Aaron mentioned, is the Korean market the opportunity you didn't know you had, I was born and raised in Japan, Korea is eCommerce leader, we would like to present about the opportunities in Korea, together with you know, talking about the ease of our deployment. So we hope at the end of this webinar, you know, you are going to say entering the Korean market is not as difficult as I thought it might be. And you don't let's go talk to Mamenta and Coupang to find out more. As we talk to at Mamenta, you know, as we talked to brand clients, as well as our prospective brand partners, the think we the thing we keep hearing over and over is how these brands would love to enter the Asia market. But how hard is seems to be they talked about the hurdles, import export regulations, cross border requirements, taxes, where should we hold inventory, and so forth. And on top of all that the language and cultural barriers and at Mamenta we are a technology company, you know, we deliver a complete SaaS platform enabling global eCommerce. Our global trade platform automates six lanes of data, which is critical for eCommerce, you know, catalog price, inventory order, shipping messages, and seamlessly integrating this into global marketplaces. And we launched brands to marketplaces in Japan, Asian markets globally. And we can tell you that it is not as hard as you might think. Not at all, you know, and towards the end of this webinar, you know, Cue or our VP of marketing will show you how to seamlessly take your brands to multiple global marketplaces. So today's call is about demonstrating that the Korean market is a prime market to enter. And we are very excited to work with our Coupang. Korea's leading eCommerce platform. And with that, I'd like to introduce Gerald Hoe, Head of Global Marketplace at Coupang.

Gerald Hoe  3:43

Thank you, thank you for the introduction. Hello, everyone. And thank you to Mamenta for providing this opportunity to share more about Coupang. I'm Gerald Hoe, head of the global marketplace at Coupang. Today I have the pleasure speaking to you about Korea online retail, the fourth largest eCommerce market in the world, and one that I believe is flown under the radar of many sellers who are looking to expand their business internationally. I'll also be introducing you to Coupang and also perhaps Coupang will be your future partner your business in Korea. So without further ado, let's get started. First, let's run through Korean eCommerce. Now Korea is poised to become the world's third largest eCommerce market by 2025. Just in the US and ahead of Japan and Germany. Koreans have spent over $153 billion on eCommerce last year alone that's up 15% from 2020. That is more than three times eCommerce market size of India, which has a population of a billion people. Most importantly, Koreans love buying American products and I'll get into that in a later slides. Now over half of the shopping in Korea is done online and more than 72% of that is done on mobile primarily through apps. So how does a country of 52 million people drive such an impressive eCommerce market? First, Korea is one of the most wired countries but 99.7% of households having internet access the previous slide, please. Okay. And secondly, mobile shopping adoption is primarily driven by the commerce and payment experience on PC due to regulatory requirements and security which do not have mobile so it's just so much easier to buy stuff on a mobile phone that is on the PC. Lastly, is the convenience of online shopping that makes it very attractive for busy periods. Work late hours don't really have helpers, unlike countries like Singapore, for example, and just don't have the time to go to a store to buy something. Next slide. 1000 Kupala we are Korea is number one eCommerce platform and we are motivated by our mission to create a world in which customers asked how do I ever live tomorrow. So we began in 2010 as a daily deal style business, and we have since grown to become an integral part of the lives of customers across Korea. To the support and hardboard of sellers, customers, partners and a Coupang team, we have been able to accomplish a great deal of guided by our mission we have been wanting customers are going from strength to strength. It's no surprise that we our careers, most use retail that across all age groups. And in Q1 of this year, we recorded more transactions than any other retail app in Korea. 72% of online shopping in Korea taking place via mobile This makes Coupangs mobile stripe especially noteworthy.

