Delicious Secures 54 Billion KRW Investment... "Global Market Expansion"

Entering the Japanese Fashion B2B Market with Experience Leading Dongdaemun's Digital Transformation

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Cheol-hyun] Delicious (CEO Kim Jun-ho and Jang Hong-seok) announced on the 5th that it will enter the global fashion market by securing Series C investment and unveiling a new business model. On this day, Delicious announced that it had raised 54 billion KRW in investment from 13 major domestic investment institutions, including Stonebridge Ventures, Korea Development Bank, DSC Investment, Yuanta Investment, and Smilegate Investment. With this, the total accumulated investment amount reaches 79.5 billion KRW.

Founded in 2011, Delicious started its service to digitize the wholesale and retail transaction methods of Dongdaemun to improve work efficiency and convenience. Through the wholesale and retail transaction platform 'Shinsang Market,' launched in 2013, and the fulfillment service 'Deliverd,' introduced in 2020, digital technology has been integrated into all processes from product transactions to distribution for wholesale and retail businesses.

As a result, Delicious, which began fashion wholesale and retail transaction services in 2013, surpassed 2 trillion KRW in cumulative transaction volume as of December last year. Despite the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic dampening consumer sentiment, the transaction volume in 2021 alone reached 572.3 billion KRW, a 36% increase compared to the previous year. There are 11,000 wholesale stores actively trading after joining Shinsang Market, accounting for more than 80% of all wholesale stores in Dongdaemun. The number of active retail stores is 120,000, with a revisit rate of 93% for wholesale businesses and 90% for retail businesses.

On Shinsang Market, an average of 24,000 transactions occur daily, and the cumulative number of times retail businesses have applied to wholesale stores listed on Shinsang Market as their trading partners has reached 23.34 million, establishing it as an essential platform for fashion wholesale and retail businesses, according to Delicious. The cumulative number of products registered by wholesale businesses on Shinsang Market is 76.84 million, which means about 7,000 products per store. Deliverd’s user base has also continuously grown, with transaction volume in 2021 increasing by 900% compared to the previous year.

Delicious will make a full-scale entry into the global fashion market based on its experience leading the digitization and standardization of the Dongdaemun fashion cluster, the home of 'K-Fashion.' The first market for expansion is Japan, which is evaluated to have purchasing power more than ten times that of Korea. The Japanese fashion market lacks production and distribution infrastructure like Dongdaemun and does not have tools such as platforms for retail businesses. Accordingly, Delicious plans to secure and nurture Japanese fashion retail businesses starting in the second half of the year. The strategy is to advance technology and expand fulfillment facilities to provide a standardized system that enables easy transactions through the platform even in global markets such as Japan.

Jang Hong-seok, CEO of Delicious, said, "Now, K-Fashion does not simply refer to fashion brands but uniquely represents Korea’s Dongdaemun fashion cluster, which can handle everything from design to distribution worldwide." He added, "Delicious has led the market as a startup that digitized the information and transactions of the K-Fashion ecosystem, and going forward, we will become the K-Fashion change maker connecting K-Fashion to the global fashion market."

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