When KKV became OH!SOME: who controls the battlefield when a brand goes abroad?
Originally written in Chinese. Translated with AI, reviewed by Gary. Read the Chinese original →
For Teachers' Day I took my kids to the mall, because they wanted to buy small gifts for their teachers.
We passed a shop called OH!SOME.
At first I thought I'd misread it. Why does this store look so much like KKV? Yellow, big, full of snacks, toys, little lifestyle items and IP merchandise. The whole feel was exactly KKV. Had someone copied it that fast?
I got curious and looked it up.
It turned out the story is far more interesting than "who copied whom".
Not a copycat
Many stores in Indonesia that used to be called KKV were later renamed OH!SOME. Behind OH!SOME is a company called Blue Origin Group. Not Jeff Bezos's rocket company, but a group with Chinese supply chain roots doing lifestyle retail in Southeast Asia.
What makes it interesting is that KKV was originally a brand under China's KK Group.
Over the past few years KK Group raised many rounds, took a lot of money, and kept trying to IPO. But this kind of new-retail variety store model expands very fast in the early days, with lots of stores and beautiful GMV, while eating a huge amount of capital behind the scenes. Rent, fit-out, inventory, team, supply chain, shrinkage: every one of them costs money. So it kept pushing for an IPO, and the road was not smooth.
Then it went overseas.
I remember when I visited Indonesia before, the KKV stores were genuinely good. I bought things there myself. It isn't a traditional sundry shop, and it isn't an ordinary discount store. It sells a browsing experience. You walk in with nothing in mind, and somehow you walk out with a few things.
The strength of a store like this isn't any single SKU. It's the whole scene.
Cheap, fun to browse, always new, photogenic, packed with stuff, bold colours, loved by young people. It's a bit like a mix of Miniso, POP MART, KKV, snack stores, designer toy shops and a general store.
But then the question comes.
When a Chinese brand goes overseas, how much should it hand over to the local team?
The brand is yours, the supply chain is yours, the model is yours. But who negotiated with the local malls? Who opened the stores? Who hired the staff? Who served the customers? Who got the product feedback? Who was running local traffic, communities, KOLs and channels?
If all of that slowly ends up in the hands of the local operator, whose market is it in the end?
Brand rights and operating rights, split apart
In the public information I found, I saw no formal lawsuit between the two sides, and no clear announcement of a dispute. But from the timeline, it looks a lot like the partnership between the brand owner and the local operator changed, and brand rights and operating rights were split apart.
KK Group holds the KKV brand.
Blue Origin holds the local stores, team, supply chain execution, mall relationships and customer touchpoints.
KKV entered Indonesia early. According to its prospectus, by the end of March 2023 KK Group had 696 stores across 31 Chinese provinces and 22 cities in Indonesia. In the first ten months of 2023 the KKV brand was already doing very well: 421 stores, 39 of them in Indonesia, revenue of RMB 3.27 billion, operating profit of RMB 712 million, with operating margin up from 10% to 21.8%.
That is the key.
If an overseas market never takes off, nobody cares much when the brand owner and the local operator go separate ways. But if the market has taken off, and is doing well, it's a different story.
The brand owner thinks: this is my brand equity.
The operator thinks: I opened the stores here, built the team, and built the mall relationships, the supply chain and the place in customers' minds, bit by bit.
So when the partnership changed, the KKV name could be taken away, but the stores, the team, the experience and the understanding of the market didn't suddenly disappear. Blue Origin changed the name to OH!SOME and kept running the same business.
Even more interesting, KKV later came back to Southeast Asia, and in Malaysia it partnered with MR.DIY. MR.DIY bought 49% of KKV's Malaysian business. In Indonesia, MR.DIY Indonesia also partnered with KK Group to bring back KKV, The Colorist and X11.
Now it gets really good.
First, KKV and Blue Origin fought for the market together.
Then Blue Origin became OH!SOME.
Now KK Group is back with KKV, with a local retail giant like MR.DIY behind it.
So this isn't a simple rebranding story.
It's a very real question every brand faces after going abroad: brand, supply chain, capital, local execution. Which one is the real moat?
The moat is in the execution
I used to think the brand mattered most.
Later I realised that of course the brand matters, but a brand is not just hanging up a logo. Especially in retail, it all comes down to execution that is dirty, detailed and heavy.
You have to know how to pick sites, negotiate rent, manage inventory, replenish stock and train staff. You have to know what local customers actually like, whether a mall's foot traffic is real or not, which SKUs go at the entrance and which go at the back, and whether young people in this market today get hooked on TikTok or buy on impulse in the mall.
None of this is in the PowerPoint. It's dug out bit by bit from everyday details and operations.
With KKV, OH!SOME and MR.DIY, it's hard to say who is right or wrong.
What's really worth discussing is control when a brand goes overseas.
When a brand first enters a new market, it badly needs a local partner. You don't know the place, the people, the channels, the regulations or the customers.
But if you hand over execution too deeply, and the local team ends up holding the stores, the supply chain, the customers and the traffic, can the brand owner still control the battlefield?
That's the most interesting part.
Very often, going overseas isn't about carrying a logo out.
The hard part of going overseas is taking your brand out without handing the battlefield to someone else.