Last year, our SMB sales increased. That was three we're getting closer to a world where not only customers asked how did they ever live with that Coupang, so do our sellers. A testament to our customer obsession, one of the biggest buy points our customer base, as of 2021, we have over 18 point 1 million active customers that's up 100% compared to three years prior. Now getting that three certain populations just under 52 million. This is a very significant portion of the purchasing population. Of course, in creating a world where customers can live without Coupang, we've got to have a global mindset. And last year, you may have heard that we politics and the New York Stock Exchange. We've also added offices in multiple countries across Asia and the US. With this robust expansion profile continues to grow. We're the country's third largest employer that with over 72,000 employees and adding more. They're also more cross border sellers signing up with us increasing by 80% between 2020 and 2021. We've also added some fantastic new services to the Coupang pack package, such as food and grocery delivery, live commerce and content streaming. This is all come about because of our relentless innovation. Whether because relentless innovation is our ethos, whether it's pioneering speedy deliveries in Korea, or introducing one click payments. Next slide. So what to prevent, like to buy from the US market?

Well, most of the US much of the US products in Korea are usually brought in by local distributors. We will focus more on the direct overseas purchase market in this slide, which I believe is more relevant to you as a marketplace seller, as it refers to the transactions of Koreans directly from international sellers. The firstly the US has a top player taking about 39% share of this total volume, right, which is about $4.1 billion. Now, Koreans are mainly buying food products about 45% from the US they buy vitamins supplements, protein shakes to process foods and confectionery items. Fashion and consumer electronics are the second and third largest categories in the US. Surprisingly, TVs from Samsung and LG are actually much cheaper from the US than buying in Korea.

Let's move on to Coupangs business model, which includes retail result is when Coupang purchases the items directly and delivers to our customers same day or next day buy expensive A logistics network in the country. This is to ensure customers and fast delivery experience stable supply any selection, the price items,

Aaron Conant  10:12

Hey Gerald really, really quick get your audio is a little off and I don't know if it's a bandwidth thing or, or not.

Gerald Hoe  10:20

Is it still off?

Aaron Conant  10:22

Just a little. We'll try it for a second.

Gerald Hoe  10:27

So retail resale is directly from you. And it allows us to provide customers with a fast experience, supply and unique selection of competitively priced items is very similar to the traditional offline distributor route that most brands have taken the past when entering Korea. The Marketplace model involves the seller interacting directly with the customer, giving the seller control over their pricing and strategy. Others also receive support and tools they need to sell successfully the career marketplace business opens up a large variety of selection for our customers to shop. If you have an established logistics capability to deliver to Korea, and a dedicated eCommerce team, this option is ideal as it offers the most control from your business.

Next slide. It's live. Sorry. All right. So, why sell on Coupang? Right? Well, one of our biggest strengths, undoubtedly, customer obsession, when you sell it Coupang, you gain access to over 18 million active customers across Korea. It also means your products be featured on the number one retailer in the country. And that's across all age groups.

So as we mentioned, Coupang has gone from strength to strength and continues to grow. Our 2022.1 results show that we aren't resting on our laurels and we keep charging ahead on our mission to our customers. Now, we also offer sellers a lot of integrations. For example, if you tend to use your own platform, we have open API's that allow you to sell to customers using your systems and processes.

Next slide. Now, with over 18 million active users, we have a variety of tools to promote your products for customers. Here are some of the options that you have at your disposal. Firstly, global date promotions, or special theme promotions that occur once a month and are designed to give visibility to our international items. We have account managers who can help take you take help you take part in these these promotions and guide you through the process. We also have self service promotion tools such as a pilot that product ads target customers who are most likely to purchase your item and displays it in the search results Product Information page and the main pages. The tool is very simple, or it can be as advanced as you want it to be. It has automatic options for those less accustomed to advertising and manual for those who prefer to tailor themselves. Plus with only a minimum daily spend of just under $10. That is an affordable way to get your your products in front of more customers. In addition, the ads are served on a cost per click basis, so you're only charged when someone actually clicks on them. The other tool that we have are the discount coupons. As everybody loves a bargain. This is an effective way to get customer attention. You can set it up either instant or downloadable coupons and both are highly useful when you want to make the price more competitively priced.

