Womenswear brand Closetnine said its sales rose to about 6 times the pre-adoption level in the 5 months after introducing Cafe24's Pro Marketing service. It said return on ad spend (ROAS) stayed in the 700 percent range, helping address advertising work challenges faced by one-person online stores.

Closetnine is a one-person shopping mall founded in 2013 by CEO Kim Min-ju (김민주) and now in its 13th year. One person has handled everything from product planning and sourcing to photography and customer service. Closetnine targets women in their 30s and 40s, ranging from those balancing childcare and commuting to full-time homemakers, who look for clothes that are comfortable for childcare, neat for work and suitable for occasions requiring formality.

Kim said the principle is to offer only clothes that can draw comments that they are pretty, at reasonable prices. She said her experience helped her keep that standard for more than a decade. Kim, who began as a first-generation product manager for online shopping malls, explained that she developed her eye for products while working across accessories and womenswear shopping malls when the market shifted from open markets to individual online stores.

But advertising operations were long pushed down the priority list because the store is run by a single person. She had experience in product planning and sourcing, but advertising was a different type of work. Choosing which products to advertise, creating materials and replacing them after reviewing performance was hard to repeat alone, as her day was already tight with photography and customer service. She also found it burdensome that it was difficult to judge whether ad spending would be effective.

Kim chose Pro Marketing to hand over ad product selection and performance analysis. Cafe24 Pro Marketing uses industry data to decide which products to advertise and what strategy to use, and it creates ad materials with only product images. Low-performing materials are replaced automatically. It charges costs based on the performance generated while shifting ad execution away, which also reduced the burden of having to set a budget size before running campaigns.

The effect appeared immediately after adoption. Kim said, "I was most worried about performance relative to cost, and it was confirmed in the first week's figures." Sales rose 227 percent in 3 months and the number of purchases became about 4 times higher. The growth continued, and as of the fifth month after adoption, sales are about 6 times the pre-adoption level, while ROAS remains in the 700 percent range.

More than the numbers, what changed was how the founder allocates her time. Kim said, "I can now spend the time I used to pour into advertising more on new product shoots and SNS communication." For one-person online stores, outsourcing advertising can be a major advantage not only for ad performance itself but also for securing time for the owner to return to core work.

The decision to outsource advertising operations also amplified the sales effect at a time when the brand's direction was being newly set. It said that as the owner was able to devote work time and focus to newly launched products and refining the brand mood, the range of responses on SNS broadened.

Kim is preparing to expand by using the time she has secured. Closetnine is preparing a product lineup that spans beyond shoppers in their 30s and 40s to those in their 50s and 60s. Kim said, "Aiming for a healthy and beautiful 40s is a personal goal and also the direction Closetnine is heading," and added, "I want to grow in a healthy way together with Closetnine."