GS Retail Falters Abroad as Domestic Home Shopping Business Also Wobbles; TV-Dependent Home Shopping Faces Collapse Amid Shift to Live Commerce

GS Retail Shuts Down Overseas Home Shopping Operations
Decline of TV Viewership Accelerates “Home-Shopping Exodus”
Consumers Turning to Live Commerce Channels

GS Retail has drawn a line under its decade-long push to expand global home-shopping operations, as it shutters overseas home-shopping subsidiaries one after another. Evaluating accumulated investments and mounting losses, the company concluded its overseas business strategy a failure. GS Retail’s slump mirrors a broader downturn in the home-shopping industry. Once enjoying a golden age, the sector now faces a three-year streak of declining sales and profit margins, confronting a serious crisis. The rapid rise of OTT platforms, decreasing pay-TV subscribers, an aging customer base, and swift consumer migration to new channels such as live commerce are accelerating the erosion of traditional TV home-shopping’s foothold.

Global Expansion Strategy Collapses After 10-Year Push

According to retailers on the 26th, GS Retail recently decided to liquidate its Thai joint venture ‘True GS.’ The decision follows years of sustained losses and complete capital erosion, leading to the conclusion that recovery was impossible. Initially, the company attempted to sell the subsidiary, but with its value plummeting and no buyer in sight, liquidation became the only feasible option.

True GS was launched in 2011 as a joint venture between GS Retail (then GS Home Shopping) and a major Thai media-retail firm, under a plan that projected a total investment of roughly USD 680 million (≈₩1 trillion) over five years, targeting KRW 25 trillion in cumulative transaction volume by 2025. Although early on (by 2012) it posted KRW 18 billion (≈ USD 1.2 million) in sales and was seen as promising, the operation never turned profitable. High fixed costs such as transmission fees and logistics expenses, combined with growing dominance of the local Thai partner reduced competitiveness. A broader stagnation in the local home-shopping market and intensified competition from e-commerce platforms further eroded performance.

GS Retail’s overseas home-shopping business, launched in 2009 under its owner-led leadership as a core pillar of its global expansion strategy, had aimed to build an “Asian Home Shopping Belt.” Joint ventures were formed across India, Thailand, China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Russia. Yet in the past five years, most of these overseas entities failed to recover the funds invested.

Korean business also on the decline

Since 2022, GS Retail has sequentially withdrawn from its overseas operations. Last year it divested its stake in Indonesian joint venture MNC GSHS, initially formed in 2012 with Indonesia’s GMC media group — a market perceived to offer high growth potential due to population size. Contrary to expectations, profitability deteriorated, prompting exit. Other subsidiaries in Russia and Malaysia have been closed, and this year’s liquidation of the Thai unit leaves only one overseas subsidiary in China, which analysts say shows no signs of sustained viability.

Its domestic home-shopping business is similarly struggling. Its home-shopping channel, GS Shop, recorded a contraction in the third quarter of this year. Revenue amounted to KRW 247.5 billion (≈ USD 16.8 million), and operating profit stood at KRW 11.6 billion (≈ USD 789,000), representing year-on-year declines of 1.4% and 37.6%, respectively. This outcome underscores the collapse of the ambitious strategy that had sought to leverage the combined strengths of GS25 convenience stores, GS The Fresh offline retail network, and GS Home Shopping’s online commerce capabilities to boost purchasing power and sales volume after their merger at the end of 2020.

During the post-COVID endemic transition — a period when many home-shopping companies struggled — GS Shop had relatively succeeded in defending its performance. Thus there had been expectations for a stronger rebound this year compared with peers. Nonetheless, the drought in sales proves not to be simply a matter of base-year effects. Industry experts point to GS Shop’s heavy reliance on TV broadcasting as a major factor undermining revenue. In the third quarter, TV sales accounted for 35.1% of GS Shop’s total transaction volume. The sluggish pace of transition toward mobile and proprietary e-commerce channels further weighed on profitability.

Prolonged Slump Pushes Home-Shopping Industry to Urgently Expand Live Commerce

Indeed, the home-shopping industry — once dubbed a “goose laying golden eggs” — finds itself in a markedly different position. While the COVID-19 pandemic had spurred a temporary resurgence in non-face-to-face commerce, the shift to an endemic era has plunged the sector into a deep slump. According to the Korea Association of Home Shopping Operators, sales peaked at KRW 21.98 trillion (≈ USD 14.9 billion) in 2021; since then, sales have declined three years straight, and profit margins have steadily eroded. Last year the combined revenue of the seven TV home-shopping firms reached KRW 5.5724 trillion (≈ USD 378.7 million), showing a modest 0.3% increase year-on-year, while operating profit rose 18.9%. Still, these figures mark a fall to roughly half of the 2020 operating profit of KRW 744.3 billion (≈ USD 50.6 million). With indications of continued decline into this year, the industry shrinks in size and substance.

Multiple factors have dragged down the home-shopping sector. First, a surge in OTT popularity has prompted a decline in paid TV subscriptions — eroding the audience base for TV-centric home-shopping. In results from a 2024 media usage survey by the Korea Communications Commission, only 22.6% of respondents identified TV as an essential medium, down 4.6 percentage points from the previous year; by contrast, 75.3% cited smartphones as essential. As a result, even the traditional core customer base of home-shopping — notably older demographics — is dwindling. Last year, 41% of home-shopping customers were aged 60 or older. An industry insider observed that “many of the home-shopping customers who became regulars 30 years ago around marriage and childbirth are still the core customer base,” adding that “there is virtually no influx of younger generations using OTT over TV.”

Simultaneously, shifts in shopping channels have driven the slump in TV home-shopping. Since 2023, expansion of open live streams, entry of players into YouTube shopping, and the launch of shops on platforms such as TikTok have increased the trend of purchasing online rather than via TV broadcast. The fastest-growing segment is live commerce, which combines real-time streaming with e-commerce. During these live shows, sellers introduce products and interact with viewers in real time; viewers can leave questions and purchase items immediately. Live commerce is rapidly gaining ground in the Korean market, supported by widespread digital device penetration and high-speed internet. One economic analyst remarked, “TV home-shopping is not only suffering from falling viewership, but also confronts structural growth limits due to oversupply. A swift shift toward live commerce and other new channels is urgently required.”