Foothold

Online shopping.

Tap! Tap-tap!

It was something she had enjoyed for a while now. Lately her hands reached for it even more often.

Convenient, I'll give it that.

Kim Seul-gi, a housewife in her thirties, was a die-hard Lupang customer. At some point it had simply become that way.

Buying was just too easy. A few taps on her phone and the payment was already done.

Did that just go through? It's so fast I get confused sometimes.

Other apps were nothing like this. Logging in and checking out alone took forever. Lupang was different in every single way—the time it took to pay, the time it took for the package to arrive.

The item she had ordered yesterday was already here. An unbelievable speed.

The one I just ordered will be here tomorrow, right? It's really a rocket—Rocket Delivery.

That convenience. Once you tasted it, you could never quit. That was why she had become a loyal Lupang customer.

In exact inverse proportion, the weekly trips she used to make to the market had steadily dwindled.

"Lupang?"

"I'm telling you, it's just too convenient."

"Who even doesn't use Lupang these days? Everyone does."

That was what her friends said. Jang Dam-bi, another housewife in her thirties, was no stranger to it either.

Are these girls just throwing money around with their household budgets?

She had tried it herself. The convenience of instant payment and delivery was overwhelming. But it was expensive. At the supermarket you could see the goods with your own eyes, pick better quality for less money.

"Still, don't you feel safer buying meat and vegetables in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠person?"

"Eh, what's the big deal."

"That's why I just buy the retort packs. Rang likes them fine."

Her friends clearly had room to spare. She swallowed the bitterness in silence.

I don't exactly have the luxury of wasting money.

The economy had been rough lately. Her husband's self-employed income had taken a hit. They had no choice but to tighten the household budget. She preferred the cheaper Dulmart.

"Why the hell won't this payment go through!!"

Jeong Oh-seong, an office worker in his twenties, suddenly bellowed while trying to order from Dulmart.

"I already installed it!!"

The payment refused to process. He refreshed the page only for it to throw a tantrum claiming the program still wasn't installed.

Tap-tap, tap!

He pulled out his phone. If the computer wouldn't work, he would just buy the items already sitting in his cart through the app.

"I already did!!"

He had clearly set it to auto-login so he wouldn't have to go through the hassle every single time.

Tap-tap, tap!

Yet it had been reset. With his irritation meter already at ninety percent, he gritted his teeth and hammered at the phone.

Failure. He pressed a palm to his forehead—hot enough to convince anyone he had the flu—and tried to dig through his memory.

This is the right one, isn't it? Did I maybe use a different ID just for Dulmart?

For the login he entered a complicated password of eight or more characters mixing English, numbers, and special symbols.

He barely made it through. The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠thought that he could finally buy something almost made his chest swell with grandeur.

"I'm not doing it! You piece of shit motherfucker!@$!@#$!#$!@#$!!"

The words exploded out of him at full volume. Once again it was demanding a complicated procedure. Auto-login had been wiped, and now identity verification had been reset too. He had no idea what kind of bastard had built this app.

Fuck it, I'm just not using this shit.

So what if it was cheap? It wasn't like they were going to cover his hospital bills when he got a rage-induced stroke from using it.

Consumer complaints. Companies remained blissfully ignorant until the fire was already licking at their feet.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Dulmart's strengths were formidable. Prices were low, quality was guaranteed. Offline, it had no rivals. Yet in e-commerce it could barely muster any force at all.

Pretty strange, right?

Wouldn't it improve with time? Making that optimistic misjudgment was only natural. They simply never realized their entire perspective had been wrong from the start.

The reason consumers had been avoiding them:

"Because paying is a pain in the ass."

""…….""

Surprisingly, that was all there was to it. A video reconstructed from real cases played on the conference room TV. The executives' faces as they watched—especially the young male actor's reaction—left them speechless.

"That's it?"

"Yes."

"You're telling me our Dulmart e-commerce performance has been this dismal over something as trivial as a few little errors?"

"I even made the video because I figured it would be hard to understand otherwise."

Did people really need to get that irritated? From the perspective of people running a company, it was hard to grasp.

That's exactly why you people never improve.

Over the past month, what I had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠done was nothing grand. I had simply improved the convenience of the online mall and the app.

That alone had been more than enough. Starting two weeks after the program update finished, the numbers had rebounded sharply.

It was way too low to begin with.

It had never matched their position as the number-one domestic retailer. Now it was simply finding its proper place.

