Two ways Coupang is expanding revenue per active customer is Coupang Eats and Rocket Wow grocery, its food and grocery delivery services. According to management, Coupang Eats is one of the most downloaded apps in South Korea this year. Unlike food delivery services that utilize third-party contractors, Coupang is able to leverage its existing delivery infrastructure and employees, which is likely why it grew so quickly. While the market remains fiercely competitive, in just 10 years e-commerce giant Coupang has managed to become the country’s most popular online retailer. The Seoul-based company owes its dominant position in part to its slate of fast delivery options, which is powered by its own logistics business, Rocket Delivery.
- This is exciting news for investors who are looking to expand their investment portfolios with an up-and-coming giant in the e-commerce retail industry.
- Total spending in Korea’s retail, grocery, consumer food service, and travel was $470 billion in 2019 and is expected to increase to $534 billion in 2024.
- Coupang’s marketplace attracts a large number of merchants, including small- and medium-sized businesses, which enables it to obtain a wide and unique selection of merchandise.
Finally, expanding third-party logistics could open up new opportunities, too, though it’s unclear how profitable such operations would be. Korea is the world’s 12th largest economy, with GDP per capita over $31,000, about half that of the United States. It’s this tension that may be most worth watching over the next few years as Coupang seeks to reconcile its desire to control the consumer experience door-to-door with the need to expand at speed.
If using the app, after installing, you need to give permission for the app to access your phone. Coupang might be making all these efforts to be a groundbreaking ecommerce player in Korea. It also has a high rate of mobile and internet adaption with eighty percent of Koreans living in cities with internet access, and 95% of Korean buyers that own a smartphone. Coupang has faced increasing scrutiny after several of its employees died from what local labor advocates and politicians blamed on poor work conditions. According to the South Korean Public Service and Transport Workers union, at least eight warehouse and transportation employees at the company died from overwork over the past year.
Beyond improved delivery, WOW is a platform for Coupang to release new, higher-margin product lines. It has a video streaming service that drastically undercuts Netflix’s offering in the country. Coupang also has plans to launch a live-streaming shopping business line to replicate the model’s success in neighboring https://bigbostrade.com/ China. These services will be launched for WOW customers first and then unbundled and sold separately to other customers. Over time, this should make the WOW bundle increasingly valuable, bringing customers into the fold. As mentioned above, in 2010, the Korean e-commerce market was dominated by Groupon clones.
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This VP goes on to highlight a particular issue around the holiday period. Coupang would invest heavily in advertising and additional staff to maximize sales, then reverse course as soon as the holidays had ended, pushing employees out of the door. The executive believed this “stop and go” policy was damaging and contributed to a feeling among senior executives of not being appropriately considered. In short, best forex indicators Coupang is a logistical marvel that has raised the bar in terms of speed and sustainability. The company delivers millions of SKUs packaged in reusable, eco-friendly bags, powered by a massive network of employee drivers. In particular, the manager noted the open space in consumer-to-business payments, compared to consumer-to-consumer payments in which Coupang would compete with players like Kakao.
Meet the “Amazon of South Korea”
With the latest news about its successful initial public offering, it’s safe to say that Coupang has far exceeded this goal. The brilliant response at the end of its first day of trading has raised the valuation of Coupang to an astronomical $60 billion. This makes it 60 times a unicorn and we’re wondering if there is going to be a new classification set for companies that perform at this exceptional level. Coupang is currently listed as one of the biggest listings in the United States stock market by deal size. Coupang has since grown into the largest ecommerce company in Korea.
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It operates a vast logistics network with more than 15,000 full-time drivers. Over 70% of the Korean population lives within 7 miles of a Coupang logistics center. Traditionally, e-commerce revenue is not valued at a premium multiple. Commerce comps trade at 0.76x (Walmart) to 1.94x (Wayfair) NTM revenue. If you give Coupang credit for 50% growth next year, which is quite conservative given how cohorts have behaved even before covid-19, $50B represents a 2.97 NTM revenue multiple. That means that investors are still paying a premium to peers on a growth-adjusted basis.
In fact, it now has an estimated 15.7% market share in its home country, up from just 7.4% in 2017. This delivery advantage has helped Coupang gain a massive market share in South Korea. In 2017, it was estimated that Coupang had a 7.4% e-commerce market share in its home country. Coupang has been on the move with a forward trajectory practically since its inception. As a part of its expansion of goods and services, it purchased a company called HOOQ. When Coupang completed the acquisition, it developed its streaming service that it calls Coupang Play.
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Kim decided to drop out of Harvard Business School to start a digital commerce company in Korea. That company began as a Groupon clone but eventually pivoted into ecommerce. Rocket Delivery is a shipping service that makes 99% of orders possible to be delivered within one day.
About half of Korea’s 52 million residents live in the Seoul metro area. Small area combined with high population density makes delivery relatively easy. Today, 70% of Korean’s live within seven miles of a Coupang fulfillment center. Coupang’s history is a fitting representation of the company’s strengths today. As we’ll explore in the rest of this briefing, the company is an impressively adaptable business, evolving its business model to fulfill its customers’ and merchants’ needs at blazingly fast speed. Like few others, Coupang has survived and thrived thanks to Kim’s masterful sense of when to pivot.
Coupang didn’t disclose the ownership stakes of its shareholders in the S-1, but Greenoaks Capital Management, Sequoia Capital and BlackRock were all early investors. Coupang isn’t yet profitable, though it has managed to lessen losses over time. In 2018, for instance, Coupang posted a net loss of $1.1 billion, while in 2020 that loss shrank to just $475 million. Korean shoppers will now be able to buy tens of millions of products directly from the latter platform.
I’m not saying that I’ve ever done this, but I can easily see someone just buying one item for delivery in the morning and doing that day after day, after day. Overtime that can hurt the operating margin of a business like this. It would be nice in future quarters to see the breakout of that spend. Of course, you can always track gross profit and operating margin just from the topline numbers every quarter and get a sense from those big aggregate numbers. Founded in 1993, The Motley Fool is a financial services company dedicated to making the world smarter, happier, and richer.