A startup company became a topic of conversation for refusing to sign an exclusive contract with Chinese shopping mall business about entering a shopping mall and making a yearly sales of $85 million.
B2LINK (CEO Lee Jae Ho) is a beauty e-commerce business that a goal of making $17 million (20 billion KRW) of sales per year within a year of being established. It already made $3.8 million (4.5 billion KRW) in the first half of 2015 and is currently growing twice more every month. There are 80 employees at B2LINK and it is planning to hire 100 employees by the end of the year.
B2LINK is currently supporting exports of South Korea’s 138 small and medium-sized cosmetics brands to Southeast Asia including China. Not only it provides information about market trend to its customers by mining Big Data 78 related to South Korean and Chinese cosmetics market, but it also supports marketing, payment, delivery, and customer service of South Korean cosmetics in China.
B2LINK currently refused an offer from a Chinese shopping mall business aboutan exclusive contract that is worth $85 million per year without hesitation.
“Because we have so many relationships with many South Korean cosmetics brands, we received an offer from a major shopping mall business in China about guaranteeing $85 million of sales per year if B2LINK enters its shopping mall. However we refused an offer because we believed that long-term growth is more important than guarantee of immediate sales since we are not a simple wholesale dealer and get our competitiveness from mining Big Data from many Chinese businesses.” said CEO Lee Jae Ho.
As B2LINK refused an offer, cosmetics that B2LINK used to deal to this Chinese shopping mall business were all taken out. However B2LINK was able to develop variety of markets as South Korea’s small and medium-sized cosmetics brands supported its decision and its sales, which was kind of slowing down, once again increased rapidly.
B2LINK recently made a strategic partnership with SFHT, which is a major business in China that helps Chinese buy products directly from South Korean shopping malls, and started O2O412 (Online to offline) business that targets Chinese consumers that visit South Korea. If Chinese consumers that are visiting South Korea stamp QR Codes that are in stores, they can easily order and receive corresponding products after returning back to China. It is as if e-commerce business and distributor are working together.
“Not only we play a role of connecting needs of both South Korean cosmetics brands and Chinese sellers, but we also help bring out sales of so-called ‘Ddaigong’ that have been viewed as illegal. We are going to open doors for South Korean cosmetics brands, which have high competitive edge, to foreign markets and help them to become ‘K beauty stars’.” said CEO Lee.
Staff Reporter Kim, Myunghee | noprint@etnews.com