Partnering with University Students to Develop 'Eolpit'... Hyundai Department Store Accelerates 'Open Innovation'

Hyundai Department Store Group is strongly driving 'open innovation' by promoting industry-academia cooperation in partnership with universities. Open innovation refers to an open-type innovation that actively brings in the technology, ideas, and services necessary for innovation through collaboration with external parties.

Exterior view of The Hyundai Seoul Fitamin store.

According to Hyundai Department Store Group on the 24th, through industry-academia cooperation with Hanyang University Startup Support Group, they recently completed the development of the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) model of the O2O (Online to Offline) clothing repair platform application ‘Eoljit (All FIT)’. After conducting internal tests with group employees and making improvements, they plan to review the commercialization feasibility once the final app development is completed.

At the end of last year, Hyundai Department Store Group focused on the ‘pain points’ in online clothing shopping while discovering new promising businesses. Since customers cannot try on clothes and sizes vary by brand, even if repairs are needed after purchase, customers have to visit repair shops themselves, which is inconvenient. They believed this inconvenience could be solved by an O2O clothing repair platform connecting customers and repair shops.

To realize the O2O clothing repair platform idea, Hyundai Department Store Group partnered with Hanyang University Startup Support Group to supplement lacking capabilities such as O2O software development and planning, and to reflect the perspectives and needs of the MZ generation. Student Dongyeop Lee (Hanyang University senior, 24 years old), who specializes in app design, formed a team with students Hojun Kim (Kookmin University senior, 24 years old) and Jungmin Park (Kookmin University senior, 22 years old), who have excellent platform development skills. They completed the Eoljit MVP model development in about 10 months.

The Eoljit app works by customers taking photos of their clothes and leaving repair requests, then the repairer sends an estimated quote → customer acceptance → after repair completion, final quote sent → customer approval and payment. They are considering operating clothing pickup and delivery functions in connection with a contactless laundry app.

A Hyundai Department Store Group official said, “After reflecting internal test results and completing additional detailed functions, we will review whether to promote commercialization, including establishing a company-in-company (CIC) or spin-off. If commercialization is decided, the students who developed the app will also be given the opportunity to become members of the business organization as Eoljit managers.”

The company explained that advancing to new service development through external collaboration is a result of Hyundai Department Store Group’s open innovation, which aims to create new products, services, and business models by cooperating beyond internal capabilities.

Hyundai Department Store Group is implementing open innovation comprehensively. Since introducing the corporate venture capital (CVC) consortium in 2020, they have made strategic investments totaling about 34 billion KRW in 12 startups, including ‘Nice Weather’ (a convenience store concept lifestyle store) and ‘Smith & Leather’ (custom-made accessories using natural cowhide). These investments were not merely financial but aimed at discovering business models that can create real synergies with the group’s existing businesses.

Recently, through investment in the digital healthcare startup ‘Kick the Hurdle’, they opened the customized health functional food (hereafter, health supplement) store ‘Pittamin’ at Hyundai Department Store The Hyundai Seoul on the 17th of last month, recording sales more than six times higher than surrounding health supplement brands. A Hyundai Department Store Group official said, “Through cooperation with startups, we benchmark the startups’ innovation and agility while quickly discovering trendy and differentiated content based on their fast decision-making and bold business execution capabilities. From world-class companies with innovative business models or technologies to university students full of flexible thinking and ideas, we will continue to promote boundaryless collaboration covering areas beyond traditional distribution sectors to accelerate securing future growth engines.”

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