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NAVER’s Project Flower Expands to Provides New Products and Services to Help More Local Businesses Go Digital and Global

- Having helped launch 420,000 Smart Stores, NAVER’s Project Flower expands to support offline markets, restaurants, and cafés 

- Project Flower 2.0’s SME-designed logistics system to help local businesses go global

- Start All-in-One Program and NAVER Business School to help new sellers get up to speed on e-commerce

- Donates KRW 10 billion to help more sellers get more market opportunities through digitalization 

 

2021-03-02

 

NAVER Corporation (KRX: 035420) reported five years of Project Flower achievements and revealed the program’s future direction at an online NAVER Meet-Up on March 2. Project Flower is NAVER’s core campaign to discover small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), entrepreneurs and creators, and foster their sustainable growth through digitalization.

 

NAVER launched Project Flower in April 2016, aiming to support 10,000 SMEs per year by providing its platform technologies as business tools. However, it has surpassed that initial goal by a wide margin, successfully launching 420,000 Smart Stores in just five years.

 

Having gained considerable traction, Project Flower 2.0 is evolving to provide additional value to Korea’s SME community and the Korean economy as a whole.

 

 

“As Korea’s leading platform for SME development and digitalization, Project Flower 2.0 will expand to help offline businesses broaden their horizons and new sellers get up to speed,” said Seong-sook Han, CEO of NAVER. “NAVER will continue to be the benchmark for platforms providing a variety of data-driven business tools and supportive programs.”

 

Applying the successful Neighborhood Market Shopping business model to local restaurants and cafes

NAVER supports the digitalization of traditional and local markets through NAVER Market Shopping. Under the new direction of Project Flower 2.0, the company will expand NAVER Market Shopping and improve its Smart Place service to help offline sellers build a strong online presence. The number of local markets that succeeded in going online through NAVER Market Shopping expanded to 80 shops last year and is expected to reach 160 this year.

 

NAVER Market Shopping helps traditional grocers to sell their products online through its Neighborhood Market category. Amsa Market was the first local market to open in NAVER’s Neighborhood Market and is a great example of digital transformation by a local grocer. It generates an average of KRW 100 million in sales per month, with more than 100 orders per day. That 25% increase in monthly sales is consistent with other stores on the platform.

 

To help local businesses leverage the Smart Place service and achieve digital transformation, NAVER is creating a cooperative model optimized for market vendors, start-ups in online business and delivery companies as well as state and local governments to invigorate the local economy.

 

Based on the success of Neighborhood Market, NAVER will apply the same business model for local restaurants and cafés and upgrade the Smart Place service as a business tool that includes AI Call reservation and mobile ordering service. It will also introduce analysis tools, such as customer characteristics, area analysis and cash register interlocking data. NAVER is in active collaboration with external partners and start-ups to carry out these improvements.

 

“NAVER has become a competitive platform not only for general users but also for SMEs and creators,” Han said. “In the process of delivering various tools and data for offline SMEs, we will actively seek out the business challenges that sellers face and take the lead to create a structure that can facilitate a better environment.”

 

Fulfillment system that provides customized solutions to solve logistics challenges for retailers and support their global expansion

NAVER’s Project Flower 2.0 takes care of SMEs that intend to expand into a ‘brand’ based on the success of their Smart Stores and intends to help SMEs grow in scale by providing logistics solutions for expansion to the global market.

 

“NAVER is the place where hundreds of thousands of independent stores operate every day,” Han said. “To help them prosper, we will introduce a flexible logistics solution that SMEs can directly design according to their business needs, not just a one-type-fits-all solution.”

 

NAVER is working with various logistics companies and start-ups to expand the fast delivery of food products and daily necessities. They’re creating collaborative models with large fresh markets that can guarantee quality control and reliability. They will establish logistics infrastructure, support logistics quality management and branding for farmers who sell and ship their fresh produce straight to consumers without intervening distributors or retailers.

 

 

NAVER will partner with fashion e-commerce platforms, such as Brandi and Shinsang Market, to support Dongdaemun market sellers’ launches and global expansion. In particular, NAVER will provide its Smart Logistics Solution to handle shipping management so that these fashion SMEs can focus on product selection, sales and marketing.

 

“Conditions for starting a business based on Dongdaemun fashion will dramatically improve if the logistic problems are solved,” said Pyeong-song Kim, leader of Business Development. “NAVER will evolve its Smart Logistics System into a cross-borders method to connect Dongdaemun fashion SMEs with global customers.”

 

For this project, NAVER will build a fulfillment data platform as the basis for various logistics services while centralizing Smart Store and logistics data of various partner companies.

 

NAVER’s Smart Store platform is not only important to the global expansion of Korean sellers, but it is also helpful to businesses outside of Korea as one of the strategies for expanding the commerce business of LINE and Yahoo in Japan.

 

At the online management integration meeting with LINE and A Holdings Corporation held yesterday, Han said, “This was a challenge for NAVER to successfully introduce technology solutions not only in Korea but also in the global market, and more efforts will be made to continuously expand our technological solutions in the global market.”

 

Start All-in-One program focuses on supporting businesses during the first six months of operation

NAVER is introducing an intensive program to improve the survival rate of start-ups based on data collected from Smart Stores over the past five years. The new Start All-in-One Program is based on data that reduces the ‘bounce rate’ for start-ups after the initial six months.

 

The Start All-in-One Program will increase the use of NAVER’s Start Zero Commission Fees Program for the first year of business. In addition to the 12 months of ‘payment fee’ support that has been previously provided, NAVER will grant commission exemptions for on-site payments for six months after starting the business.

 

NAVER will also add a new consultation service enabling new businesses to get advice on labor, finance and accounting matters from a NAVER eXpert. They can also try online marketing by using ‘growth points’ after achieving transactions of KRW 200 million and KRW 800 million per month. 

 

Also, before setting up the Start All-in-One Program for offline SMEs, NAVER will boost fee support and analyze data. Offline local restaurants and cafés that introduced NAVER Pay’s on-site payment for the first time this year will be exempted from associated fees for six months. In addition, NAVER will again extend the Smart Order fee exemption that it provided to offline SMEs from April to December last year and extended until June this year.

 

NAVER Business School coming later this year to offer valuable education and consulting

With digital business smarts and go-to-market speed being keys to competitiveness, NAVER plans to open NAVER Business School in the second half of this year to help online and offline SMEs expand and adapt to the digital environment.

 

“NAVER will introduce an online education platform that administers valuable education and consultation to SMEs and creators, including systematic courses and data-based curriculum developed by NAVER employees with expertise in the business,” said Ki-joong Gong, the head of NAVER Business School.

 

NAVER Business School will begin with seven courses and 255 classes, supported by more than 40 NAVER mentors. They will analyze the records and results of SMEs and creators and execute systematic coursework that can help business consulting.

 

NAVER Business School’s contributing mentors, who have abundant experience and a deep understanding of internet platforms and technologies, will train SMEs and content creators. The online education platform, curriculum and coursework developed through these processes will continuously strengthen their expertise so that they can be used globally.

 

At the end of the event, Han announced that NAVER will donate KRW 100 billion to provide additional help to SMEs that have struggled during COVID-19. She said, “NAVER plans to help more sellers in need of digitalization by offering them various programs that can lead them to more opportunities in more markets.”

 

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