Lastly, the automatic pricing feature has helped many of our most successful sellers by reducing the time spent on manually updating prices and optimizing the items to become an item winner on our marketplace. We've also been launching coupons we're also going to be launching Coupang live our streaming live commerce service and a paid customer review program for global sellers to provide them with more opportunities to raise the awareness of their products and increased purchase conversion.

Next slide. So if people ask, what can you sell on Coupang? Perhaps an easier and more apt question might be what can I sell? This is because vendors can solve virtually anything except as listed on this page. Coupang strives to maintain a safe reliable platform because products, we work hard to ensure listed products are authentic, confident items are not allowed as their personal goods, alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, medicines, you can refer to our website for more information.

Next slide. Right, so every Coupang seller is unique, and does things a little different. But one thing remains the same. They're all they all come back to when I was still the management portal, whether it's listening in checking your sales statistics, or reviewing assignment, when you use your one stop shop, I didn't take it to showing sales. We've got a short video here that will give you the insight of what it looks like when a day as a Coupang seller will look like

Take a look. Okay, thank you for that.

And so with that, so I'll pass it on to the next speaker. Thanks.

Aaron Conant  18:10

Yeah, and I think some of the main questions that are coming in around, you know, how long does it take to set up? Right? How, how long before there's returns. And this could be for anybody. Tally queue is nice for you as well. But we'll all kind of kick it over. There's just questions that come in around that is how easy to get is it to get started? And what is the timeframe before you know sales start being made? Then maybe we'll cover that.

Cue Orr  18:37

Yeah, so we'll get into that in the second half of the presentation right now. We'll just get into that.

Aaron Conant  18:58

Then the other question that comes in is are you seeing this as like one of the top places to start a lot of people are thinking EU first and then and then potentially China or Korea? Have you seen anything any of these shifts there? Okay.

Cue Orr  19:17

Those are definitely all good questions. And so we'll we'll get into a little bit of that. I'm Cue or VP of Marketing for Mamenta. And we just want to start off by with a little video just explaining about who we are as metadata. So we'll just pull that up a small moment. Okay, can everybody see the screen right now? Not yet. Yep.

Voiceover

What is Mamenta? Can I say it's the future? It's a revelation for eCommerce. Boss, data driven, the cross border company designed to solve global eCommerce problems and help our brands and partners to go global, faster. Mamenta connects your marketplace, storefronts from around the world and across the metaverse. So you can manage your global business from one convenient place the Mamenta global trade platform. That means controlling catalog and venturi orders, price shipping and customer messaging at scale, across 70 plus countries,

Voiceover

Centralizing every marketplace also means all your data is in one place, bringing you complete views and richer insights into your brand's performance. So you can make smarter decisions faster

Voiceover  21:30

Mamenta offers our technology headless, as a standalone platform, or as a fully outsourced solution. Mamenta is radically simplifying the way brands sell globally,

Voiceover  21:48

creating new products growing your brand.

Voiceover  21:49

We are the future of global commerce, Mamenta. It's your brand everywhere.

Cue Orr  22:16

Okay, so hopefully that video explained a little bit more of what we did and help you visualize what we do at meta. But we seamlessly connect brand data and inventory positions and global marketplaces, expanding accelerating access to to new markets and maximizing profits.

So most brands have a global problem. domestic and international brands just experienced the same things. And there's two major problems. One is a disparate infrastructure globally. There's a lot of different brands that have broken and different ways through distributor models, and broken down systems. And they have multiple different ERPs and systems that need to be connected. So we connect those into the MetaTrader platform, securing their back end, and then we help distribute it across the globe to different marketplaces, such as Japan, and many other across the world. The other problem that many brands have is middle sized brands that have low global reach, because they're just connected within one region. And so within nomads global trade platform, we're able to launch them on multiple different marketplaces around the world. And one of the benefits of Numenta is we have the largest coverage across the globe.

