![Retail giant Shinsegae has appointed Jung Hyung-kwon (left) as the new CEO of GMarket and Choi Hoon-hak as the new president of SSG.com. [SHINSEGAE]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2024/06/19/dc9c5d94-7815-4716-b017-d66b7a4e1304.jpg)
Retail giant Shinsegae has appointed Jung Hyung-kwon (left) as the new CEO of GMarket and Choi Hoon-hak as the new president of SSG.com. [SHINSEGAE]
Shinsegae has replaced the leaders of struggling e-commerce operators SSG.com and Gmarket, which are being pushed aside by rivals such as Korea's Coupang and China's AilExpress and Temu.
The South Korean retailer has appointed Jeong Hyun-kwon, a former general manager at Alibaba Korea, to head Gmarket. SSG.com is significantly downsizing its business operations, and Choi Hoon-hak, who currently heads sales, will take over as CEO, Shinsegae said in a news release on Wednesday.
According to the company, the personnel changes are an effort to achieve a recovery in e-commerce growth and prepare for a logistics transformation based on a new partnership with CJ Group.
Shinsegae's share of the domestic e-commerce market lags behind online marketplaces Coupang and Naver: The conglomerate owns 10.1% compared with 24.5% and 23.3% for its rivals, as measured by the Fair Trade Commission in 2022.
“We recognize that we are in dire need of a new growth engine. The first step towards building a growth engine is the MOU we signed with CJ Group on June 5,” the retail giant said. “Shinsegae will embark on new growth in its online business by replacing key executives in tandem with the restructuring of its logistics platform.”
Shinsegae said Choi's promotion was due to his experience in strengthening the competitiveness of food and logistics.
The personnel changes come nine months after Kang Hee-seok stepped down as co-CEO of SSG.com in September, leaving Lee In-young as sole CEO. SSG.com posted consecutive losses of 107.9 billion won and 111.1 billion won in 2021 and 2022, respectively, and an operating loss of 103 billion won ($74.5 million) in 2023.
SSG.com's four divisions (Data/Infrastructure, Sales, Marketing, and Support) have been reduced to D/I and Sales. Marketing has been integrated into the latter division, and teams classified as Support will now report directly to the CEO. Ahn Jeong-hoon, who led the digital transformation at Emart, Shinsegae Group's offline supermarket division, will head the D/I division.
Chung served as head of Alibaba Korea from 2017 to 2024, was a senior member of Coupang's financial planning and analysis team from 2015 to 2017, and also served as CEO of Alipay's Korea, Europe and Middle East branches.
Jung will oversee the division of Gmarket's Product Experience (PX) division into a PX and technology division, with former Naver employee Kim Jeong-woo taking over as chief product officer for the PX division, and the technology division, led by former Coupang director Oh Cham, consisting of developers with a focus on AI.
Kim Ju-young [kim.juyeon2@joongang.co.kr]
