CJ Olive Young, the country’s largest health and beauty product store, opened an online shop on Southeast Asia’s biggest e-commerce platform Shopee, Tuesday, as part of its global expansion plans.
“From now on, Olive Young will actively seize opportunities in the global market to grow and lead the globalization of Korean cosmetics,” a CJ Olive Young official said.
Shopee is a subsidiary of Sea Group, which sells various products from daily necessities to cosmetics and electronic goods online. It is referred to as the Amazon of Southeast Asia, as it focuses on Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia. Last year, the number of accumulated mobile application downloads of the Shopee platform surpassed 200 million.
In 2020, Olive Young also signed a memorandum of understanding with Dairy Farm to launch several of its products in Guardian stores, a drug store chain in the region.
The health and beauty product store is entering foreign markets through local retailers because it wants to minimize risks and analyze the markets first.
CJ Olive Young has started selling 300 items from its six house brands on Shopee ― Wake Make, Colorgram, Round Around, Botanic Heal Boh, Bring Green and Filli Milli ― which are good value local brands sold for reasonable prices that are popular among international customers.
The health and beauty product stores’ items will be available in Indonesia and Malaysia first. This is because they have a high proportion of young people who are interested in K-beauty and mobile shopping. It wants to introduce Korean products as well as improve the firm’s brand awareness in the two countries.
CJ Olive Young sold some of its shares to the domestic firm Glenwood Private Equity last month. After the stock purchase agreement, the private equity fund became the second-largest shareholder with 24 percent interest.
During the purchase, Glenwood valued Olive Young at 1.8 trillion won. The health and beauty product store plans to go public on the Korean bourse next year and raising its corporate value is important as it will have to pay back money to strategic investors after listing.
Olive Young is already successful with its bricks-and-mortar business here, which has a nearly 70 percent market share. However, its online business is a whole other story. Online retail giants Coupang and eBay Korea have established gigantic sales platforms that give no reason for customers to go only to Olive Young’s online mall.
For this reason, Olive Young decided to eye the Indonesian and Malaysian markets. Although sales in the two countries may not produce good profits at first, it has to look beyond the domestic online market that is already too competitive.