Last month, TMON, an e-commerce company, was acquired by OASIS Market and announced plans to resume operations within this month, uploading promotional videos to its YouTube channel for the first time in a year while seeking to advertise its platform. It appears to be inheriting its past achievements by maintaining its existing brand colors and characters.
TMON is enhancing its platform competitiveness by introducing services such as dawn delivery based on direct purchases, while also guaranteeing sellers the industry’s lowest sales commission rates and working to expand its sales network. The plan is to also introduce a next-day settlement system to ensure payment stability.
Previously, TMON applied for corporate rehabilitation following a large-scale unsettled payments and refund delays incident with WeMakePrice last July. OASIS Market, which was negotiating the acquisition of TMON, finalized the acquisition after the Seoul Bankruptcy Court decided on the forced approval of TMON's rehabilitation plan on the 23rd of last month. The acquisition cost is 11.6 billion won.
According to industry sources on the 15th, TMON resumed its social networking service (SNS) activities by uploading promotional videos in shorts format to its YouTube channel since the end of last month. The released video includes explanations of various sales categories such as tours, beauty, home appliances, and fashion, alongside the dawn delivery service that TMON has announced. Prior to this, TMON deleted all posts on its YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook accounts after the large-scale unsettled payments incident that occurred last July.
In the process of resuming operations, TMON chose to recycle its representative character 'Timoni,' which has been used since 2015, instead of opting for a rebranding, thus maintaining its brand concept. This character, which has a round orange shape, has been used in a variety of places including TMON TV commercial models and pop-up store promotional models.
An industry insider said, 'From OASIS Market's perspective, there was also an option to rebrand TMON, but considering the long history of over 15 years of the platform and rebranding expenses, it likely judged that maintaining the familiar existing image for consumers would be safer.'
Along with the revival of its platform, TMON announced plans to launch the dawn delivery service. Its parent company, OASIS Market, is expected to provide the same service in regions where it currently operates dawn delivery. OASIS Market is currently providing dawn delivery services in the metropolitan area, Sejong, Daejeon, and parts of Chungcheong, and has recently expanded its reach to Busan, with plans to gradually extend to Changwon, Daegu, and Ulsan.
A representative from OASIS Market stated, 'To introduce the dawn delivery service, we are planning to buy some popular items, including fresh food, directly from sellers and store them in a logistics warehouse, quickly dispatching them whenever an order comes in.'
An Jun-hyung, the representative of OASIS Market, has recently taken on the role of new CEO of TMON, establishing a dual leadership system. There are plans to apply OASIS Market's trust-based management strategy to TMON.
OASIS Market has also made an investment of 50 billion won to reinforce TMON's payment settlement system, which had previously caused problems. The funds will be utilized for securing new logistics warehouses and for building a next-day settlement system that allows sellers who list products on TMON to receive their sales proceeds the following day.
TMON is recruiting sellers by offering a sales commission rate of 3-5%, which is the lowest in the industry. TMON's lower commission rate than the open market average (10-12%) is seen as a strategy to quickly expand its size while restoring platform credibility.
However, there are projections that it will not be easy for TMON to regain its footing in an already saturated online e-commerce market. An insider from an e-commerce platform remarked, 'Since other companies have already introduced dawn delivery services, it will be difficult to differentiate.' He added, 'Ultimately, it will be crucial to have clear competitiveness in terms of pricing and product supply.'
A representative from OASIS Market noted, 'While it is still too early to disclose TMON's specific management strategies, combining the platform operational know-how and logistics system that OASIS Market has accumulated over 13 consecutive years of profitable operations could provide sufficient competitiveness.'