Korean Retailer The Hyundai Launches Immersive Digital Platform

Hundai Hi has translated ecommerce in its own eclectic way.

COURTESY OF HUNDAI HI

Icons, gems and 3,000 brands. All of these elements are commingling on The Hyundai Hi, a new e-commerce platform developed by Base Design for The Hyundai, a luxury department store in Korea.

Revolving around the friendly greeting ‘HiHi,’ the name, brand strategy, visual identity and art direction features shop-in-shops and curation spaces where users can leave ‘gems,’ which look like sparkling jewels. The gems can be affixed to products, brands and content. Collectively, gems express personal taste, formulate recommendation feeds, and can be shared with other users.

Gems is a fun, yet essential functionality that came from ‘likes,’ said Min Lew, managing partner and creative director of Base Design, adding that gems are similar to video games, where you collect coins and gems that you can use later on. “As you’re exploring on Hyundai Hi we wanted to give people a mechanism, we call gems, to collect,” Lew said.

“The name ‘HiHi’ itself reflects the idea of an open and friendly encounter — between customers and brands, online and offline,” said YoungShin Jang, platform strategy leader at The Hyundai, adding that the visual system isn’t simply about decoration.

“It’s part of our ambition to make digital shopping feel more human, engaging and culturally relevant,” Jang said. “Most commerce interfaces are designed around efficiency — grids, banners, promotions and transactions. We wanted to create more room for discovery, emotion and editorial expression.”

With department stores struggling to find relevance in a world of hyper-competitive e-commerce where AI is rewriting the rules, retailers are scrambling to understand their roles in this rapidly changing landscape.

Conceived as “The Hyundai in your pocket,” The Hyundai Hi positions shopping as entertainment and leisure rather than a purely transactional endeavor, through engaging, immersive and discovery-driven experiences.

The Hyundai Hi mirrors the department store’s first-mover reputation for hosting pop-ups where Korean shoppers queued up for hours to discover emerging and niche brands. The Hyundai has dedicated areas for fashion, living and food, organized in shop-in-shop formats, from Le Bon Marché’s food hall to Valentino to street fashion brand Aape.

Younger customers tend to engage with emerging brands, exclusive products, editorial content and discovery-oriented features such as the home feed, said Jang. More established customers place greater value on trusted brands and premium products as well as convenience and services connected to physical stores, she said.

“With The Hyundai Hi, we actually saw an opportunity to focus more on customers in their 40s and above, who have greater purchasing power and a strong appetite for premium products and experiences,” Jang said. “We believe our role is not to show customers everything, but to help them discover what is worth their attention.”

Lew 10 years ago, was part of the team that helped the retailer rebrand from The Hyundai Department Store to The Hyundai. “It turned around what it was known for in terms of curation and a full lifestyle offering,” Lew said. “It became a destination with a lot of cultural aspects and pop-ups.”

Korean e-commerce is hyper-specialized and hyper-developed, driven by convenience and price. In the U.S., one-day delivery by Prime is considered acceptable. In Korea, if you order something at 4 pm on a Friday, you expect to receive it by 9 pm, or 10 pm that night. Hyundai Hi can’t compete with the traditional native e-commerce players.

“We don’t believe that simply trying to be cheaper or faster than everyone else is where The Hyundai can create the most distinctive value,” said Jang. “We focus on discovering brands and products customers may not encounter elsewhere, and presenting them with context and a point of view.”

A cornerstone of The Hyundai Hi is curation, which manifests itself in its own digital ecosystem, where collecting, expressing your taste and discovering other user’s taste is possible online. Of course, the latest collections from, say, Celine, are available also.

Icons, influential people from a variety of disciplines, are chosen by The Hyundai for their creative point of view. The icons can shape The Hyundai Hi by fostering ongoing cultural conversations, Lew said. The Me Space, a vibrant community hub within The Hyundai Hi, lets customers handpick content from the app, and share lifestyle inspirations with like-minded fans.

The South Korean retail sector market size was valued at $423.6 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $628.4 billion in 2032 growing at a CAGR of 5.1% from 2026 to 2032, according to Verified Market Research.

Following the launch, The Hyundai Hi generated $40.5 million in GMV, up 43.5% year-over-year. Audience growth increased 326% to 9.6 million and traffic rose 315% to 18.5 million clicks. The platform is building a loyal user base, attracting more than 470,000 new members, an increase of almost 560% compared with the previous year.

Lew said that the platform is “this sensory discovery tool in consumers’ pockets. We want to make sure we become part of their routine and by being part of the day-to-day of people’s lives, that’s the truest engagement a brand can really hope for.”