Naver will not charge fees for retail startups for 1 year
GWANGJU — Naver will not charge a commission fee to sellers at its online shop for a year to nurture small businesses, the company said Thursday.
The country’s top internet firm added it will make an advance payment to store owners to help improve their cash flow.
“Naver’s Smartstore online shop is a platform where business owners can promote and sell their products. The store also helps them to better manage customer relationships,” Naver CEO Han Seong-sook said during the opening ceremony of the Naver Partner Square support center in the southwestern city of Gwangju, Thursday. “By providing them with Naver’s technology and data, we will support them to grow their businesses.”
The support center is designed to foster small business owners and content creators as it provides various kinds of startup assistance programs for free.
Not only providing an offline platform, the company also announced various support programs that would be helpful for startups when selling their products. Introducing its “Start Zero Commission Fee Program,” Naver said it will not charge any commission fee on sellers at Smartstore.
Choi In-hyuk, chief operating officer of Naver, said the company decided to start this program because “only 27 percent of its online stores can sell their products to customers while the other 73 percent just gave up their businesses due to various kinds of obstacles.”
Choi said the program applies to owners who have managed their online stores for less than a year. According to the program, business owners don’t need to pay a commission when they make a payment of up to 5 million won ($4,471) a month.
The program will begin next year and business owners can apply for it starting in November. Choi said Naver is estimated to spend more than 10 billion won ($8.9 million) a year to operate the program.
Naver will also introduce its “Quick Escrow” service within this year. With this program, business owners who make monthly revenue of more than 8 million won can receive an advance payment of 80 percent.
“We decided to introduce the Quick Escrow program as it usually takes 11 days for sellers to receive money for selling their products. This will help them improve their cash flow,” Choi said adding that the company is developing the program with Mirae Asset Capital.
Han said Naver doesn’t expect these support programs will produce tangible results over the short haul but added she believes these efforts would bring a win-win scenario for both Naver and small business owners.