We're able to get you on over 600 different marketplaces in 70 different countries, and 75 just distribution setups. And this is a breakdown of how our solution works. We have the brand data on one side, the MetaTrader platform in the middle, connecting catalog price inventory orders, shipping messaging to the marketplace, and then back. So meta is the platform that manages everything in between your brand and your global marketplace system. There's some of the brands that we work with globally. And what is the Mamenta difference? We have more integrations 600 Plus Sims via pre connected Threepio warehouses. We have a unique operating partner system that helps support launches globally around the world. We have an engagement, a service offering that's hands on that's helping you grow and profit. We also offer console, consulting assistance helping identify and access priority marketplaces. Or a meta code base was developed specifically for global marketplace integration. And we're also focused on enterprise legacy legacy brands that wanted to strategically enter marketplaces have gone through non organic paths. And now faced with disparate technology, infrastructures and inventory positions within various global marketplaces.

So here are some some of the main questions that come up. And then we'd like to have like start beginning a conversation between all of us on some of these topics. Initially, what ponder, respond to these, and one of the first ones that we've gotten to previously, but there are hundreds of global marketplaces, why should I start in Korea? Gerald, do you want to respond to that? Yeah.

Gerald Hoe  26:18

Okay, so as I mentioned earlier, Korea is a country of 52 million. It's the world's largest eCommerce marketplace. Customers with the billion dollars last year, in addition to spending, as part of it is just behind China, US and the UK. And the populated infrastructure for eCommerce, why the country is it's not a set over half of all retail transactions place online. Right. So it's very sizable consumer base. So then another thing is that Koreans generally for very large for conventional products, right. So I believe that if you're looking to outside the US-

Aaron Conant  27:22

Gerald, I'm wondering if you, and I don't know if it's your earpiece, but it's still the audio. They don't know if it's the earpiece or not. Maybe it's the battery in there. I don't know if it's dying, but and then I see what you are. If it's yeah, it was the bandwidth, you might if you maybe turn the video off helps to show that.

Gerald Hoe  27:51

Okay, is this better?

Aaron Conant  27:54

Yeah, yeah, it is.

Yeah, I mean, I love the second one, which is, you know, why do you start? And then what's the brand's opportunity? And that goes into what how do you? How do people do the brand evaluation if it's worth going based on what category they're in?

Gerald Hoe  28:12

Okay, so when you went to Korea, or Coupang, I think the first thing that you need to do is you need to research the certain channels, to gauge the volume of interest and your products, or your brand is assess trends, it's a look at social media as you need to see how well known your brand is is with the with Koreans begin with. And, and if your brand is not well known that you need to be able to you need to continue to think about marketing your, your your products, when you start thinking about marketing, off Coupang and on Coupang. Awesome.

Aaron Conant  28:51

And then okay, so if it's actually a good thing, if people currently somebody is already selling your brands there in a way, if there's already brand recognition, in this case, you're just kind of coming over and reclaiming your brand. It sounds like a lot of times what happens, you know, on Amazon here, where third parties are already selling potentially, and brands can just come on and claim those sales in a way.

Gerald Hoe  29:15

Yes, that's right. So if your products are being sold by resellers in the country, and you can, you can always check with us to give you a sense of how well your product is really selling a Coupang, we can help you with that. But that that should give you some kind of confidence whether you you you have a you have demand for your products, right. And so and that also depends on if you have a really, really have strong, sharp demand for your products. All you need to do is just come on Coupang and focus a lot of your marketing activities on Coupang itself because as a marketplace, we just have the widest reach of the first place that shopping journey.

Aaron Conant  29:55

So then, if I want to if I'm on the call today, right now like, I want to give this a whirl, right? So they reach out, they connect, you know, with you can connect through the Mamenta team. What is typical launch timing? Like? Is this something where you start now? And it's 2023? Or is it something you start now? And if you got the stuff and the connections made in the inventory, there is it's four weeks.

Gerald Hoe  30:19

Yep. So setting up an account on Coupang is very easy, will take up to five days to review and approve your application. And once your application is done your accounts all there you just you can start listing and start selling immediately. We can you talk about Mamenta.

Cue Orr  30:37

Where we come in as far as Mamenta, we allow you to connect your your infrastructure, your back end infrastructure, whether whatever systems that you have warehouses all into them the MetaTrader platform, and then from there, we can connect you to any other marketplaces that you're already currently on or like to expand to, and then directly into Clickbank.

