Grinding teeth and preparing for a year... Various e-commerce 'Black Friday' strategies

Creating Core Products Like Beauty and IT, Preparing for at Least 10 Months
Strengthening Monitoring of Hazardous and Counterfeit Goods Amid Surging Direct Purchases

Gmarket's Overseas Direct Purchase Big Sale Homepage Screen.

[Asia Economy Reporter Jeon Jinyoung] The e-commerce industry's biggest annual event, 'Black Friday,' has begun. The industry is launching various strategies leveraging their unique strengths to target consumers.

According to 11st on the 22nd, this Black Friday capitalizes on its collaboration with the US-based Amazon. The number of discounted Amazon direct purchase items has doubled compared to last year, and considering that Amazon's top purchased items are IT products, deals are focused mainly on Amazon's best-selling digital goods.

For Gmarket and Auction, this is the first year hosting a large-scale Black Friday event across the entire company, increasing the number of participating sellers sixfold compared to regular promotions. They decided to focus on traditional direct purchase events, emphasizing health supplements and luxury goods, including the Orthomol specialty mall, known as the 'Hermes of vitamins.' Lotte ON is launching its own sale to respond to overseas direct purchases. Leveraging its growth based on department stores, it is focusing on 'beauty and fashion.' Along with its own luxury hall 'On and the Luxury,' it emphasizes sales of about 100 department store brand products including cosmetics, luxury goods, and fashion.

The industry views this year's Black Friday as the 'real battle.' Due to the high exchange rate, known as the 'King Dollar,' it has become crucial to prepare which products and how large discounts will be offered in advance. 11st has assigned the Amazon business team to handle the work exclusively, continuously accumulating and analyzing data through pre-events such as Amazon Week and the summer 'Summer Blf.' They also introduced products that have gained word-of-mouth among IT YouTubers, showcasing unique items like the 'Razer Anju Smart Bluetooth Glasses,' which support Bluetooth audio.

Gmarket prepared for its first large-scale Black Friday by collaborating with related departments for over 10 months. They significantly expanded the number of themed category halls and mega stores to a total of 21. In particular, they prepared stock of the Apple iPhone 14 Pro, which faced domestic shortages due to production issues, offering it at a discounted price of 1.69 million KRW.

They also thoroughly prepared for issues related to counterfeit or hazardous products, which are weaknesses of overseas direct purchases. 11st sourced items directly from Amazon, and for open market sellers, merchandisers (MDs) will strengthen real-time monitoring during the Black Friday period.

Gmarket operates a 'Luxury Authentication Service' that provides free authentication upon request for customers concerned about counterfeit products, and sellers were pre-filtered in preparation for this Black Friday.

Lotte ON operates a Safety Transaction Center to address safety issues for cosmetics and other products, and issues the 'Trust ON' emblem to sellers who agree to counterfeit compensation.

An industry insider said, "Black Friday is the biggest event of the year for the e-commerce industry, where all capabilities are poured in," adding, "From seller onboarding to safety measures, everyone is thoroughly preparing."

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