NS Home Shopping's complete acquisition of the business rights of Homeplus Express and the launch of a new corporation is a strategic move that goes beyond simple asset purchase and attempts to fundamentally improve the business structure. Meanwhile, Homeplus had to go through the long tunnel of corporate rehabilitation procedures and face the painful reality of instability in the product supply chain and customer defection. To overcome this, NS Home Shopping moved quickly even before completing the acquisition process. We focused on restoring broken relationships of trust by carrying out detailed on-site inspections of all stores and providing payment guarantees to key suppliers. Thanks to these preemptive measures, some stores are already showing rapid recovery, with sales soaring by more than 40% compared to the previous month, which can be interpreted as a positive sign that the product assortment on site is normalizing.

This acquisition is attracting attention in the distribution industry because NS Home Shopping has overcome the limitations of existing non-face-to-face channels such as TV home shopping and mobile commerce and has secured offline contact points. The combination of Harim Group's strong food manufacturing capabilities and NS Home Shopping's curation capabilities with approximately 300 stores nationwide is a source of powerful synergy. In particular, it is a noteworthy asset that 76% of Express stores are optimal quick commerce locations that can function as urban logistics centers. By utilizing this high-density store network concentrated in the metropolitan area and metropolitan cities, it becomes possible to build a very close distribution network where customers can receive fresh food immediately after ordering within their living area. This is interpreted as a will to go beyond a space that simply sells goods and to become a life-friendly platform that delivers freshness to the closest places in customers' daily lives.

Meanwhile, separate from this acquisition, NS Home Shopping's move to expand and operate 'Beauty Play', a win-win platform for small and medium-sized partners in regional bases such as Busan, clearly shows the direction of distribution pursued by NS Home Shopping. The strategy of breaking away from the distribution structure centered on large corporations and opening up sales channels for local cosmetics companies and small and medium-sized agricultural, livestock, fisheries, and food companies, and distributing them evenly across online and offline channels, is aimed at co-growth of the ecosystem. The acquisition of Homeplus Express is also in line with this win-win trend, pursuing a virtuous cycle structure that provides new offline display opportunities for small and medium-sized partners and a wider range of product choices for consumers. These multifaceted attempts suggest that NS Home Shopping is evolving beyond a simple distribution company into a platform operator that acts as a bridge between suppliers and consumers.

But not everything is rosy. While Homeplus Express is on the path to normalization by finding a new owner, its parent company, Homeplus, still faces the huge task of securing additional operating funds. As the deadline for approving the rehabilitation plan set by the court is imminent, the delay in negotiating an emergency working capital (DIP) loan with Meritz Financial Group is a factor casting anxiety throughout the retail market. If the liquidity problem is not resolved, there is a high risk that the business's chances of reviving will be undermined no matter how innovative the strategy is. Therefore, as Homeplus emphasizes, close coordination between the financial sector and the distribution industry to catch the two birds with one stone, supplying liquidity and stabilizing operations, is more urgent than ever.