Naver Corporation announced that it will acquire Poshmark, Inc., the largest fashion C2C community in North America. Naver evaluated Poshmark’s corporate value at $17.9 per share, with a net enterprise value of $1.2 billion.
Naver’s acquisition was promoted to secure long-term commerce competitiveness by preemptively responding to the global C2C market, which is increasingly evolving into a vertical platform. While the vertical C2C market, a trading platform between individuals with the same interests in limited categories such as fashion, limited editions, or luxury goods, has emerged and continues to grow mainly in Europe and North America, Naver has grown Cream in Korea and Vintage City in Japan. In Europe, the company has continued to invest in the market, including investing in Bestière Collective.
Through this acquisition of Poshmark, Naver will build a global portfolio connecting Korea, Japan, and Europe, based in North America, the core region of the C2C market.
Poshmark is a leading company in the fashion C2C field in the North American market and has an unrivaled business model with strengths in social and community. Both Naver and Poshmark are based on similar business visions, including ▲paying attention to the formation of interest-based communities as a key factor in growth, ▲deep understanding of the values and consumption patterns of the MZ generation, the core group of the next-generation market, and ▲generous investment in technology. I completely agreed that we could create great growth.
The two companies plan to increase service linkage between the story and entertainment business centered on webtoons and Wattpad, which are spreading mainly among the MZ generation in North America, and the commerce business through Poshmark. In addition, by utilizing Naver’s search and AI recommendation and vision technology, live commerce, community platform, and advertising platform, we provide innovative experiences to Poshmark users and discover new business models. We plan to move forward.
CEO Soo-yeon Choi said, “By working with Poshmark, the No. 1 fashion C2C platform in North America with a large number of users, Naver has laid an important foundation for understanding the MZ generation in North America more broadly.” He added, “In Silicon Valley, the headquarters of the global IT industry, “As a Korean company, we will continue to take on new innovations and challenges to achieve a higher level of growth,” he said. He continued, “We will create a new trend in the global C2C market by providing future core users with differentiated experiences across ▲C2C shopping, ▲webtoon, and ▲K-pop content.”
Poshmark CEO Manish Shandra said, “Naver is one of the most notable Internet companies not only in Korea but also in Asia, an innovative technology company, and a global company that is successfully developing businesses encompassing various fields of the Internet.” He added, “Our employees, including me, “I am confident that they will have more growth opportunities as part of Naver, a larger organization.”
He continued, “Naver is a partner that has everything necessary for Poshmark to take a new leap forward, and we will add technology and service functions to provide a new experience to the community of sellers and users.”
Meanwhile, once the acquisition is completed, Poshmark will be incorporated as an affiliate of Naver, which runs an independent business, and Poshmark’s executives will carry out business in North America, Australia, and India while maintaining the same brand and business identity.
Source: Pangyo Techno Valley Official Newsroom
→ Go to ‘Asian Innovation Hub Pangyo Techno Valley 2022’ news