"We've met the target of tripling it, and the upward trend is expected to continue for a while."

"What kind of shady trick did you pull?"

"Shady trick?"

"I mean was there any loss! If you achieved this with some bleeding promotional event, this rise is invalid!"

Managing Director Jeon Ju-seong raised his voice. Even though I had already submitted the income statement, he clearly hadn't bothered to read it.

Maybe he's just feeling guilty because shady tricks are his usual method.

A common sight in Korean companies. Suddenly scatter coupons, run some insanely generous event! From the company's view, wasn't that a loss? From the consumer's view too, anything that made you think that usually had an ulterior motive.

Inflating sales. Padding quarterly profits. Creating a flashy-looking financial statement right before executive re-contracts.

"If you look at the income statement you'll see there's no problem. I never even touched product planning in the first place. If you're still suspicious, review it calmly after the meeting."

"Th-that…"

"Any additional questions?"

They would already have tried everything. Nothing produced visible short-term results quite like events. And yet it had been impossible. No matter what they tried, the e-commerce share that refused to rise…

They never imagined it would be solved this easily.

The reason. I had said it from the beginning. It really was nothing special.

"Kim Taek-gyu from the e-commerce department. I'm curious about the basis for saying this share rise isn't just a short-term phenomenon."

"The answer is simple. Because we benchmarked Lupang's success factors."

"Benchmarked…?"

"Where exactly?"

The executives looked bewildered. Even the relatively young ones in their forties couldn't quite grasp it.

Because they're Korean.

Globally it was obvious. In Korea, surprisingly, it hadn't been.

"There's something Lupang provides. Something Dulmart never offered."

"What is it?"

"Dawn delivery or something like that, I suppose."

"Consumer rights."

""!!""

Internet banking, online shopping malls, and the rest. There had been an era when you had to jump through every hoop imaginable just to get in.

Enough to give anyone a rage stroke. Public certificates, complicated passwords—the list of irritations was endless. Why had they even made those things? People only complained that it was inconvenient; the reason never became a topic of discussion.

Because companies didn't want to take responsibility.

What if there was a bank withdrawal error? What if there was a shopping mall payment error? They had dumped the entire burden onto the consumer. Not many people knew that Korea was the only place in the world doing this. By global standards, that responsibility belonged to the company.

"Doesn't seem like that hard a job."

"It's just improving convenience, isn't it?"

"That is exactly what the consumers wanted."

A system that had become obvious after 2020. It had been solved as COVID accelerated the untact society.

Lupang had been doing it long before that. Lupang's secret to success was analyzing the market thoroughly from the consumer's perspective.

Rocket Delivery and free shipping were both created in that same context.

The first platform that actually considered user convenience. That was how you could define Lupang in a single sentence. Looking at it one way, it was nothing special. But from the consumer's eye level, it was a revolutionary change. I had simply introduced a little of that method. Improve convenience alone and the short-term effects appear immediately.

"Simple, right? An easy job."

"W-well, that much even without you…"

"But do you know why you never did it all this time?"

"Why?"

"Because a market used by the young generation is being managed by the old generation."

"You insolent—!!"

That was the power of a number-one company. The reason a premium was reflected in the stock market.

But to the executives who freeload while chipping away at that, it wouldn't be welcome news.

I had clearly pressed the seizure button. The kindly managerial image he had been carefully maintaining was now in ruins.

"We are in a meeting. Managing Director, please calm down."

"Chairman! As someone who has served as a director for the past twenty years, this is a situation I simply cannot accept."

"For what reason?"

"If we change the existing methods this drastically and something goes wrong…"

I was glad I hadn't called him a fossil to his face the way my personality usually would. His words weren't entirely without merit.

Well, he's not completely wrong.

From the company's perspective it was burdensome. And people who already had a lot hated taking responsibility. Persuading the chairman had not been easy. There had been one backroom deal that made it possible.

Internal politics. Even the chairman was no exception. There was always at least one subordinate who got on your nerves.

"After review, we have decided to accept the risk."

"Chairman?!"

"If we keep clinging to the old methods forever, we really could be weeded out of the market, couldn't we? With methods that are far too old."

"……."

With this incident as the catalyst, Managing Director Jeon Ju-seong's influence would shrink. And the younger executives' positions would grow.

It will also become easier for the chairman to control the company.

A favor. I had achieved my original goal of building a connection inside a Korean chaebol family. The first step toward doing well with Korean stocks.