Realry Acquires European Sneaker Search Engine ‘Sneakers123’
Realry announced on the 7th that it will acquire the European sneaker search engine Sneakers123 to accelerate its entry into the global sneaker market.
Sneakers123 was launched in 2019, primarily in Austria, and serves various European countries including France, Germany, Poland, and Italy. It is a search engine specialized in sneakers that provides information on sneaker searches, price comparisons, and discounts worldwide. Sneakers123 has over 200,000 unique users visiting the service each month and has achieved a cumulative transaction amount of over 7 billion KRW.
Currently, it has onboarding partners such as global sneaker commerce platforms StockX, Flight Club, Foot Locker, and GOAT. Additionally, Sneakers123 was awarded 2nd place as Product of the Day on Product Hunt in the U.S. shortly after its launch.
The founder of Sneakers123 and CEO Hadi Ruda stated, “Based on over 10 years of experience in the sneaker reselling market, my background as an early member of Austria's largest sneaker distributor, and the knowledge accumulated from operating a search engine service, we will build the world's largest fashion engine network together with Realry. The online sneaker market has significant potential. This merger will allow us to create the next commerce for users in the fashion and sneaker industry.”
Through the acquisition of Sneakers123, Realry aims to strengthen its business model. The goal is to create business synergies by linking user and partner data across commerce engines and to expand this further. If we combine the global monthly users of Realry and Sneakers123, we will accumulate data from over 500,000 users and build an improved business model utilizing different user segments.
Realry's CEO An Seong-jun stated, “From the beginning of our business, we have applied the business models of global travel search engine Kayak.com and HotelsCombined, benchmarking their business expansion strategies. We aim to become the Booking Holdings of the fashion industry. Through this acquisition, we will solidify our business positioning in Europe and North America, while planning to expand into South America beyond Asia, North America, and Europe starting in the second half of 2024 in the Japanese market. We will create a 'First Destination' service that users visit first before purchasing online luxury and contemporary fashion or sneakers.”
In the first half of 2023, Realry was selected as a ‘New and Notable Publisher’ by Rakuten Advertising and turned a profit in May 2023.
