What Can We Learn From Coupang- A Company valued at $9 Billion
How big is E-commerce? Well in 2017 the sales on e-commerce were at $2.3 Trillion and in 2018 it jumped to 2.8 Trillion and it is expected to be at 4.9 trillion by 2021. Currently, China is the largest e-commerce market with sales of $740 billion in 2019, the US is at $561 billion, the UK at $93 billion and South Korea at $69 billion. You may have heard of e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, Shopify, BigCommerce, but South Korea has its own online retail space, Coupang, founded by Bom Suk Kim. Coupang managed to do $4 Billion in sales revenue in 2018.
Kim is the current CEO of Coupang. He was born in Seoul, Korea, he left his at 7. Later in life, he attended Harvard Business School but dropped out after the first year. The countries second youngest billionaire at 40, Mr. Kim, started off working for Boston Consulting Group. He then started his own magazine later purchased by Atlantic Media. At this time he returns to his homeland and felt the absence of an online retailer. He envisioned an e-commerce model for South Korea where he wanted to create an experience for customers where they would wonder, “How did I ever live without Coupang”
Customer Experience:
“The shape of Coupang, the business model of Coupang, what Coupang looks like today, went through a lot of change,” said Kim. Change is necessary for business; you have to innovate continuously to serve your customer needs. You need to find ways for customers to order a product conveniently and deliver them quickly. Kim believes that continuous improvement is required to make the customer experience memorable.
Starting over:
Coupang was initially started as a Groupon-style website, after launching Mr. Kim and his team thought that the services and the experience they were providing customer were not to their satisfaction. So Kim decided to start over; this time reinventing Coupang, where customers could shop on their platform and received the order at their doorsteps. Sometimes in life, you have to start over again and build everything from the ground up, so do not be afraid to start over.
Fight your Constraints:
Kim considers constraints to be a blessing because South Korea is a highly dense country, transportation goods have restrictions. The trucks have to be a certain size, which only allows a number of packages for the team to deliver. This was highly inefficient, so they decided to completely modify their delivery system, by redesigning their trucks and their packaging. The constraints forced them to find a solution and served their customers better. “What seemed like a curse at that time — that we had to build this entire infrastructure, and build the technology to integrate it all, end-to-end, by ourselves, from scratch — ended up becoming a huge blessing”.
Today Coupang operates as an online retailer with 2 million products delivered within 10–24 hours, with a lot more products delivered the next day. They have offices in Seoul, Shanghai, Beijing, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Silicon Valley. The business started to see good numbers within three years from launching. Kim said the company crossed $1 billion in sales. With more than 5,000 drivers — known as Coupangmen, 10,000 employees, leadership such of Kim himself, Coupang is on the way to crack the online retailing in Asia. So take a lesson from Coupang, keep changing and innovating, do not be afraid to start over and consider your constraints to be a blessing.
