Currently, the fashion platform market, led by Musinsa, is being expanded by numerous large and small platforms. The domestic fashion market was valued at 43 trillion won (based on the Korea Federation of Textile Industries in 2021), but the proportion of fashion e-commerce is projected to be around 10%. This suggests that there is still room for growth in the fashion e-commerce sector. ABLY, which started later than other platforms, is a testament to this growth potential.

Since its launch in 2018, ABLY has achieved a cumulative transaction amount of 1 trillion won and 30 million downloads in about three years, the shortest time in the industry. Despite intense competition among fashion platforms, ABLY's vision for the next commerce ecosystem is intriguing.

Creating the 'Next Commerce Ecosystem' with ABLY | 1 — Photo provided by ABLY

ABLY, Leaping into a Lifestyle Platform

ABLY is a style commerce leading the innovation in the e-commerce market. Approximately three years after its official app launch, it achieved the highest Monthly Active Users (MAU) among domestic fashion platforms. Additionally, ABLY has the largest number of markets (sellers) at over 30,000, among fashion shopping apps.

ABLY aims to be a ‘personalized style commerce platform’ that recommends styles to users for easier and more convenient expression of their individuality. Recently, it has expanded its categories from fashion to home decor, handmade, beauty, digital, and food, making a leap into a platform that encompasses the entire lifestyle spectrum.

ABLY began in March 2018 as the first celebrity market collection app in South Korea, launched by ABLY Corporation. Within approximately three years, a record time for the industry, it gained attention by achieving a cumulative transaction amount of 1 trillion won and 30 million downloads.

Its investments are also progressing smoothly. In January 2022, ABLY successfully raised 67 billion won in pre-Series C funding, nearing unicorn status with a company valuation of 900 billion won. To date, ABLY's cumulative investment amounts to 173 billion won, the largest in the women's fashion shopping industry. ABLY has established itself as an app used by 7 out of 10 women in their 20s and 30s in South Korea, holding big data such as 35 million cumulative reviews and 800 million 'product likes' based on its overwhelming user numbers.

In January 2022, ABLY ranked as the most frequently used app among the MZ generation, with over 800 million app launches in July. This signifies its position as the most actively used platform by many users.

Creating the 'Next Commerce Ecosystem' with ABLY | 2 — Photo provided by ABLY

What is ABLY's Business Model?

ABLY's business model has two components. The first is the ABLY Partners and ABLY Sellers solutions. ABLY's goal is to create a platform that anyone can easily start and operate a business. To this end, 'ABLY Partners' offers a full-service solution that manages purchasing, logistics, delivery, and customer service, enabling anyone with a sense of style to easily start and operate a market on ABLY.

ABLY introduced this solution to resolve the long-standing difficulties of sellers, based on its experience operating top women's shopping malls in Dongdaemun. The system significantly lowers the barrier to entrepreneurship, allowing those with sense and talent to simply coordinate items, take photos, and upload them, while ABLY takes care of purchasing, logistics, delivery, CS, and marketing.

In the first quarter of 2022, ABLY Partners' transaction volume increased by 130% and order numbers by 87% compared to the same period last year, surpassing 6,000 cumulative markets. For popular markets, many have achieved monthly sales of 1 billion won within 1 year and 3 months of joining, accumulating numerous success stories.

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ABLY also operates an open market-style 'Sellers' solution, allowing existing business owners to join and sell their products. The biggest differentiator of this service is its groundbreaking sales commission rate. Unlike other open markets that charge an average commission of 10-15%, ABLY introduced an industry-first 0% sales commission to minimize the burden on participating companies. In contrast to most open markets where exposure is difficult without advertising, ABLY provides equal exposure opportunities for all sellers through its own SNS channels.

If sellers invest in advertising, ABLY supports them in achieving high efficiency at reasonable costs using AI engines and targeting strategies. ABLY Partners can freely transition to ABLY Sellers and vice versa, with ABLY offering tailored solutions according to each seller's growth stage and needs. This seller-friendly approach has been a driving force in elevating ABLY's product quality to the highest level.

Based on these two business models, ABLY strategizes to create a virtuous cycle structure through mutual growth of both sellers (ABLY's in-store sellers) and app users. Sellers can reduce the burden of e-commerce entrepreneurship through a streamlined shopping mall operation process, while users have a system to easily and quickly purchase a variety of products suited to their tastes.

Creating the 'Next Commerce Ecosystem' with ABLY | 5 — Photo provided by ABLY

The Strength of ABLY is Its Technology

ABLY's robust technology plays a role in connecting sellers with a good range of products and users. Based on this technology, it is actively expanding into various categories capable of encompassing styles.

