Chinese e-commerce platform such as Alibaba has expanded to many countries across Asia. But there is one country that has no room for foreign e-commerce player. Because South Korean market is full of local e-commerce giants such as TMON.
TMON or also known as Ticket Monster, is South Korea-based e-commerce platform. The company is one of the biggest in the country, second only to Naver’s e-commerce platform. Daniel Shin and four other co-founders founded the company back in 2010. It is one of the firsts in the industry.
The company claimed that it has hold on 90% of customers who do not use Naver. In 2018, it records around $4.3 billion sales. It is a 40% increase from the previous year. And it has set its target on becoming the country’s number 1 time commerce platform by 2020.
No, it’s not Amazon. TMON wants to be Alibaba
The company’s new CEO, Lee Jaeho has a clear strategy to accomplish the goal. He stated that his company will not become the South Korean equal of Amazon. Instead he wants it to be the South Korean equal of Alibaba.
Lee does not want customers to only open TMON app when they need to buy some specific things. He wants them to open it daily, checking what on sale and which merchants has the best offering.
For this, Alibaba’s model is very perfect. Therefore the company has since made sale events such as the Monster Deal. It is a kind of flash sale, discounting many products in a short period of time. And it gained the company 25% more users and 15% increase of monthly sales.
The company also launched TV On Live last year and will expand the feature for minor merchants. It is simply a live show such as those at the home-shopping channels in the television.
Also, as Lee stated, TMON is developing another features that allows customers to buy things from watching videos. It would be the e-commerce version of YouTube. And it would make TMON no longer a usual e-commerce platform but also a service platform.
