apM Coin AMA with GAINS Associates Highlights
On Wednesday, June 03, we had the pleasure to welcome to GAINS Associates Telegram chat:
Bina Cho, VP of Marketing Strategy of apM Coin
GAINS Associates asked her questions about the development of apM Coin, ranked 586 on CoinMarketCap.
Some sentences have been slightly edited for readability but the meaning has been conserved.
Summary
apM Coin is like flight miles for shoppers. apM Coin is partnering with apM Group, the owner of the largest wholesale fashion malls in Korea.
There are more than 1,300 wholesale brands in three malls, welcoming 10,000+ buyers who visit the malls every day.
apM group will adopt apM Coin’s Customer Rewards Management system. Customers will enjoy rewards, digital coupons and gift vouchers. Exclusive benefits will be provided for customers who stake a certain amount of tokens. They will receive tiered benefits based on their staked token amounts, creating demand.
Wholesalers will be able to access this massive consumer database.
It is to be noted that the Korean government has set up some clear regulatory guidelines for crypto and blockchain, a good sign for apM Coin and other Korean projects.
Introduction
Q — Alexandre R from GAINS: Bina, can you tell us what you did before crypto, how you got into crypto, and if you’ve had any other venture in crypto previous to being involved with apM Coin?
A — Bina Cho from apM Coin: Hi everyone! I am Bina from the apM Coin project, a real-world blockchain application project partnering with the Korean wholesale fashion giant, apM Group.
Q — Alexandre R from GAINS: Interesting. For the non-Koreans here, can you tell us how big the apM Group is?
A — Bina Cho from apM Coin: Yep, apM Group is the owner of the largest wholesale fashion malls in Korea, which are apM, apM PLACE, and apM Luxe. There are more than 1,300 wholesale brands in three malls, welcoming more than 10,000 buyers who visit the malls every day. The buyers are customers of wholesale brands, which means they are not general customers. The buyers are business persons in clothing distribution or retail business, and almost 80% of these buyers are flying in from Korea’s neighboring countries, China, Taiwan, Japan, and Vietnam. Our large user base visits the malls almost every two weeks to place orders and check out the market trend, which shows high customer loyalty towards apM malls.
Literally, apM, apM PLACE and apM Luxe are the leaders of the Korean wholesale fashion market as well as the pioneers of K-fashion :)
Q — Twitter user Pusat: What’s the meaning of “apM?”
A — Bina Cho from apM Coin: The word ‘apM’ is coined from the combination of AM and PM, designed to deliver the meaning of ‘the malls that never sleep.’
Q — Alexandre R from GAINS: Are they open 24/7? lol
A — Bina Cho from apM Coin: Haha, actually it opens from 8 am to 5 pm. The malls’ customers are very loyal to apM malls and their brands.
Product
Q — Alexandre R from GAINS: Can you tell us what the project is about in a few simple sentences?
A — Bina Cho from apM Coin: First of all, to briefly explain about apM Coin, apM Coin project is a customer reward platform for apM shopping malls.
Q — Alexandre R from GAINS: Like fidelity points?
A — Bina Cho from apM Coin: Yes, like flight miles. apM Group is planning to adopt our customer rewards management system powered by blockchain. The platform will also work as a CRM system for 1,300 wholesale brands by collecting dispersed market and customer data efficiently through the fast and secure blockchain network, but also as a loyalty program that our 10,000+ daily visitors can enjoy various customer benefits including customer rewards, digital coupons, and gift vouchers.
Q — Twitter user Ravi: Being a Korean project which already had many big blockchain projects, how powerful is the apM Coin project to compete with them?
A — Bina Cho from apM Coin: Yes, there are so many blockchain projects working actively in Korea :) One of our key strengths is that apM Coin has already secured user bases that our services will be deployed to, which are our wholesale brands and thousands of customers in apM, apM PLACE, and apM Luxe.
The malls are a B2B business, which means most buyers come to the malls after they close their business/clothing shops in the daytime. You will be surprised to see so many people are going here and there checking out awesome clothing.
