Lotte Home Shopping showcases Bellygom at Manhattan’s Pier 17

NEW YORK – Lotte Home Shopping Inc. displayed Bellygom at Manhattan’s Pier 17 on Wednesday, on the sidelines of the Korea Brand Expo in New York City.

Visitors to the expo and locals alike were busy taking photos with the intellectual property, which the Lotte subsidiary hopes to take global.

The company’s CEO Lee Wan-shin said, “Beginning with the NYC exhibit, we will officially launch the business of growing the teddy bear character into a global intellectual property.”

The decision to take the character abroad comes as more than 40% of the viewers on Bellygom's official YouTube channel are overseas and more than half of the comments on the channel are made in languages other than Korean. 

Lotte Home Shopping said it will nurture Bellygom as a global IP and continue to produce content related to the teddy bear, such as animation, for the overseas market.

The head of Lotte Home Shopping, who spoke on behalf of all six distributors under the Lotte Group, elaborated, “The companies that attend this year’s expo but did not end up making entry into the overseas market will have the opportunity to sell their products on our platform and the ones with growth potential will receive direct investment.” 

Lee reportedly invited all heads of small and mid-sized enterprises that took part in the expo to dinner in Manhattan.  

In April, the electronic retailing arm of the Lotte Group displayed the 15-meter tall teddy bear on the lawn outside Lotte Tower in Jamsil, Seoul. The event drew more than 3.25 million visitors. 

Write to Jong-Kwan Park at pjk@hankyung.com
Jee Abbey Lee edited this article.