Coupang Surpasses 7 Trillion Won in Sales Last Year, 'Record High'... Loss Growth Also Slows (Update)

Bold Investment Drives Sales Growth and Job Creation
30,000 Direct and Indirect Employees Last Year... 1.4 Trillion KRW Invested in Labor Costs
34 Million Consumers Live Within 10 Minutes of Coupang Rocket Delivery Centers

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Cheol-hyun] Coupang announced on the 14th that it recorded consolidated sales of 7.153 trillion KRW in 2019. This represents a 64.2% increase compared to the previous year. Operating loss was 720.5 billion KRW. Coupang explained that the expansion of dawn delivery and same-day delivery areas nationwide, rapid growth in key categories such as home appliances and fresh food, and a steady increase in the number of customers drove the sales growth.

Jobs also increased significantly. Coupang's direct and indirect employment rose by 5,000 people in one year, from 25,000 in 2018 to 30,000 in 2019. Various personnel joined Coupang, from AI engineers designing cutting-edge services to brand managers discovering local specialties, and from Coupang delivery workers to Coupang Flex workers.

The labor costs paid by Coupang soared from 100 billion KRW in 2014, when the Rocket Delivery service started, to 1.4 trillion KRW last year, a 14-fold increase over five years. The cumulative labor costs paid during this period reached 4.068 trillion KRW. Additionally, 62,000 mini-enterprises with annual sales under 3 billion KRW grew together with Coupang last year. Seven out of ten Coupang partner companies are these mini-enterprises. The sales generated by them through Coupang last year exceeded 4 trillion KRW. Compared to the previous year, the number of mini-enterprises increased by 15,000, and sales grew by 1.4 trillion KRW.

So far, Coupang has focused its investments on "how to build a fast and stable logistics infrastructure." Coupang predicts which products customers will order using AI, purchases them in advance, stores them at Rocket Delivery centers nationwide, and delivers them to customers' homes via the fastest route as soon as an order is placed. Two thousand engineers work to ensure this system operates smoothly.

When Coupang started Rocket Delivery in 2014, there were 27 Rocket Delivery centers nationwide. By 2019, that number had increased sixfold to 168. As the number of Rocket Delivery centers increased, the number of consumers living within a 10-minute distance from a Rocket Delivery center, known as the "Rocket Delivery living zone," jumped 13 times from 2.59 million to 34 million during the same period. As of 2019, more than 6 million types of pre-purchased products worth 711.9 billion KRW are waiting for customer orders at 168 Coupang Rocket Delivery centers nationwide. Five years ago, it was 30.3 billion KRW. In February this year, Coupang expanded Rocket Delivery service to Jeju Island.

Based on the nationwide Rocket Delivery center network, Coupang has been the only company in Korea to offer nationwide dawn delivery of fresh food since January last year. This year, it will take a step further by introducing the "Rocket Fresh Same-Day Delivery Service," which delivers fresh food by 6 p.m. if ordered by 10 a.m. Based on the logistics infrastructure steadily built over the past five years, even in the first quarter of this year, when mass delivery delays occurred worldwide due to the spread of COVID-19, Coupang explained that it delivered daily essentials to 1 million households nationwide every day. Coupang also kept the prices of masks, which it sells through direct purchase, at pre-COVID-19 levels and was the first in the industry to fully implement "untact delivery." Furthermore, to support the "post-COVID" economic recovery, Coupang plans to carry out the "Cheer Up Korea" project nationwide with seven metropolitan governments until the end of the year, discovering and selling local small and medium-sized enterprise products, regional delicacies, and local specialties.

Kim Beom-seok, CEO of Coupang, said, "The exceptional speed of Rocket Delivery is thanks to the technology and infrastructure that predict the products customers want and prepare them in advance at Rocket Delivery centers close to customers." He added, "We will continue to aggressively invest in technology and infrastructure to accelerate a world where customers ask, 'How did we live without Coupang?' by providing unprecedented services such as Rocket Fresh same-day delivery beyond dawn delivery."

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