Hancom Group bought a jewelry company for an NFT pivot — dissolved it three years later

Hancom Group is a South Korean software conglomerate best known for Hancom Office, the country's dominant office productivity suite. In 2020, the group acquired a gold trading platform, Hancom Gold Exchange, and in 2021 it acquired IBC Jewelry, renaming it Hancom Jewelry. The company operated the Moliz jewelry brand and later acquired designer Risaco Jewelry in 2022. The group's vision was to build a gem-and-jewelry-based NFT platform through Hancom Artpia, its NFT marketplace launched in 2021.

The NFT market peaked in 2021–2022 and then declined sharply. By 2024, Hancom Artpia had been liquidated. Hancom Jewelry, which had been acquired specifically to supply the NFT pipeline, recorded 3.6 billion KRW in revenue and a 2.6 billion KRW net loss in 2024. The jewelry operation was bleeding cash with no path to profitability as the NFT use case that justified the acquisition had disappeared.

In March 2025, Hancom Jewelry's board of directors resolved to dissolve the company. The subsidiary Risaco Jewelry was also liquidated. A Hancom Group official stated: 'Profitability was poor, so we decided to liquidate, and we will exit the jewelry business entirely.' The dissolution represented the complete failure of a corporate pivot into an adjacent industry, driven by a technology trend that evaporated before the investment could pay off.