The Team's Secret: Expanding to 200 Countries by Breaking Language Barriers

Bungaejangter CEO Choi Jae-hwa unveiled a groundbreaking global expansion strategy at ComeUp 2025, emphasizing that problem-solving abilities and continuous experimentation are more crucial than fluent foreign language skills. Indeed, it was only this year, three years after Bungaejangter began its overseas expansion, that it started recruiting team members proficient in English. Bungaejangter identified the potential of the global market in 2022 through a surge in international traffic seeking K-pop merchandise. Observing on X (formerly Twitter) that overseas fans were experiencing difficulties using Bungaejangter, the company defined this as "the same problem as starting a business" and set out to solve it. Amidst the startup winter at the time, the marketing team developed the 'Starcloud' minimum viable product (MVP) webpage in just 42 days. Without foreign language experts, they directly engaged with customers using translation tools, response manuals, and Line chat to verify market viability. Once they felt the limitations of manual responses, they immediately transitioned to product development. Subsequently, Bungaejangter continued to evolve in step with the growth of the re-commerce market. It pursued partnership and channel integration strategies, including dual listing collaboration with Japan's Mercari and the development of its own English website, 'Bunjang Global'. Bunjang Global started without a translation function, then introduced AI translation, and gradually developed by adding a registration function after three years. These efforts led to astonishing results. Compared to last year, MAU grew by 700%, and the number of transactions increased by 225%. Recently, a growth hacking campaign resulted in an 8365% surge in MAU compared to the previous month, attracting 630,000 new subscribers in just one week, surpassing a cumulative total of 700,000. CEO Choi emphasized that behind this success lay "400 failures" and "the accumulation of small experiments". Currently, Bungaejangter operates in 200 countries through 27 channels, recording 1 trillion won in transaction value and 1 million monthly transactions. CEO Choi cited ▲Product-Global Market Fit, ▲Accumulation of Small Experiments, and ▲Partnerships as key factors for global success, and stressed that, above all, "knowing our product best and continuously exploring and understanding users" is more important than foreign language proficiency. It is the willingness to solve problems and the execution capability, rather than foreign language skills, that has become the driving force leading Bungaejangter towards its goal of becoming a top 5 global re-commerce platform.