SpurSell helps companies sell overseas via the internet

Industry

Published: 12 Nov. 2020, 17:17

SpurSell helps companies sell overseas via the internet

From left to right are Denny Jeon, head of merchant sales and solutions in Korea and Mongolia at Visa, SpurSell CEO Matthew Kim and Leo Park, Korea lead at Shopify. [LINKOMM]

As increasing numbers of people shop online, more companies are offering services to help individual sellers enter overseas markets.

SpurSell, a cross-border e-commerce service start-up, is one of the players that has jumped into the market. A total of 62 companies from 12 countries are selling cross-border through SpurSell.

“Recently, the global e-commerce market has been growing rapidly,” said SpurSell CEO Matthew Kim during a press event held in central Seoul on Thursday. “The market has annually grown 42.5 percent from 2014 through 2019. But compared to the e-commerce market size, the cross-border market is still relatively small.”

The Go Global Korea platform, operated by SpurSell, helps individual sellers with a broad range of services required for business operations, like opening an online shopping mall and helping with marketing and sales through a partnership with Shopify, the commerce platform for building online stores, and Visa. SpurSell was established in 2015.

Through the platform, the service users are able to expose their products on a diverse range of channels they choose, which could include Naver Shopping, Coupang as well as Amazon or Walmart.

The company receives a monthly fee and commission per transaction for its services. The commission ranges between 0.5 to 2 percent.

When compared to Cafe24, which similarly provides IT services for online shopping malls from Korea, Kim said SpurSell’s focus is centered on cross-border sales, while Cafe24 is more concentrated on domestic business.

“There are a lot of limits when it comes to operating business overseas. Depending on the location of the server, connection speed in different regions can be different, while security issues can also be raised,” Kim added, saying its partnerships with Shopify and Visa will help SpurSell solve these concerns.

“Due to the Covid-19, businesses of small- to mid-sized sellers have been hurt,” said Leo Park, the Korea lead of Shopify. “We will set a stepping stone to help them enter the overseas market by opening a cross-border channel.”

BY JIN MIN-JI [jin.minji@joongang.co.kr]