[Person人] Ha Song, CEO of Wemakeprice, 'Human+Tech' Strategy... Dreaming of Becoming the Google of E-commerce

Business Model Innovation Drive
Introduction of 2.9% Flat Commission
Declaration of Evolution into 'Meta Shopping'
Completion of Data Storage and Search AI Technology
Accumulation of Approximately 700 Million Product Data

"We will further strengthen our industry-leading curation services and invest in technological advancement to become a competitive platform thoroughly from the user's perspective."

This is the new vision of WEMAKEPRICE presented by CEO Ha Song in his inauguration speech in February this year. Since then, for nearly a year, CEO Ha has maintained a low profile externally. However, behind the scenes, he has been focusing on recruiting technology talent and investing in research and development (R&D). In short, what CEO Ha pursues is the 'evolution of shopping.' While maintaining the existing position, he set a goal to provide users with differentiated value from conventional e-commerce services by targeting gaps in the market. The aim is to break away from self-destructive price and delivery speed competitions and bring a fresh breeze to the e-commerce industry through technology-based smart services.

CEO Ha joined WEMAKEPRICE in 2015 after serving as a senior researcher at Samsung Economic Research Institute, head of business planning at Wonder People, and director at Wonder Holdings. Since then, he has gained experience overseeing marketing, business analysis, direct purchasing, and logistics operations. In 2017, he took charge of the strategic business division, leading platform and new business development as well as partnership projects. From the second half of last year, he acted as the interim CEO, and after being officially appointed CEO earlier this year, he has driven the new leap of WEMAKEPRICE by strengthening technology-based platform functions.

CEO Ha first initiated a drive for business model innovation. In April, he announced the start of innovation by introducing a flat-rate commission of 2.9%. This commission policy sets the same lowest platform commission rate of 2.9% across all categories. It broke away from the differentiated commission system applied per product under the open market model. From September, the 2.9% flat-rate commission was expanded to non-delivery partners such as travel, accommodation, and performances.

As the commission reduction increases the number of sellers on WEMAKEPRICE, naturally, a wider variety of quality products can be sold. This allows customers to purchase diverse products they want and secure items not available on other platforms, thereby enhancing platform competitiveness.

Earlier this month, CEO Ha ambitiously declared the evolution into 'Meta Shopping.' By combining metadata-based technology with WEMAKEPRICE's unique strength in product planners' (MD) curation, the company attempted to transform into a new commerce platform. They built a top-tier data lake (a repository for raw data) in Korea and completed search AI technology that analyzes the accumulated data. Currently, WEMAKEPRICE's data lake holds data on 700 million products from 230,000 domestic shopping malls.

Meta Shopping offers differentiated services that go beyond simple lowest-price comparisons by comparing detailed product information and styles. Users can conveniently grasp trends and product information all at once within WEMAKEPRICE without having to browse various shopping malls.

CEO Ha's strategy is to enrich the pool of curation candidates through commission reduction and build a tech-based platform through Meta Shopping.

In the first quarter of next year, WEMAKEPRICE will also launch a 'D2C (Direct to Customer) service' where users can find content from various brands' official online stores all in one place. This will allow users to view scattered brand official website content at a glance on WEMAKEPRICE. It will provide users with various information such as discount events exclusive to the official stores, purchase reviews, preferences, and related keywords.

Brands benefit from expanding customer touchpoints without additional costs. Using data accumulated through WEMAKEPRICE, they can also offer consumers more diverse and sophisticated shopping content. WEMAKEPRICE plans to provide brand companies with official store-related data free of charge in the second half of next year.

When CEO Ha's 'Human + Tech' strategy is completed next year, users will be able to solve everything from A to Z of shopping within WEMAKEPRICE. Users will be able to view desired shopping content clearly and gain an efficient and convenient platform usage experience. This is expected to lead to a platform lock-in effect. A reasonable platform experience encourages users to return to WEMAKEPRICE and stay longer. Partner companies selling products will naturally be attracted as well. The gathering of many users and partners is the greatest competitiveness of a platform company.

Attention is focused on whether WEMAKEPRICE can become the 'Google of commerce' as envisioned by CEO Ha. He said, "We will maintain overwhelming competitiveness in curation, where planning and operational capabilities are crucial, while strengthening R&D investment to provide users with the optimal shopping environment as a commerce platform."

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