Korean e-commerce platform 11Street’s open market crosses break-even level

[Courtesy of 11Street]

11Street Co., the e-commerce platform under South Korea’s SK telecom Co., said its open market business has crossed the break-even point as new services launched earlier this year, such as selling fresh food, luxury, and refurbished goods are on track.

On Monday, the company said it held a town hall meeting at its Seoul office to share its operating performance results for the first six months of the year.

In June, the open market business turned profitable, improving by more than 7 billion won ($5.4 million) from the same month a year ago.

In the first half of this year alone, operating profit improved by more than 29 billion won on year. This is the first time in two and a half years that the company has posted a positive monthly operating result since January 2021.

11Street’s business is largely divided into open market and direct purchase. The open market is the business of brokering products from vendors on the platform. It is estimated to account for 90 percent of total sales.

The company has shown steady growth in its open marketplace business, turning it into the black, even as its direct purchase and delivery business have been losing money.

This year, 11Street explored new territories it had not explored before and attracted new vendors. As the business grew, so did the number of new customers.

One example is the fresh food delivery service, which launched in February. For this service, the company partners with verified producers who have their own farm-to-fork distribution centers and delivers high-quality food directly to customers. It started with 600 products and plans to expand to 1,700 by the end of the year.

This does not cost 11Street any extra money because it does not have to set up an additional warehouse. Fresh produce is an area where e-commerce has not been able to fully meet the needs of its customers.

The company said that its fresh food service is contributing to new customers wanting to buy fresh food and is increasing the loyalty of existing customers.

The expansion of the service has also led to a steep increase in monthly active users (MAUs) compared to last year.

In June, the 11Street mobile app had 13.97 million MAUs, up about 1.01 million from January, according to Nielsen KoreanClick.