About Service
South Korea's Dongdaemun fashion district is one of the world's largest wholesale clothing markets, where thousands of sellers manufacture and distribute products at a speed that sets global trends. Sinsang Market digitized this entire ecosystem.
Over 80% of the Korean fashion wholesale industry now operates through the platform, processing ₩4 trillion+ in cumulative transactions. It serves as the central infrastructure connecting sellers, buyers, and influencers across the full value chain, from design to delivery.
Context
Slow decision-making blocks the growth loop in the wholesale marketplace, creating friction for both sellers and buyers.
As the platform scaled, both sides hit critical friction points.
1. High discovery costs for retailers With tens of millions of products, inconsistent filters and limited search options led to high abandonment during browsing.
2. Limited visibility into store performance for wholesalers ~400K products registered, but only ~10% actually selling. Most sellers made decisions based on intuition. Even top sellers said, "I don't really know why this one sells."
The Challenge
How might we help both sides of the marketplace make faster, better decisions to drive platform growth?
Research & Discovery
On the seller side, I interviewed 12 wholesale sellers and visited Dongdaemun markets to understand how they source, price, and make sales decisions on the ground.
I conducted focus group interviews with wholesale sellers and internal stakeholders, and visited Dongdaemun firsthand to observe real transaction workflows. Through this research, I was able to map out the seller's decision-making flow. Their process followed four repeating stages: checking store status through key metrics, spotting drop-off points like clicks that don't convert to saves or purchases, investigating root causes such as pricing or exposure timing, and deciding what action to take next. This framework became the foundation for defining the MVP scope.
FGI with Fashion Wholesale and Business Operators.
Observing Order Management at Dongdaemun Wholesale
On the retailer side, I conducted usability testing with 26 retailers to evaluate the full product browsing and transaction flow across mobile and web.
I designed a usability evaluation metric with four team members to measure error rates by frequency and duration. This allowed me to identify three tasks with the highest error rates, which set the priority for the most urgent usability improvements.
Strategy & Hypothesis
The following 3 key factors were identified as major causes of purchase drop-offs for retailers and obstacles to wholesalers' business growth.
Solution for Wholesalers
Sales Lab: a mobile analytics tool designed to help wholesale sellers make decisions based on data, not intuition.
Previously, the wholesale store home only showed basic daily metrics like order count and visits. The goal was not simply to show more data, but to build a structure where sellers can understand their current store status and immediately decide what to do next. I mapped the four-stage decision-making loop from my research (Observe → Detect → Analyze → Act) directly into the product structure:
Store Performance Summary to grasp overall status and benchmark against peers through percentile rankings.
Product Performance Funnel to detect exactly where products drop off from impressions to orders.
Keyword Insights to analyze what's driving traffic, distinguish top-performing keywords from rising ones, and take immediate action on sourcing and ad strategy.
Solution for Retailers
The filter system, crucial for product search, was inconsistent and the filtering criteria were unclear.
The inconsistent shapes of filters confused users as they navigated through different filter options. Users struggled to immediately view filter results, and modifying or removing filters required multiple clicks. Furthermore, the lack of certain desired filter options often caused users to abandon their search midway.
Solution for Retailers & Wholesalers
Wholesalers and retailers faced challenges in efficiently tracking payments due to third-party payment platforms.
Retailers had to manually enter different bank account numbers for every transaction with each wholesaler, leading to time-consuming steps and frequent errors. Wholesalers needed a global payment solution to expand internationally while tracking all sales performance in one place.
Solution for Retailers
The filter system structure within the service was completely overhauled to enable faster product searches.
Users can apply multiple filters at once through a bottom sheet to narrow down their search results and easily modify the filters as needed. The filters are prioritized based on data analysis and customer behavior, organized by frequency of use.
Solution for Retailers & Wholesalers
Easy Payments with ShinSang Cash
With ShinSang Cash, users can send payments directly and conveniently to trading partners, both locally and globally, without needing to copy account information. This streamlined process makes transactions faster and more efficient across borders.
Impacts
One quarter after launch, the Sales Lab reached 86% adoption among wholesale sellers. More importantly, sellers who used the tool began investing in paid advertising, driving a 38% increase in ad membership conversion. The tool didn't just get used. It changed seller behavior and drove real revenue.
The launch of ShinSang Cash increased international transactions by 194%, as retailers no longer needed to rely on external payment platforms.