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The South Korean web large Naver has agreed to purchase Poshmark, a well-liked secondhand retailer based mostly in the USA, for $1.2 billion. It’s Naver’s largest acquisition to this point and an indication of the corporate’s broadening world ambitions.
Generally known as the “Google of South Korea,” Naver is a wide-ranging web providers supplier that started as a search engine earlier than increasing into e mail, messaging, information aggregation and e-commerce. Its web site and suite of cellular apps are a few of South Korea’s hottest.
Naver’s acquisition of Poshmark provides the South Korean tech large a large foothold within the North American resale trade. The corporate had already expanded into Japan and different markets within the area, most notably because the father or mother firm, together with SoftBank, of the favored messaging app Line.
Naver has set its sights past Asia. In 2021, it acquired its first North American enterprise, Wattpad, a Toronto firm that provides a platform for studying and writing authentic tales, for $600 million. In 2017, it acquired Xerox Analysis Heart Europe, a France-based middle targeted on breakthroughs in synthetic intelligence.
Choi Soo-Yeon, the chief govt of Naver, stated the acquisition marks the corporate’s acceleration into the worldwide “C2C” market, the class of enterprise the place clients promote items and providers to one another by way of a third-party platform like eBay or Craigslist. She positioned specific emphasis on vogue, which has seen a world surge in current months and makes up 15 p.c of South Korea’s e-commerce market.
Naver pays $17.90 per share, 15 p.c greater than on Poshmark’s closing worth of $15.57 on Monday however far beneath Poshmark’s worth when it went public in early 2021 at $42 per share. Poshmark will proceed to be led by its chief govt, Manish Chandra.
Naver’s shares fell by practically 9 p.c on the shut on buying and selling in Seoul on Tuesday. The corporate’s inventory is down roughly 60 p.c from its peak in mid-2021.
Large tech corporations are zeroing in on the intersection of social media and e-commerce as a brand new avenue of progress. With the success of short-form video and livestreaming apps like TikTok, many are looking for new methods to channel social behaviors into an in-app buy.
Poshmark was based in 2011 and works like a mixture of Instagram and eBay. It permits customers to publish images of things on the market in a digital “closet” from which others could make purchases. It is among the largest apps in a booming world resale market that’s set to double within the subsequent 5 years, in accordance with a projection by ThredUp, a competitor.
The platform has over 80 million registered customers, largely within the U.S., Canada, Australia and India. In 2021, the corporate posted $326 million in income, a 24 p.c improve from the earlier yr, and recorded a $98 million loss.
With the deal, Poshmark will achieve entry to Naver’s intensive community of customers and know-how merchandise. In a convention name, Mr. Chandra cited Naver’s know-how prowess in areas like livestreaming and synthetic intelligence as a motive for the sale.
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