From college dropout to successful Coupang seller, Kim Sang Hoon has given his family’s bedding business a new lease on life by using the power of Coupang’s customer base.
Kim Sang Hoon’s parents had run a blanket factory for 20 years. During his college years, he would often help out to make a little extra pocket money and as time went on, he took things into his own hands and began to sell the bedding straight from a truck. He targeted apartments initially and word of his cheaply-priced blankets spread like wildfire. He sold $1,000 worth of blankets within 2-3 hours.
His passion for the business led him to drop out of college in 2012. However, it wasn’t all rosy. He realised he still had much to learn about blankets and their production. For four years, he worked at the factory, learning about blankets, how they were made, how long the process took, how much they cost and why.
Kim Sang Hoon soon found himself frustrated with the seasonality of blankets and could not allow himself to sit idly during off-seasons. In 2015, he founded Dream Bedding and discovered Coupang to be an effective tool for customer feedback. Every season, Dream Bedding would release new products and “Because of Coupang’s large customer base, the Coupang consumers’ overall response was almost always on the money.”
Another advantage of selling on Coupang for Dream Bedding was that the customer judgment seemed fair. When selling wholesale offline, there was prejudice around the fact that Kim’s family factory mainly handled more lower-end blankets. As a Coupang seller, on the other hand, his products were judged on their own merit. Every year, Kim Sang Hoon notices the offline wholesale and retail market shrink and believes online retail will soon comprise 100% of his business.
If you’re a cross-border seller interested in signing up to Coupang Marketplace, sign up here or email grp_globalsellingrow@coupang.com