And that typically takes anywhere from two to four weeks, depending on your your back end infrastructure, and getting that tied into Mamenta. And then we'll get you onto the markets.

Aaron Conant  31:18

Awesome. Well, there's a question on here advertising opportunities, you see that there's a percentage of media spend? You know, once brands are established what they should be spending? Is it 10%? Is it 14%? And then how do you see what a launch looks like? Is it just an over index for brand awareness? And I know you've listened a bunch there is our should be will be pulling all the levers? Or is it kind of like Amazon when he first gets started, you just use the PPC platform.

Gerald Hoe  31:50

I think you can, you definitely get your start with you start with the PPC platform, right you can run product ads on our on our marketplace to increase exposure to shoppers who are most likely to purchase your products. And also, you know, run discount compounds to give your products to make your product more competitively priced. And over coming up with other types of marketing and marketing services to help increase exposure of your products such as the outlook on life, which is our life commerce service, and also a paid customer reviews, which are very useful for purchase conversion, especially if your products are nearly Korea. That being said, you know, if you are at your price above them, you need to think about how you want to promote your product off Coupang as well. via Instagram, Koreans are big. They really engage very well with with influencers on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. Right. So I would look at considering building an off Coupang marketing strategy on that too, especially if you're if your friends don't although.

Aaron Conant  33:04

And then combining kind of like the fourth question with the last one determining product catalog and mix for the marketplaces. And then understanding sales revenue potential in the Korean market, those kind of go together, that you help brands evaluate whether it's worth going or not like, Do you have a platform they can run on and say, hey, you know it, the product, the category, the brand doesn't resonate? You know, I think that's what people want to know at the end of the day you have. Are you helping brands with that evaluation?

Gerald Hoe  33:37

Yes, so we can help evaluate, we can help brands evaluate the search volumes for categories and for their brands. And also how many listings are for of their products by the sellers on our platform. And we can also give them a sense of how how all these products are doing whether they're getting the item innervates because you know, one thing about Coupanging I mentioned I mentioned item in a bit. But basically models like Amazon, right, you could have 10 sellers selling the same item. But we only display that one item to our customer, unlike other places in Asia. So so we can help you think about how you need to position your products so that you are the item winner compared to all your resellers.

Aaron Conant  34:27

Right. And then what about selecting the distribution model and distributor? Yeah, I'll kick this over the Mamenta team. Are you guys able to help with that? Because that's the next thing. where's the where's the inventory land? Where does it get shipped? That's where people want to know.

Cue Orr  34:44

Yeah, so we can we can work in multiple different ways we can connect to your inventory position that you potentially could have in country. We can connect into where you're getting your product produce, we can connect into Have your domestic here and in the US and do cross border. Or we can connect into all of them and bring them in and be able to shift inventory as as needed to be up on time. So wherever you have product, we can connect it in and get it up.

Aaron Conant  35:19

And then what is that expected timeframe look like?

Cue Orr  35:23

Yeah, it's all kind of dependent on your your infrastructure, but to get typically, one warehouse up and going, you know, a couple of we like to two to four weeks or something like that. But we have to do evaluation of the infrastructure.

Aaron Conant  35:42

Awesome. Are there other things that come up, you know, routinely and Gerald lucky this year for us like, what it's even here, number three common things that people should be aware of, when launch unique, it's kind of like top mistakes, but it could be, you know, just top things to be aware of when launching, and then we kick it over to Cue and Tommy as well to get their input.

Gerald Hoe  36:04

Okay, well, one thing to know, Korean customers are very discerning, and they like to research your products before they buy them. So when you're listing your products, you make sure that you're forthcoming. With the details, right? If you're selling some customers electronics picture, you have information about the voltage clearly stated independence that you use and all that. Specifically for marketplace, we do see that brands and sellers don't put enough relevant search tags for their product, which then makes it hard for the premium customers to find your product on Coupang. So we recommend at least yet at least five search tags. And we can also help you think about what type of tags to put in the search tags can be a combination of English and Korean words.

