South Korean Internet Giant Buys Poshmark in $1.2 Billion Deal

The South Korean web big Naver has agreed to purchase Poshmark, a well-liked secondhand retailer based mostly in america, for $1.2 billion. It’s Naver’s largest acquisition to this point and an indication of the corporate’s broadening world ambitions.

Typically known as the “Google of South Korea,” Naver is a wide-ranging web providers supplier that started as a search engine earlier than increasing into e-mail, messaging, information aggregation and e-commerce. Its web site and suite of cellular apps are a few of South Korea’s hottest.

Naver’s acquisition of Poshmark offers the South Korean tech big a large foothold within the North American resale trade. The corporate had already expanded into Japan and different markets within the area, most notably because the dad or mum firm, together with SoftBank, of the favored messaging app Line.

Naver has set its sights past Asia. In 2021, it acquired its first North American enterprise, Wattpad, a Toronto firm that gives a platform for studying and writing authentic tales, for $600 million. In 2017, it acquired Xerox Analysis Heart Europe, a France-based middle targeted on breakthroughs in synthetic intelligence.

Choi Soo-Yeon, the chief government of Naver, mentioned the acquisition marks the corporate’s acceleration into the worldwide “C2C” market, the class of enterprise the place prospects promote items and providers to one another through a third-party platform like eBay or Craigslist. She positioned specific emphasis on style, which has seen a worldwide surge in latest months and makes up 15 p.c of South Korea’s e-commerce market.

Naver can pay $17.90 per share, a 15 p.c premium on Poshmark’s closing worth of $15.57 on Monday. Poshmark will proceed to be led by its chief government, Manish Chandra.

Massive tech corporations are zeroing in on the intersection of social media and e-commerce as a brand new avenue of progress. With the success of short-form video and livestreaming apps like TikTok, many are searching for new methods to channel social behaviors into an in-app buy.

Poshmark was based in 2011 and works like a mixture of Instagram and eBay. It permits customers to publish photographs of things on the market in a digital “closet” from which others could make purchases. It is among the largest apps in a booming world resale market that’s set to double within the subsequent 5 years, in accordance with a projection by ThredUp, a competitor.

The platform has over 80 million registered customers, principally within the U.S., Canada, Australia and India. In 2021, the corporate posted $326 million in income, a 24 p.c enhance from the earlier yr.

With the deal, Poshmark will acquire entry to Naver’s intensive community of customers and know-how merchandise. In a convention name, Mr. Chandra cited Naver’s know-how prowess in areas like livestreaming and synthetic intelligence as a cause for the sale.