Market Kurly renames brand to diversify business

Market Kurly Inc. has rebranded and announced its new name as part of its business strategy for future expansions and to strengthen its cosmetics sales. The company is seeing its cosmetics line as its new growth driver, so it is focusing on it now.

The company’s name is not really different, though, as it only dropped the term “Market,” which means it is now simply called “Kurly.” With this rebranding, it will now extend its business beyond fresh groceries, and cosmetics will be one of the additions.

On Wednesday, the online premium grocery delivery and logistics platform sent a notice to its employees about the name change. According to The Korea Economic Daily, the company further told them that it would form two sub-platforms that will each handle specific products. One is the Market Kurly for fresh food, and the other is Beauty Kurly for beauty products

“We are reorganizing our systems to offer our customers an improved shopping experience beyond food to daily necessities and luxury cosmetics products,” an official of Kurly said in a statement.

Kurly is one of the brands that started the grocery delivery service in South Korea thus, it is considered a pioneer in this market. It was first launched in 2014, and even as a startup at that time, it has already gained so much attention as many people find its service offerings very convenient.

The company delivers orders the following day after the placement of orders. All orders that came in before 11 p.m. are delivered to homes starting at 7 a.m. of the next day, every day.

It was revealed that its original corporate name was actually The Farmers, but this was changed to Kurly Inc. in 2018. Now its online platform name is the same as its corporate handle to include cosmetics to further grow its business.

At any rate, Kurly added cosmetics products for the first time to its platform in 2017, and since then, its sales have surged by almost 200% per year. In March this year, the firm expanded its cosmetics biz to include manufacturing and sales.

“Except for CJ Olive Young, Korea’s top beauty store chain, there is hardly any significant player in the domestic cosmetics industry that has competitive e-commerce capabilities,” a business expert commented with regard to Kurly’s expansion to cosmetics. “Kurly’s early morning delivery system has many strengths in that sense.”