ABLY's technology is its self-developed 'AI personalized recommendation' service model. Initially, like others, it used Amazon's AI recommendation service AWS, but found it unsuitable for the fashion category, where each product has a unique personality and style. ABLY's AI personalized recommendation service has successfully evolved to cross-recommend using data from other users with similar tastes, going beyond simple price comparisons of the same products. Though the app is the same, the app page for each user who accesses ABLY appears differently, tailored to the user.

Another element supporting ABLY's technology is its vast amount of big data. ABLY more quickly and easily recommends products in styles that match users' tastes, based on customer experience data such as the 'purchase history' of various age groups, about 800 million 'product likes', and 35 million reviews.

ABLY, with the most markets, connects the most users through its powerful technology, 'personalized recommendation technology.'

Creating the 'Next Commerce Ecosystem' with ABLY | 6 — Photo provided by ABLY

Creating a Fashion 'Chain Platform'

So, what is ABLY's 'Next Commerce'? ABLY's vision of 'Next Commerce' is to enable anyone to easily start a business and provide services from manufacturing to distribution within the platform. Its ultimate goal is to expand overseas.

ABLY refers to this as a 'Chain Platform'. The 'Chain Platform' offers solutions related to product sales, including logistics and customer service, from starting a business on ABLY to manufacturing and sales, and reaching the end consumer.

As part of this, ABLY has established a fulfillment center in Seongsu-dong. ABLY's Dongdaemun fashion-specialized fulfillment center currently manages the entire logistics value chain of the 'ABLY Partners' solution. With the rapid growth of the e-commerce industry, fulfillment capabilities have become crucial, and ABLY has been investing in fulfillment for the past seven years, ahead of other fashion platforms. ABLY manages all 'Partners' services, including purchasing, inspection, packaging, shipping, and customer service, through its 1,000-pyeong fulfillment center in Seongsu, operating 24 hours.

ABLY plans to expand into a 'Chain Platform' based on its fulfillment services. While the current service connects Dongdaemun wholesalers and retailers, the Chain Platform will upgrade to a D2C model that connects manufacturing with wholesale and retail.

Creating the 'Next Commerce Ecosystem' with ABLY | 7 — Photo provided by ABLY

Sellers will be able to directly participate in the production/manufacturing process, which had a high barrier to entry, through links to manufacturing factories. Moreover, using customer and sales data accumulated in ABLY, sellers can produce trend products that match users' tastes. ABLY's Chain Platform aims to broaden the product sourcing options for sellers and enhance their sales competitiveness.

In relation to this, a new business model is being developed: 'ABLY Offline Showroom', a space that becomes Dongdaemun anywhere.

The offline showroom concept allows sellers to sell products by simply taking pictures without visiting Dongdaemun, by creating 'offline showrooms' at major national locations. The showrooms will be filled with a variety of items from Dongdaemun wholesale markets and brands, and there are plans to set up studio spaces for shooting and editing coordination photos.

Various solutions like these are also being pursued for overseas market entry. The first step in this international expansion is 'Pastel'. 'Pastel' is a fashion, beauty, and life shopping platform targeting Japanese women aged 18-35. It sells about 1 million products from around 2,000 markets, including popular Korean shopping malls and beauty brands such as SONA, Black Up, Innisfree, Skinfood, Rom&nd, as well as local Japanese shopping malls.

'Pastel' has surpassed 3 million cumulative downloads in Japan and is the only Korean platform to rank in the top 5 fashion app downloads, competing shoulder to shoulder with major global e-commerce platforms like Amazon and Rakuten.

Creating the 'Next Commerce Ecosystem' with ABLY | 8 — Photo provided by ABLY

ABLY envisions creating a 'Next Commerce Ecosystem' where anyone with talent and passion can easily start and succeed in a business. The advent of the App Store has created business opportunities for anyone to freely express their ideas, and the era has arrived where anyone can freely create content and generate revenue through YouTube.

Just like the App Store and YouTube brought about innovation, ABLY aims to build a platform ecosystem where everyone dreaming of e-commerce entrepreneurship can easily showcase their talent through the Chain Platform, and all users can receive recommendations and purchase products that match their tastes.

COMMENT by Seok-Hoon Kang, CEO of ABLY Corporation

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“ ABLY aims for the 'Next Commerce Ecosystem'.

With ABLY, anyone can easily start an e-commerce business, and from a user perspective, we want to create an ecosystem where anyone can easily find and purchase their own style.

Through our own e-commerce data, algorithms, and enhanced UX, we want to become the company that best knows and utilizes users' fashion, beauty, and lifestyle preferences. ”

CEO Profile

Name: Seok-Hoon Kang

Position: CEO & CPO

Education: Dropped out of Yonsei University, Business Administration

Experience: Current CEO of ABLY Corporation

Co-founder of 'Watcha (Watch)'