Another thing to also note is that when it comes to your delivery times, right, typically, Koreans can be willing to buy a product if it doesn't take more than seven days to get to them. So from us to Korea, you can get them two days, that's probably the fastest you can get it there. So I would say try to keep your delivery times longer than seven days in order to have much higher shorter time.

Aaron Conant  37:33

Yep. Another question comes in can you speak to recommended product mix? Or Korea

Gerald Hoe  37:41

You mean, okay, like if you're a seller what type of product you should should be started selling to be successful in Korea. Okay. Is that what you're Is that what you're asking?

Aaron Conant  37:52

It might be just you know, if you're if you want to just highlight a little bit by product mix, are you thinking you know, fashion apparel, you know, beauty, consumer electronics, or to be kitted bundled? Is it the same in the US is in Korea.

Gerald Hoe  38:16

So we go we're not selection. We are selection agnostic. For our marketplace business. What we see there community customers like to buy from the US, they are platform they primarily buy a lot of food products, right health supplements are usually the number one type of products that Korean customers come to Kupala to buy from the US have supplements protein shakes vitamins. And another thing from from consumer electronics we see that they buy to buy a lot of Google Chrome Chromecast, iPads, right. TVs, as I mentioned earlier, consumer electronics are generally cheaper outside of Korea, even for Korean brands. And that's what that's why customers Korean customers are like to buy these type of items overseas for fashion fashion. Yes, definitely. They're looking for for much cheaper products such as and wider selection. Right. So like shoes, you know, other like staple American brands gap, right? And so these cultures and all that so they there's a lot of demand for those type of well known us fashion apparel in Korea.

Aaron Conant  39:49

Love it. And I can see and that's exactly I think Joe kind of highlighted here again, exactly what she was looking for. So you pretty much nailed it. I see we're actually Like 30 minutes over the time we had that people committed for this, like key takeaways as a whole, right? Again, like the the team Mamenta are great friends, partners, supporters of the network, and just helping brands launch internationally and marketplaces, they have tons of relationships, they're really close with a lot of the marketplaces globally. And so I encourage people to have a follow up conversation with them and the ease that it is and how they simplify the business model. But, you know, if we kind of go to like the key takeaway time, Gerald, I will start with you, and then we'll go to Cue and then we'll go to Tommy for key takeaways. And if other people have questions, just, you know, just drop into the question section.

Gerald Hoe  40:41

Okay, key takeaway, as complex or as mysterious as it is Coupang is very easy for you to set up. So this is basically your site sign up. So make it very easy and cost effective for you to start to test your products out. And it's really a big opportunity that you should not miss.

Aaron Conant  41:02

Thank you. Awesome. Cue key takeaways.

Cue Orr  41:06

Yeah, just kind of reiterate, what Gerald said is Korea is you know, it's a great opportunity that that's there, along with many other opportunities that Mamenta can help you with, with the global marketplace strategy, but Coupang was one of those opportunities that's that's sitting out there that we talked to a lot of people and they don't even have that on their on their radar. So we're just trying to make people aware and let people know that there is the opportunity, and we're here to help.

Aaron Conant  41:37

Awesome. Tom, the key takeaways.

Tommy Vogtman  41:39

Yeah, you know, like, same same tone there. Yeah. And, you know, it's something that I said in the beginning, but, you know, we we hope at the end of the webinar, you are going to say, hey, entering the Korean market is not as difficult, you know, as we thought and to echo what you and Gerald just said, and, you know, it's not difficult, you know, let's, let's talk and then let us help you get to revenue in the Korean market. So yeah, thank you.

Aaron Conant  42:04

Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Well, again, Tommy, Cue, Gerald. Thanks so much for your time today. Thanks, everybody who dialed in and the great questions. With that. We're going to wrap it up. Hope everybody has a fantastic Tuesday. Everybody, take care, stay safe and look forward to having you at a future event. Thanks, everybody. Already, we'll see you Thank you.