SEOUL — In recent years, South Korea’s door-to-door delivery service has evolved to allow customers to expect their parcels the very next day, or within…
SEOUL — In recent years, South Korea’s door-to-door delivery service has evolved to allow customers to expect their parcels the very next day, or within 2 to 3 days at maximum.
While much of this dynamic still stands, e-commerce companies and retail giants have rolled out a “dawn delivery” service, striving to cut down delivery times even further.
Dawn delivery allows orders to be placed as late as midnight with deliveries guaranteed to arrive by 7 a.m. the next day. Daily necessities and perishable fresh food products are popular items for dawn delivery.
According to the industry, the dawn delivery market was valued at around 10 billion won ($8.9 million) in 2015. Although the service is currently only available in Seoul and some parts of Gyeonggi Province and Incheon due to lack of logistics infrastructure, the market value is estimated to have already reached 400 billion last year.
In 2015, an online grocery startup Market Kurly first introduced the concept of dawn delivery. Its “Saetbyul delivery” delivers food products by 7 a.m. if customers order before 11 p.m.
While next-day delivery ensures the goods reach the customer within the shortest hours possible, dawn delivery sets the timeline to the very next morning.
According to Market Kurly, products are packed and dispatched from its logistics center in Songpa-gu to some 480 deliverymen by 2:30 a.m. every day. As of August last year, an average of 12,000 orders were made every day for Saetbyul delivery.
Thanks to increasing consumer demand for fresh food in the morning, the company saw 46.5 billion won in sales in 2017, about 167 percent on-year increase. It forecasts some 160 billion won in sales in the last year.
Market Kurly remains the dominant leader in the dawn delivery market, being responsible for some 79.
