Naver Smart Store's 100 mn won club reaches 45,000 members

Around 45,000 sellers on South Korea's Naver Smart Store as of June raked in annual sales of 100 million won ($72,250) or more, or 7.9% of the overall figure of 570,000.

The ranks of the online store's "100 million won club" rose 28.6% in a year from about 35,000, attesting to the growing strength of Naver's digital technology ecosystem.

The nation's largest web portal Naver Corp. on Tuesday said this through the release of its annual report on the ecosystem. The key point was the growing diversity of partners like small and medium enterprise (SME) owners, creators and startups using Naver technologies such as the cloud, artificial intelligence (AI) and big data.

A major finding was the higher number of SME owners who achieved growth through the use of Naver technology. In June, the number of sellers earning more than 100 million won in annual sales on Naver Smart Store exceeded 45,000 for the first time, showing steady growth from 19,523 in 2019, 29,455 in 2020 and 38,192 in 2021. 

Naver Smart Store was created through the use of an online shopping mall solution provided by the web portal.

“Smart Store was designed to lower the barriers to starting a digital business,” a Naver source said. “Anyone can easily and conveniently sell products on the online store.”

The number of content creators active on Naver blogs, webtoons and the metaverse platform Zepeto reached 10.4 million. Toon Radar, a Naver technology to prevent illegal content distribution, is used on main content channels and has an economic effect of an estimated 300 billion won per year. 

The number of startups and research entities using the company's hyperscale AI HyperCLOVA also grew to 700.

The combined corporate value of startups receiving investment from D2SF, Naver’s strategic investment unit, amounted to 4 trillion won.

“Naver’s goal is to connect ecosystem members through technology and back their growth,” a company source said. “We're striving to build a sustainable ecosystem where diversity blooms.”

Write to Ji-Eun Jeong at jeong@hankyung.com