S.Korea's Naver Webtoon to expand IP-based operations

South Korea's Naver Webtoon is selling its online intellectual property (IP)-based webtoon products on the offline market to expand its webtoon IP operations under a strategy of continuous profits through promotion of webtoon fan communities.

The company on Monday said it will hold in the year's second half at least three pop-up stores for webtoon IP goods. Throughout the event, it said it will host displays and sales of character products using IP for webtoon fan communities, which have grown as strong as those of K-pop acts.

The first pop-up store will run from Thursday through July 12 at Starfield COEX Mall in Seoul featuring the hit webtoons "Maru Is a Puppy" and "Meow Man." The event's concept is for fans to visit the neighborhoods where the characters in both works live, with about 260 IP-based products like large dolls, bags and keychains to be sold.

"I've realized that webtoon characters are so loved and popular that they even got a pop-up store," "Maru" creator Mojo said.

Naver Webtoon is expanding its IP operations in fields like video, publishing, music, crowdfunding, games, emoticons and products. The number of methods used by creators of serial works on the platform to earn profits from webtoon IP jumped from nine in 2013 to 21 last year, and that of Naver Webtoon works raking in additional revenue from IP saw phenomenal growth from just eight in 2013 to 415 last year.

The popularity of IP-based offline products is also surging. Naver Webtoon’s online store Webtoon Friends in the year's first half saw sales jump 700% year on year, with those of Maru-related products alone exceeding 30,000 units.

Naver Webtoon said reinforcing its IP business this way creates a win-win formula for creators, readers and platforms.

“Sales from our diverse business based on original IP will expand,” Naver Webtoon CEO Kim Jun-koo told a news conference in April. "By 2025, our goal is to expand to over 500 works a year that each generate average IP sales of 5 million won ($3,825) per month."

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