Emart's move signals the group's intention to push Peacock beyond in-house brand to a proper food brand. "It's a starting point for us to grow Peacock into an individual food brand," said Kim Il-whan, a manager for the Peacock team at Emart. Emart's started online sales of Peacock products last March through a partnership with e-commerce company Coupang. Since then, they have been offered on other e-commerce sites like Gmarket and 11st, mobile stores Syrup and Kakao and even on home shopping channels including NS and Lotte. Last year, Emart established an individual B2B sales team and signed contracts with eight companies to place Peacock products in their brick-and-mortar stores. The reason why Emart's competitors are embracing Peacock is that the brand has been rapidly expanding presence in the so-called home meal replacement market.