Seoul’s oldest market Dongdaemun market has adopted the modern world’s way of working by hopping on to the digitalisation bus with Korean startup portal Linkshops.com. Located in the northeast of central Seoul, Dongdaemun market is primarily a clothes market with a number of shopping centres offering garments at wholesale rates. Linkshops.com has linked the Dongdaemun wholesalers with retailers through its online platform.

Linking the wholesalers with the retailers

Established in 2012, Linkshops Co., Ltd operates a B2B e-commerce site where retailers can buy products from Dongdaemun’s wholesalers and have them delivered to their retail stores. Dongdaemun market has about 27 shopping malls, which is home to over 20,000 wholesalers selling various stuff like clothes, accessories, bags, shoes and other fashion products.

The buyers and sellers can both download the Linkshops’ app for placing and receiving orders. There is a membership fee for joining the platform, which allows the seller to browse through the variety of stocks available at the Dongdaemun market shops. The fashion products are updated almost daily, so retailers can order new products. The retailers can make online payments for the stock they order. The retailer can check each step from placing orders to seeing the progress of a delivery at any time using Linkshops’ smartphone app and website.

Customers can receive their purchased products within a day, all without having to visit the Dongdaemun Market themselves. Other features for users of LinkShops include downloading and organising of the online purchase order lists through Excel, managing stock and coordinating with the pre-order service, advanced browsing for past orders, and grouping the individual purchases in one receipt.

The online shopping platform also has a solution for the frequently encountered problem of ‘out of stock’ products. LinkShops’ team regularly monitors wholesale stock and determines when the products will need restocking. The relevant retail dealers are informed immediately if shortage occurs and it helps the customers during the ‘pre-order’ stage itself.

“Linkshops.com aims to provide a more convenient and efficient service for both parties,” the company’s vice-chairman, Young-Ji OH had said in a media statement.

Old market, new tricks

Linkshops currently provides over 180,000 products of apparels, accessories, shoes and other fashion products supplied by over 5,000 wholesale stores. The startup is becoming one of the largest B2B sales brokerage platform in the Korean fashion market.

While the retail store owners have got the opportunity to place orders online and buy stock without having to step out of their shops, the biggest benefit of Linkshops has been for the wholesalers of Dongdaemun. The oldest market, which was originally established in the 1900s, was facing downward growth because of the advent of digital fashion markets. With Linkshops’ platform, the market is reviving its old times glory using the modern-day tool of digitalisation.