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Get your Exo gim, Super (Junior) jam and SHINee sparkling water at SUM Market

March 4, 2016

S.M. Entertainment opens ‘SUM Market,’ a store that offers Korean manufactured food products with names, patterns, photos and other intellectual properties of its K-pop artists.

SUM Market (Photo courtesy of S.M. Entertainment)

SUM Market (Photo courtesy of S.M. Entertainment)

By Chung Joo-won

SEOUL (Yonhap) — South Korean brands and freelance designers joined forces with globally popular K-pop stars as a precursor to expanding the outbound market, a local entertainment agency said on Friday.

S.M. Entertainment, the country’s largest star label by market capitalization, opened “SUM Market,” a store that offers Korean manufactured food products with names, patterns, photos and other intellectual properties of its K-pop artists.

SUM Market offers products with “hallyu” packaging designs, including crispy seaweed snack “Exo Gim Me Gim Me,” fruit preserves “Super Junior SuperJam” and bottled water “SHINee Sparkling Water.”

Korean food and beverage products are displayed in SUM Market in S.M. Communication Center in Samsung-dong, Souteastern Seoul, on March 3, 2016. (Photocourtesy of S.M. Entertainment)

Korean food and beverage products are displayed in SUM Market in S.M. Communication Center in Samsung-dong, Souteastern Seoul, on March 3, 2016. (Photocourtesy of S.M. Entertainment)

Hallyu refers to the global boom of Korean pop culture such as K-pop, TV series and films.

“EXO Gim Me Gim Me” resulted from a collaboration between S.M. and Gitdeum, a small South Korean maker of gim, or processed seaweed. The packing design of the gim product was inspired by the costume worn by S.M.’s K-pop boy band EXO in the music video of the band’s hit song “Love Me Right,” the star agency said.

Similarly, “Super Junior Superjam” and “SHINee Sparkling Water” are S.M.’s collaborations with Jamong International and E-mart.

In the same building, S.M. also opened “SUM Cafe,” a bistro cafe that offers the latest in trendy Korean cuisine.

SUM Market and SUM Cafe are part of the entertainment giant’s “creating shared value (CSV) project,” which promotes K-trend and K-lifestyle in collaboration with popular Korean-made export items.

CSV is a business concept that links a company’s competitiveness to its level of corporate social responsibility. The concept was first coined in the Harvard Business Review article written by Michael E. Porter and Mark R. Kramer, leading scholars of Harvard Business School in competitive strategy.

“We hope that the project will become a marketing platform for (South Korean) companies, brands and individual creators,” S.M. said in a press release.

3 Comments

  1. L. Carter

    March 5, 2016 at 6:23 PM

    This is why I can’t treat K-pop seriously. The “idols” are manufactured and entertainment companies such as SM will do everything to milk their products dry. No authenticity with their overproduced sounds and each idol is just a copy of another idol. It’s sad because in this YouTube era, anyone with real talent can be famous, and a lot of these Korean idols are really talented, but they still choose the long-but-sure-hit way and join repulsive companies like SM.

    Reply

  2. Tan

    November 7, 2016 at 8:50 AM

    @L. Carter but this is actually a good “fan services” . There are a lot of fandoms of Kpop that create a lot product with their idol’s name or photo in it and selling it. From clothes, calendar, foods, cap, bag, many more. Why not for the management? It’s not like SM is the only one who milk their idol. In result, their flop-like idol’s is still have fans internationally and known in Korea too. While other management or agency? Nah. There’s this recent news about a big agency that revealed doing something big and controversial even illegal to get more money twice or thrice more. But their artist? I don’t even remember when some of their artists release a new project or song. While their most popular artists are also not even release something for years. People should stop saying things like SM is the crazy one for money. That one example is just one. Moreover, SM get their money legally and open publicly from invest something to sell products.

    Reply

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