Distribution Industry Joining Hands with Startups... Accelerating Securing Future Growth Engines

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Chun-han] Large retail companies are accelerating their investments and collaborations with startups. This move aims to secure future growth engines by partnering with promising startups in line with the rapidly changing retail environment.

11st acquired a 7.2% stake in Barogo, a last-mile logistics IT platform. This is to respond to the e-commerce delivery war triggered by Coupang. A 11st representative said in a phone interview with Asia Economy on the 27th, “We invested with a focus on delivery competitiveness,” adding, “Various services utilizing logistics networks such as same-day delivery can emerge.”

Through this investment, 11st plans to strategically cooperate to create synergy by differentiating delivery using Barogo’s last-mile logistics network and urban hub logistics. Barogo plans to expand the delivery market beyond the food and beverage sector, which has been the mainstay of delivery, to cosmetics and daily necessities in partnership with 11st. Barogo has about 1,000 branches nationwide, with approximately 54,000 registered riders and 100,000 registered store owners. Last year, its transaction volume reached 2.9165 trillion KRW, a 166% increase compared to the previous year.

GS Retail has partnered with Danggeun Market. GS Retail possesses the largest number of nearby offline retail channels in Korea, while Danggeun Market is the country’s number one local lifestyle-based online platform. The two companies agreed to collaborate on ▲product sales ▲activation of neighborhood life services ▲new product development and mutual infrastructure utilization. GS25 and GS Supermarket plan to inform Danggeun Market users about various information such as discounts on products nearing their expiration dates. This is expected to reduce waste and enable efficient management of food resources. Additionally, a system will be established to allow job seekers to find necessary jobs at 15,000 offline stores through the Danggeun Market platform.

Earlier, Seven Eleven partnered with Last Order in February last year to launch a service that sells products nearing their expiration dates at a 30-40% discount for the first time. CU also introduced this service in June of the same year. According to Seven Eleven, the total waste reduction amount through the operation of the Last Order service reaches about 2.4 billion KRW on a monthly basis. Having achieved results through collaboration with startups, Seven Eleven announced on the 9th that it signed a business agreement with 'Sechingu' and 'Successful People' to introduce a tax mobile service. Seven Eleven franchise owners will be able to manage tax filing, sales and purchase management, estimated tax calculation, and document management quickly and accurately via mobile.

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