"'Value Sapsida' with a Belly Button Bigger than the Belly... 35% of Tenant Stores Have Zero Sales"

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Bo-kyung] The government's 'Gachi Sapsida' platform, established to support small business owners' online expansion, has come under scrutiny for its poor business performance. It was confirmed that 35% of the participating vendors had no sales, and despite a project budget of 11 billion KRW, the net sales amounted to only 2 billion KRW.

The Gachi Sapsida platform project began in December 2019 to promote and sell products of small business owners who find it difficult to enter private online malls directly. With a relatively low sales commission of 3%, it was expected that if the project operated properly, it would greatly help small business owners overcome their crisis.

However, an analysis of data submitted by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups to Democratic Party lawmaker Shin Jeong-hoon on the 5th revealed that the government's platform role was insufficient, and sales performance was concentrated on private live commerce platforms.

As of cumulative data in July this year, sales of vendors on the Gachi Sapsida platform amounted to 8.796 billion KRW. Of this, pure sales on the Gachi Sapsida platform accounted for only 2.055 billion KRW (23.3%), while sales on private live commerce platforms accounted for 6.741 billion KRW (76.6%). Since September last year, the Ministry of SMEs and Startups has been simulcasting with private platforms such as Wemakeprice and Tmon to increase sales of participating vendors' products.

Analyzing the sales status of the Gachi Sapsida platform, the number of participating vendors increased quantitatively from 1,432 last year to 2,090 as of July this year. However, the number of vendors with no sales reached 733 (35.1%), and 48.9% recorded negligible sales of less than 1 million KRW. Only 44 vendors, or 2.1% of the total, achieved sales exceeding 10 million KRW.

Another issue is that sales are concentrated during specific periods such as large-scale promotional events like Donghaeng Sale and Christmas events. The pattern of sales surging briefly and then declining repeatedly was observed.

Since the project started in 2019 until September this year, a total of 10.989 billion KRW has been spent on the Gachi Sapsida platform project. Considering that the pure sales amount excluding live commerce platform sales was only 2.055 billion KRW as of cumulative data in July this year, the cost outweighs the benefits.

Lawmaker Shin said, "It has become clear through the failure of the project over the past two years that simple online sales cannot compete with the private sector," and advised, "The project approach should shift to establishing a subscription economy section with a regular payment model and increasing benefits for long-term and excellent consumers to prevent customers from temporarily entering and then leaving, thereby promoting stable revenue generation."

He added, "Along with an online platform specialization strategy, strengthening offline infrastructure is necessary," emphasizing, "Offline live commerce studios supporting small business owners' online expansion should be expanded regionally to provinces so that small business owners in each area can utilize them evenly."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.