CJ ONSTYLE has laid out a plan to train 100,000 commerce-focused creators by 2030 and expand related transaction volume to 35 times the level recorded last year, the first year of the business. The company intends to shift its strategy away from content commerce centered on live broadcasts and short-form video toward "creator commerce," which channels creators' fan bases and influence into purchases.
Sung Dong-hoon, head of the platform division at CJ ENM's commerce unit, said the company aims to raise creator commerce to 50% of its mobile content commerce transaction volume by 2030, from 9% last year, according to CJ ONSTYLE on the 23rd. Sung spoke the previous day at the Creator Commerce Festival Korea (CCFK) 2026, held at COEX in Seoul's Gangnam District. Mobile content commerce covers live shopping, short-form video and creator commerce.
Creator commerce links the content and fan bases of YouTubers and other influencers to product purchases. To build out the business, CJ ONSTYLE launched a business platform called ONTNER last month. Through ONTNER, creators receive support across the entire process, from product search and matching to content production, sales, settlement, delivery and customer service.
Where creators were previously used simply to promote or sell products, CJ ONSTYLE now plans to help them expand beyond advertising into affiliate marketing, group buying, private-label development and overseas expansion.
A creator specializing in consumer electronics, for example, had been limited to explaining and promoting the performance of specific products. With support from CJ ONSTYLE, that creator will be able to run group-buying campaigns or affiliate marketing with relative ease. Going further, the creator could co-develop products with brands based on their expertise or expand into a private-label business.
CJ ONSTYLE plans to make active use of artificial intelligence and data analytics in the process. Its proprietary AI analyzes creators' social media content and follower characteristics, then combines that with product information and actual purchase data to match creators with suitable brands or products.
The company also plans to apply the product planning and distribution capabilities and content production technology it has accumulated to the creator commerce business. Drawing on roughly 100 professional producers and its experience running mobile live commerce, CJ ONSTYLE intends to work with creators from the content planning stage through to product sales.
CJ ONSTYLE is focusing on creator commerce because online shopping behavior has been shifting from "purpose-driven shopping," in which consumers search directly for products they need, to "discovery shopping," in which they encounter products through content and come to see a need for them. As a result, the expertise and fan base of the person introducing a product carry growing weight in purchasing decisions.
"In the past, when buying experience goods such as cosmetics, shoppers could not know qualities like how a product spreads on the skin in advance, so they relied on reviews and ratings to decide," said Kim Do-hyun, a professor of business administration at Kookmin University. "Now, recommendations from creators with expertise and credibility are influencing those judgments." In North America, platforms such as ShopMy that support creators' product recommendations, brand collaborations and monetization are already growing quickly.
CJ ONSTYLE expects creator commerce transaction volume to rise roughly 3.3-fold this year from last year. Over the medium to long term, the company plans to build creator commerce capabilities in South Korea and then expand them abroad, widening overseas customer access to domestic lifestyle products in K-beauty, K-fashion and K-living.
"By combining CJ ONSTYLE's content commerce competitiveness with our data and AI capabilities, we will set a new standard for creator commerce grounded in trust and expertise," Sung said. "Beyond that, we will grow into a platform that curates the K-lifestyle in global markets."