E-mart opens 1st store in Mongolia
An artist’s rendering of an E-mart store in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia / Courtesy of E-mart
By Lee Hyo-sik
E-mart will open its first store in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, on July 28, as part of its efforts to find a new income source abroad.
The discount store unit of Shinsegae Group said Thursday that Altai Holdings, one of Mongolia’s largest business groups, will operate the store.
E-mart and Altai signed a franchise contract in 2013 under which the former will share operational knowhow with the latter. In return, the Mongolian firm will pay E-mart a portion of its sales profit in royalties.
“We directly operate eight stores in China and one in Vietnam, meaning that we did everything on our own to open the stores. It is very time-consuming and requires us to invest a great deal of money,” an E-mart official said.
“In contrast, we are entering Mongolia by forming a franchise partnership with a local business to more quickly open a store at lower costs. We will set up two or three more franchised stores in the near future, selling a wide range of consumer goods made by Korean small manufacturers.”
E-mart said the store will be the largest retail outlet in Mongolia, consisting not only of shopping areas, but also other stores including a bank, an auto body shop and a hair salon. It will also offer comprehensive customer services concerning product refunds and exchanges and other customer relations matters, just as E-mart stores do in Korea.
“What E-mart offers will revolutionize the Mongolian retail industry. We are confident that we will be the top retailer in the country,” the official said. “We will also act as a sales channel for domestic small enterprises seeking to export their goods to Mongolia and other Asian countries.”
E-mart said more than 33 percent of what its Mongolian store sells will be goods made in Korea, adding that the store will stock about 12,000 different products from its 320 small business partners back home.
The company expects the store to earn about 30 billion won in sales in its first year.