Gyeongbuk Province Agricultural Specialty Products Shopping Mall 'Saiseo' Achieves Record High Sales of 45.5 Billion KRW Last Year

Gyeongbuk Province announced on the 10th that the agricultural specialty product shopping mall ‘Saiseo’ achieved sales of 45.5 billion KRW by the end of 2023, marking the highest performance ever.

Last year, ‘Saiseo’ recorded sales of 45.5 billion KRW, a 19% increase compared to 38.2 billion KRW the previous year. The number of registered farms increased by 22% from 1,821 to 2,223, and the number of members grew by 53% from 86,746 to 132,506.

Looking at monthly sales performance, January (5.1 billion KRW) and September (10.6 billion KRW), which include the Lunar New Year and Chuseok holidays, accounted for 15.7 billion KRW, or 35% of total sales. The fourth quarter?October (6.7 billion KRW), November (6.7 billion KRW), and December (3.3 billion KRW)?totaled 16.7 billion KRW. Sales from January and September through December, a five-month period, reached 32.4 billion KRW, representing 71% of total sales. This shows that consumers tend to concentrate their purchases during holidays and the year-end and New Year seasons.

Annual Saeso Sales Revenue

In response, ‘Saiseo’ focused on period- and theme-specific consumer-tailored events such as holiday gift fairs, year-end discount sales, and seafood promotions, which is analyzed as a key factor in its success.

Additionally, since 2021, efforts to enhance consumer accessibility, diversify products, and implement integrated marketing have led to the consolidation of shopping malls that were previously operated at the city and county levels into a single provincial-level wide-area platform by 2023, which is recognized as a major achievement.

By integrating member management, product registration, payment, and settlement systems, ‘Saiseo’ has enabled systematic customer service and system management. Consumers can now participate in various regional products and events across both ‘Saiseo’ and city/county shopping malls with a single ID, without separate registration procedures.

As a public shopping mall, ‘Saiseo’ also fulfills its public interest role. In July last year, following unprecedented extreme rainfall that caused significant damage in northern Gyeongbuk, it launched a campaign to support the affected areas and donated 40 million KRW through the Community Chest of Korea. It also carries out various policy projects such as the Small Business Subscription Economy Support Project led by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups and the childbirth congratulatory coupon support project by the provincial health policy department.

Gyeongbuk Province has set goals for 2024 to achieve sales of 50 billion KRW, 150,000 members, and 2,500 registered farms.

In the long term, it plans to completely revamp the Saiseo website and system to build a user environment comparable to major private online shopping malls and to realize low-input, high-efficiency marketing by reducing promotional budgets and expanding sales channels through integrated marketing of Saiseo and city/county platforms.

Kim Ju-ryeong, Director of the Agriculture, Livestock, and Distribution Bureau of Gyeongbuk Province, said, “Despite difficult conditions such as economic recession, high inflation, and abnormal weather last year, we thank consumers and registered farms who helped ‘Saiseo’ grow. We will continue to improve the system, expand customer-tailored events, and collaborate with other organizations to enhance consumer convenience and accessibility, aiming to become the nation’s best agricultural specialty product shopping mall where producers and consumers coexist.”

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