Cafe24 said on Tuesday it will take part in a project to build new infrastructure for Sodam Square, a digital commerce specialist institution overseen by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups and the Korea SMEs and Startups Agency. Cafe24 will work with the Chungnam Economic Promotion Agency, the project’s official implementing body, as a partner supporting small merchants in Chungnam with digital transformation and the full online business process.

Sodam Square is a digital commerce support programme and a regional hub designed to help small merchants respond to changing distribution environments and secure digital competitiveness. It currently operates at 7 sites nationwide in Seoul, Busan, Daegu, North Jeolla, Gangwon, Gwangju and North Chungcheong. A public contest to select a new implementing body added Chungnam (Cheonan) as a new hub on March 30. Sodam Square Chungnam is scheduled to open in October in Dujeong-dong, Cheonan.

Cafe24 will join the Sodam Square Chungnam project as part of a consortium and lead infrastructure building and operations. It will take on 3 roles: technical support for building and operating shopping malls, education and consulting for small merchants, and support for expanding online sales channels and entering global markets. Baekseok University and Lotte ON (Lotte Shopping) will also take part in the project.

Cafe24 will provide technical support for building and operating shopping malls to help small merchants run stable online businesses based on their own shopping sites. It will support functions needed across e-commerce operations, including building shopping malls and multilingual shopping malls, product registration, payment and delivery settings, and integration with external platforms. The company said its premium service, Cafe24 Pro (PRO), is expected to be used for this. It also plans to support a sales model combining creator-based content and commerce through YouTube Shopping integration to help expand new online sales channels.

It will also support global expansion. Cafe24 said it will help connect overseas sales channels using its global network and support global marketing and building an export base. It plans to help regional small merchants expand beyond the domestic market to global markets.

Education and consulting to strengthen the capabilities of small merchants will also be carried out. It will support strengthening basic digital capabilities through customer data management, building social network service (SNS) channels and AI-based marketing practice. In advanced courses, it plans to provide practice-focused training across the full process of running an online business, including producing product detail pages, product operations and establishing marketing strategies.

Cafe24 Chief Executive Lee Jae-seok (이재석) said, "Participation in Sodam Square is a meaningful opportunity to directly connect Cafe24’s e-commerce platform capabilities and technology with the public sector and small merchants." He added, "We will spare no practical support so that small merchants in Chungnam can generate stable online sales based on their own shopping sites and go on to enter global markets."