Udo is a very small island located around 3.5 kilometers off the northeastern coast of Jeju, whose name literally means “Cow Island” due to its bovine shape. With less than 2,000 residents and no airport, deliveries to Udo typically require two boat trips and four to five days to complete. What’s more, Udo customers often must pick up their orders directly at the port, as most courier services do not provide last-mile delivery.
“If you order online, you have to expect it will take at least four or five days,” said Jung-hwan Yoon, an Udo resident. “And even though we pay for inter-island shipping, they don’t even deliver to our homes.”
Solving these logistical headaches for Udo residents was an irresistible challenge for Coupang, whose mission is to exponentially transform customers’ lives for the better—no matter where they may live. With the launch of the Jeju Rocket Delivery Center in 2020, Coupang designed a process to bring next-day Rocket Delivery even to the remote island of Udo.
Using artificial intelligence (AI) and other technologies, Coupang has optimized logistics, sortation, and delivery processes to ship orders from the mainland to Udo by the very next day. Orders destined for Udo are sorted and loaded from Coupang fulfillment centers in the mainland onto Coupang Trucks, which travel by ship overnight and arrive by morning at the Jeju Rocket Delivery Center. At the center, these orders are then sorted and loaded onto smaller Coupang Cars. These Coupang Cars then take another ship to arrive in Udo, where Coupang Friends (delivery drivers) bring orders straight to customers’ doorsteps.
“Coupang’s Rocket Delivery is great because it’s fast,” said Soon-sam Yoon, another Udo resident. “It’s really impressive!”
WOW members have even more to be impressed by, with benefits such as unconditional free Rocket Delivery and 30-day free returns for the low price of 4,990 won (less than four dollars) per month. “Coupang is cheaper overall, so I use Coupang every day,” said Jung-hwan.
These days, Coupang Cars are welcome sight in Udo, representing a level of convenience that residents had never imagined in the past. “Udo merchants treat me kindly and say thank you a lot,” said Min-sung Jung, a Coupang Friend working on the island. “Since there are no big supermarkets in Udo, it seems that the residents depend a lot on Coupang.”
As Coupang continues to expand its Rocket Delivery network across the nation, we will work so that even more customers ask themselves, “How did we ever live without Coupang?”
