Naver's Kream buys stake in Malaysian resale platform

Kream, the resale platform of South Korea’s online portal Naver Corp., has agreed to buy a stake in Malaysia’s biggest sneaker resale community Shake Hands for $1.7 million, Kream said on Monday, a move aimed at extending its clout across Asia.

The purchase of a 22.47% stake in Shake Hands followed the string of Kream’s stake acquisitions of online used-goods market operators in Singapore, Australia, Thailand and Japan in the past year.

Shake Hands is the parent company of SneakerLAH, where sneaker enthusiasts share information and trade goods.

Through the acquisitions, Naver expects to build an Asia-wide, borderless resale platform to allow users to directly trade used items such as limited-edition sneakers, clothes and watches.

Earlier this year, Kream acquired a 2.71% stake in Singapore-based Quista Technology Pte. for $3 million. Quista is the largest online marketplace operator for used home appliances and other secondhand goods in both Singapore and Australia.

Kream's investments in online resale platforms in other Asian countries
Company name	Country	Size of Kream's stake	Purchase price
Shake Hands	Malaysia	22.47%	$1.7 million
Sasom	Thailand	20.1%	28.1 million Thai baht
Quista Technology	Singapore	2.71%	$3 million
Soda	Japan	14.89%	3.5 billion yen
Source: Companies' regulatory filings

In particular, its 3.5-billion-yen purchase of a 14.89% stake in Japan-based Soda Inc. last year is expected to help Kream gain a foothold in other parts of Asia since Soda’s operations span China, Singapore, Hong Kong and Indonesia. 

To fund such strategic investments, Kream has borrowed a total of 87 billion won ($66 million) from its parent company Snow Corp., a software developer.

At home, Kream also has been solidifying its lead in the resale market through a series of acquisitions of smaller e-commerce players. One of the acquisitions included the 8-billion-won purchase of a popular online resale community, Nike Mania, in 2021.

Since its inception in March 2020, Kream has been a major beneficiary of the retail scene's rapid growth. Its first-quarter transactions are estimated at 370 billion won in value, according to industry sources, or more than 90% of the projected 400 billion won for all of 2021.

Currently, Kream is raising new funding in a Series C round.

Write to Han-Gyeol Seon at always@hankyung.com
Yeonhee Kim edited this article.