E-Mart Everyday Store. Provided by the FTC
E-Mart Everyday, which unreasonably returned unsold products to suppliers, was charged a penalty of nearly 600 million won.
The Fair Trade Commission announced on the 14th that it imposed a fine of 582 million won along with a corrective order for E-Mart Everyday for violating the Large-scale Distribution Business Act. As of 2018, E-Mart Everyday is a retailer with 232 stores and annual sales of about 1.17 trillion won, which is a’large-scale distributor’ under the current law.
According to the FTC, E-Mart Everyday unfairly returned 157,000 products that were delivered from 15 suppliers from January 2015 to May 2018. For products that are intensively sold during a certain period of time, such as sunscreen, sunscreen, and icebox, they did not set conditions for return, and when the season was over, inventory was left to the supplier.
The problem is that E-Mart Everyday received the products in a’direct purchase transaction’ method. The direct purchase transaction is a form of transaction in which a large-scale distribution company directly purchases products from suppliers, and the products that are not sold to consumers are self-burdened. It is distinguished from the’special contract purchase transaction’, in which the stock is subject to return conditions and purchases by credit.
E-Mart Everyday also dispatched 119 employees from 19 suppliers from January 2015 to March 2018, and mobilized them to display products to open new and renewed stores. In this process, it was investigated that a written agreement describing the conditions for dispatching employees was delivered to the supplier only after a maximum of 77 days had passed after the dispatch. For 673 contracts with suppliers, Emart Everyday delivered a basic contract after an average of 7.8 days (new contract) or 13.2 days (renewal) from the date of signing the contract.
The Fair Trade Commission said, “We will continue to monitor large-scale retailers for unfair trade practices, such as improperly transferring costs to suppliers during the Corona 19 crisis.”
Sejong= Youngha Son reporter [email protected]
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