Hojeong Food finds new path on Temu, breaking free from holiday-only sales

For Hojeong Food, a regional food company with a 30-year history, traditional Korean confections known as "hangwa" had long been a seasonal product — bought mainly around the holidays and rarely otherwise. Searching for ways to drive repeat purchases and build everyday demand, the company recently found a new opening on Temu, the global e-commerce platform that has opened its marketplace to Korean sellers.

Orders that numbered just five in the company's first month on the platform have since grown consistently to around 400 a month, putting the business on a stable footing. The growth has been driven by strong repeat purchases of a nutrition bar — a reinterpretation of traditional hangwa as a meal-substitute snack, individually packaged for daily consumption.

Yoo Su-jin, a director at Hojeong Food, credited Temu's distinctive shopping ecosystem for the results. Conventional online marketplaces are built around "intent-based shopping," where consumers search for specific items they already want — meaning hangwa barely registers outside the holiday season. On Temu, by contrast, the company's products began appearing naturally in the feeds of shoppers browsing for everyday essentials, leading to purchases and, crucially, repeat orders.

"On Temu, customers stumble across our products while shopping for everyday items," Yoo said. "When a second order follows, it's not because a special occasion is coming up — it means the product has become part of their daily routine."

Hojeong Food is not alone. Other brands have also built loyal customer bases through the platform. Chef Aechan, a brand specializing in banchan and ready-to-eat meals, has recorded a repeat-purchase rate of about 23 percent on Temu. "Temu is a platform that gets consumers to try our products for the first time and then come back for more," said Park Woo-yeon, CEO of Chef Aechan. Beauty brand Rokkiss has similarly observed a pattern in which shoppers discover its cosmetics while browsing the platform and go on to buy them repeatedly.

Hojeong Food, which produces more than 150 varieties of traditional food at two factories in Damyang, South Jeolla Province, is one of the largest hangwa manufacturers in the country. When it entered Temu, the company led with a "small-package strategy" aimed squarely at attracting new customers.

"The key was lowering the barrier to entry so consumers could try our products without feeling like they were taking a risk," Yoo said. The strategy paid off: the share of small-package products in Hojeong Food's Temu sales now far outpaces that of any other retail channel the company uses.

Dedicated support from a Temu account manager also contributed to the momentum. The manager suggested popular search terms in the snack category that suited the nutrition bar, and when the company incorporated them into the product name and ran tests, visibility in Temu's discovery feed jumped sharply, translating directly into more orders. "It wasn't generic advice — it was specific, immediately actionable tips that made a real difference," Yoo said.

Now in its first full year on the platform, the nutrition bar has become Hojeong Food's best-seller on Temu. A traditional confection that once depended on a single annual holiday rush is finding its way onto consumers' tables every week as an everyday snack.