Former announcer Kim So-young announced on the 22nd that the brand builder 'BPLANT' she founded has secured approximately 7 billion won in Series A investment from Altos Ventures. This investment was made solely by Altos Ventures.
BPLANT is a corporation that has grown based on the curation commerce 'Bronte'. Initially, it selected and sold carefully chosen brand products from the market, but recently has focused on introducing its own brands based on consumer data, concentrating on designing promotions, customer experience, and the convenience in daily life before and after use.
Wellness healthcare brand 'Seren' and skincare brand 'Curved' are representative examples. Curved's main product, Aqua Toner Pads, sold out 20,000 units immediately after its release. BPLANT stated that the repurchase rate on the Curved platform reaches 80%, and explained that revenue in the first quarter of this year has tripled compared to the previous year. Seren has expanded its distribution channels, including department store pop-ups and Kakao gift offerings, and was recently selected as a winner in the communication institutional sector at the '2025 Asia Design Prize'.
Kim So-young, the founder and CEO of BPLANT, has introduced a total of four brands over eight years, starting with the offline bookstore 'Book Development Institute' in 2017, followed by the e-commerce platform 'Bronte' in 2020, and 'Seren' and 'Curved' in 2024. Through the operation of the Bronte Shop, she has gained experience in product planning by category, sourcing, development, delivery, and customer service, laying a solid foundation for expanding into manufacturing new brands.
Altos Ventures noted, 'BPLANT started based on influencer commerce, but considering brand design capabilities, product perfection, and customer retention, it is a team with high potential for sustainable growth.' They added, 'The founder understands customer preferences well and possesses both authenticity and execution ability by naturally integrating her identity into the brand. We determined that these capabilities could also succeed in the global market, which is why we decided to invest this time.'
CEO Kim So-young said, 'Through this investment, our goal is to leverage the strong persona and the cohesion of the core customer base that existing influencer commerce has while simultaneously establishing research and development investments and a highly specialized organizational structure, thus creating a powerful brand to expand into both domestic and overseas markets.'