Sold Out Early Despite Additional Production and Purchase Limits
Sold on Open Market at High Price of 200,000 Won Due to Hot SNS Popularity
[Asia Economy Reporter Choi Sunghye] The Starbucks e-Frequency event gift, the 'Summer Ready Bag Pink,' which caused nationwide sell-out due to its hot popularity, has been confirmed to be traded at high prices on open markets. Even after collecting all the e-Frequency stamps, customers can no longer obtain the product at stores, leading to an increase in buying and selling of the Ready Bag through personal transactions.
As of the 1st, checking platforms like Wemakeprice and Gmarket, the Ready Bag Pink was being sold in the high 100,000 KRW range through numerous posts. The Ready Bag Green with the same design was traded at a price about 50,000 to 70,000 KRW cheaper, in the low 100,000 KRW range.
The Ready Bag's popularity was also strong on the region-based mobile secondhand marketplace, Danggeun Market. Posts such as "I will add tens of thousands of won on top of the Ready Bag Green price if you sell me the Ready Bag Pink" and "I want to exchange two Ready Bag Greens for one Pink" are overflowing.
According to Starbucks Coffee Korea, all stock of the Ready Bag Pink color was sold out on the 29th of last month. From the 30th, only the Ready Bag Green color started to be restocked. Although the event runs until the 22nd, the Ready Bag Pink was sold out early due to explosive popularity on social networking services (SNS). The Pink Ready Bag was known to be so popular that it was unavailable within 10 minutes of store opening until recently.
Starbucks explained, "The popularity of the Ready Bag Pink was much hotter than expected, causing an early sell-out crisis," adding, "We made various efforts to minimize consumer dissatisfaction, such as limiting exchanges to one per day, placing additional orders, and opening stock services early, but all stock was exhausted." They stated that even if additional orders were placed, it would take more than one to two months, and since the event period is fixed, further orders are difficult.
A Starbucks official said, "However, considering the current trend, we cautiously predict that the remaining demand during the event period can be covered with stock of Summer Chair, Ready Bag Green, and others."
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