Online Marketing Training for Traditional Market Merchants: "Boss, Just Focus on Making Money"

Wemakeprice Win-Win Cooperation Team

Shin Hee-woon, Head of Win-Win Cooperation Team at Wemakeprice. Photo by Wemakeprice

[Asia Economy Reporter Moon Hyewon] "The offline market has been greatly contracted due to the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19). Traditional markets, where many elderly merchants operate, have been hit the hardest. Most of these people want to sell on online markets but give up because they don’t know how. Our team visits them directly to teach them easily from online promotion and marketing strategies to sales and delivery systems, helping them gain experience in online sales." (Shin Hee-woon, Head of Wemakeprice Win-Win Cooperation Team)

The Wemakeprice Win-Win Cooperation Team, composed of eight elite merchandise planners (MDs), has visited traditional markets all over the country. They do this to bring products that can be tasted and enjoyed locally?such as Jeju’s clean fruits, handmade industrial goods, and local traditional market specialties?into the online market. The Win-Win Cooperation Team provides opportunities for those unfamiliar with offline distribution and sales to expand their online sales channels.

Team leader Shin said, "When meeting traditional market merchants, some are only familiar with offline and have vague fears about online, while some mid-sized local companies feel no need for online sales because their offline performance is fairly good. We help them enter online sales as soon as possible, even if it’s a bit slow and unfamiliar, so they can gain experience and become familiar with it."

Originally formed in 2017 with just two members?a team leader and Shin, who was then a junior employee?the team has now grown to eight members. The team was created with the purpose of expanding the quality and variety of products by onboarding excellent products from small business owners nationwide, and allowing small business owners to increase sales by joining a verified online sales platform, creating a win-win situation for both sides. Wemakeprice, an online distributor whose sales network becomes stronger as more partners join, places great expectations on the Win-Win Cooperation Team, which creates pathways to secure products with strong competitiveness. They also plan to increase the number of team members through ongoing recruitment. Shin said, "We need the insight to select products that can sell better if marketing is strengthened." If there are local specialties that people remember fondly after tasting them at tourist spots and want to buy again after returning home, that place becomes the next destination.

The Win-Win Cooperation Team has developed the live broadcast program "How Far Have You Sold?" with popular creators and the bus tour event "How Far Have You Been?" to revitalize traditional markets, expanding opportunities to meet with small and micro businesses.

The "How Far Have You Sold?" live broadcast features mukbang creators who deliver vividness that online shopping platforms cannot provide. Because consumers cannot taste products directly online, friendly mukbang creators express the experience realistically. In fact, last year, a small company’s meal kit product promoted through the "How Far Have You Sold?" broadcast sold 40,000 units in just a few hours. Even after the program ended late last year, many small and micro businesses have continuously requested its continuation.

Choi Jong-dae, CEO of Gwa-il-asak, said, "Through this program, we were very grateful to expand new sales channels and increase sales in the online market. Especially, collaborating with famous creators who are usually hard to access helped improve brand awareness, which was very satisfying."

The long-term goal of the Win-Win Cooperation Team is the "online operation of traditional markets." Although their activities are currently limited due to COVID-19, they expect their role to increase once the situation stabilizes. Shin said, "We currently collaborate individually with companies and merchants for one-time sales, but I want to create a system where all merchants in a traditional market can join the Wemakeprice platform and customers can purchase products from any store in the traditional market at once."

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