7-Eleven ratchets up sports marketing to take on GS25, CU

7-Eleven, the third-largest convenience store chain in South Korea, is challenging its bigger rivals GS25 and CU, attracting customers with Hello Kitty-decorated Korean professional soccer club jerseys and player trading cards.

Last month, it opened a pop-up store within Lotte World Tower, a 123-floor skyscraper, in Jamsil, Seoul.

It displayed novelty goods such as Hello Kitty dolls in K-League uniforms and K-League mufflers featuring Kuromi, a Sanrio character in collaboration with the Japanese entertainment company. K-League stands for the Korean professional soccer league.

The pop-up store has drawn 250,000 visitors since it opened three weeks ago, with some 600 visitors queuing up every morning for the opening rush. It has recorded the largest-ever sales for a pop-up store operated within the Lotte World Tower.

“We opened the pop-up store because of the popularity of K-League soccer cards that we have sold since last year, and it has been a huge hit," said a 7-Eleven official.

7-Eleven has unveiled seven types of sports trading cards in collaboration with the Korea Baseball League, the Korea Volleyball Foundation and the Korea Baseball Organization, as well as with the K-League.

A pack contains cards featuring a random assortment of professional players. Avid sports fans tend to buy new packs of cards until they find one printed with their favorite player.

Since it released the K-league cards in September last year, it has sold 4.5 million packs.

The popularity of sports cards boosted sales of other products at 7-Eleven. Customers come to the store to purchase trading cards and end up buying drinks and food there.

FOOD SALES

It is also attracting budget-conscious customers with convenience food and occasional discount events for imported beer.

One of 7-Eleven's popular food offerings is kimbap, a Korean seaweed rice roll filled with marinated meat and various vegetables. Its kimbap contains 12 pieces, longer than regular kimbap rolls cut up into eight pieces.

7-Eleven expects to create synergy from the merger with Ministop from the fourth quarter of this year. It completed the merger in April this year after shutting down underperforming stores and selling non-core assets.

With the addition of 2,500 Ministop stores, 7-Eleven's outlet number rose to 13,130 stores as of the end of 2023, narrowing its gap with GS25 and CU, which each run about 17,000 stores.

7-Eleven will write off most of the goodwill it paid for the Ministop acquisition this year, so the purchase is unlikely to dent its earnings next year.

The 7-Eleven official said the company expects to turn to profit in 2025.

This year, it is projected to narrow its operating loss to 14.0 billion won ($10.2 million) from the 55.1 billion won shortfall it posted in 2023 on a consolidated basis, according to Heungkuk Securities Co.

Lotte Group owns Korea Seven, the operator of 7-Eleven, including a 92.33% stake held by its holding company Lotte Corp.

Write to Hyun-Jin Ra at raraland@hankyung.com

Yeonhee Kim edited this article.