I think this is our biggest competency in this industry. The apM Coin project is to be adopted in this massive B2B platform in clothing supply chains as the first customer reward platform for our wholesalers and thousands of global/local buyers. Period :)
Q — Telegram user Jerry: Does apM have support from the Korean government? What are the regulations governing Blockchain?
A — Bina Cho from apM Coin: Korea is one of the leading countries in the IT business, and blockchain is also one of the key areas that the government tries to promote.
apM Group is quite a mature wholesale giant with more than 20 years of business history. Although the company cannot receive start-up benefits from the government, its secure consumer base and business know-how will be a key driver to accelerate our service.
Also, the Korean government has set up some clear regulatory guidelines. This will be another plus point to accelerate our business under a more precise regulatory landscape.
Q — Telegram user VyachCrypto: When will the apM Members mobile app launch? What will be unique in this app and what features will it support?
A — Bina Cho from apM Coin: We will launch our service this autumn. We were all set for our service launch though, but due to this COVID-19 pandemic, we postponed our service launch from spring to this autumn :).
Token
Q — Twitter user SAM: How will apM coins be used in this business? What are the benefits to wholesalers and customers?
A — Bina Cho from apM Coin: Buyers, customers of apM shopping malls, can enjoy several benefits through our platform including earning and redeeming customer rewards. There will be exclusive customer benefits to be provided through this platform, which customers have preferred. When we plan and develop these, exclusive customer benefits, apM Group’s 20-years business know-how will be a great support to attract them as our active users.
Also, wholesalers of apM malls can use the platform as a well-organized digital CRM to enhance their business competitiveness by accessing this massive consumer data of the platform and learning some hands-on business insights from these data.
Despite more than two decades of market history, the Dongdaemun fashion market (the center of Korea’s fashion industry) does not have a well-structured CRM platform that can collect dispersed data of the market. We would like to provide this platform that the wholesalers can pick up valued market insights for agile and sustainable business growth.
Q — Alexandre R from GAINS: What’s the current status of the project? Is apM Coin currently used for real-world use cases like that?
A — Bina Cho from apM Coin: Not yet. But we are planning to launch our service this autumn along with the launch of our mobile app, apM Members. This will be an actual touchpoint between us and actual users
The app completes the beta test and is ready to launch :) We can briefly share some sneak peeks about our app.
Q — Alexandre R from GAINS: You seem to have the users part quite nailed down. If the token starts getting used, what are the features that can create even more demand? Will there be any fees taken from transactions, a burn mechanism, etc.
A — Bina Cho from apM Coin: Some exclusive benefits will be provided for customers who stake a certain amount of tokens. They will receive tiered benefits based on their staked token amounts.
Also, wholesalers can access this massive consumer database. For them to use our CRM service, they also need to deposit some amount of apM Coin tokens too.
Q — Telegram user JAT: Can I buy bibimbap with apM Coin?
A — Bina Cho from apM Coin: There is an outdoor food court in apM malls, which are also favored by our customers and tourists :) Bibimbap is not included in the menu but you can have various Korean snacks or light meals like hot noodles, Korean style fried chickens. The food court and cafeteria of apM malls are some of the additional utilities of apM Coin’s customer reward platform!
Adoption
Q — Telegram user Arvind: How does the APM platform create awareness about their project with non-crypto users too?
A — Bina Cho from apM Coin: One of our key objectives for service adoption is making our users not aware of this is blockchain/crypto-based service :) Considering the majority of our service users will be wholesalers and buyers of apM malls, they would not be familiar with this technology or crypto-related topics. We have developed our service including mobile app apM Members to provide best usability and efficiency of these non-crypto people :)
Q — Telegram user Crypto Devil: Do you want an international company to adopt apM Coin project?
A — Bina Cho from apM Coin: It would be awesome if international companies can adopt our platform. This will expand our ecosystem and eventually share more values with our active users, wholesalers, and thousands of buyers in particular.
As most buyers of apM malls are global business persons in the clothing distribution/retail industry, we have looked for strategic cooperation with the travel industry and logistics industry.
apM Coin Official Communication Channels
Website | Telegram Announcement Channel | Telegram Global Community(English)| Telegram Korean Community (Korean)| Twitter
