[Biz Leader] Kim Gi-rok, CEO of Korea Center, "Moltale Business Unit to Achieve High Growth This Year... Expecting Performance Improvement"

[Asia Economy Reporter Hyunseok Yoo] "The growth of Moltail, our overseas direct purchase platform business division, continues. Based on this, we expect performance growth again this year."

Kim Girok, CEO of Korea Center, said in an interview with Asia Economy, "Due to COVID-19, non-face-to-face purchases have increased."

Korea Center was established in 2000. It is a platform company that provides solutions necessary for e-commerce business. It owns 'Moltail,' the number one overseas direct purchase platform, and 'MakeShop,' the number one paid shopping mall solution. From global procurement and supply to shopping mall construction and operation, integrated management of multiple markets, advertising and marketing, to global logistics and sales support based on big data, it provides optimal services to meet e-commerce business demands. Additionally, its subsidiary Summers Platform owns price comparison site 'Enuri' and others.

The first quarter recorded strong performance. Operating revenue was 88.5 billion KRW with an operating profit of 4.3 billion KRW. This represents increases of 36.26% and 77.12% respectively compared to the same period last year. Korea Center’s business divisions are broadly divided into domestic e-commerce, global e-commerce, and big data e-commerce. Among these, global e-commerce accounted for 64.82% (57.3 billion KRW) of total sales, followed by domestic e-commerce (24.88%) and big data e-commerce (8.64%).

CEO Kim said, "Until 2019, we acquired and merged companies related to e-commerce, but synergy was not realized at that time. However, with the special situation of COVID-19, non-face-to-face commerce has become active, and now as collaboration among affiliated companies is progressing in earnest, synergy is emerging." He added, "For example, we provide services by attaching the Dachatda search engine jointly developed with Enuri to MakeShop, which has received great responses from small business owners and increased traffic."

Korea Center expects performance to improve this year following the first quarter, especially anticipating growth of Moltail. He said, "In the non-face-to-face era, since overseas travel is restricted, consumers are actively purchasing overseas products directly through revenge consumption. Moreover, overseas companies are increasingly interested in the domestic market and want to enter through us because we can handle everything from distribution to returns."

He also anticipated growth for Enuri, the price comparison site operated by subsidiary Summers Platform. Summers Platform owns subsidiaries including Sweet Tracker, which operates the parcel information service Smart Parcel, and Shell We Ad, a mobile advertising platform. CEO Kim Girok said, "We are currently working hard to develop a business model for listing. The product database (DB) has rapidly increased from 300 million items three years ago to 1 billion items this year."

He emphasized, "This DB allows manufacturers to manage dumping and understand what products consumers want, and it can be effectively used by advertising companies for promotion. Data searches and sales revenue continue to increase."

Korea Center recently conducted a large-scale paid-in capital increase of 60 billion KRW for additional growth. Of this, 40 billion KRW is for acquiring securities of other companies. CEO Kim said, "We are interested in companies specialized in detailed areas related to e-commerce. We are currently looking at companies that can fill gaps or deficiencies we have."

Korea Center stresses that after listing, the 'basics' have become more important. He explained, "In the past, we prioritized creating services and persuading customers. But now, we think a lot about being faithful to the basics. We are making efforts to listen more to customers’ voices and provide solutions to scratch their itches."

Finally, CEO Kim emphasized that he wants to make Korea Center a company like salt, a company capable of sustainable growth. He said, "Even if someone other than me leads our company, I want it to be a company that shares values and collaborates to enable continuous growth. Our goal is to remain a presence always needed in the e-commerce market."