A customer looks at vegetable packaging at an E-Mart Inc. store in Seoul, South Korea, on Tuesday, August 30, 2022.
Sung-jun Cho | Bloomberg | Getty Images
E-mart, a unit of South Korean retailer Shinsegae Group, said on Thursday it plans to form a joint venture with Alibaba International.
The joint venture will be funded in part by Shinsegae Investment’s 100% stake in South Korean e-commerce platform Gmarket, Shinsegae said in a regulatory filing.
Shinsegae said in a separate statement that AliExpress Korea and Gmarket will be merged into the joint venture to be established in 2025.
November, Alibaba Group Holdings Quarterly sales missed analysts’ expectations as Chinese consumers cut back on spending and the world’s second-largest economy struggles amid a housing crisis and growing job insecurity among young people.
At the same time, Gmarket, the fourth largest Korean e-commerce market in the world according to Euromonitor data, has been competing with local e-commerce giants Coupang and Naver, while facing increasingly severe challenges from Chinese competitors such as AliExpress and Temu.
