A Korean-Thai joint venture home shopping TV channel expects to break even within 26 months – faster than any sister joint ventures in other Asian markets.

O Shopping Channel now boasts 450,000 customers across Thailand, mostly younger, cashed-up housewives in the 25 to 50 demographic – this despite a 10 day enforced shutdown after Thailand’s military dictatorship seized power in May. It expects revenue to increase by 50 per cent in 2015, to 1.5 billion Thai baht (US$45.4 million).

O is a joint venture between South Korea’s CJ O Shopping Co and Thai company GMM Grammy and has a 13 per cent share of Thailand’s 8 billion THB TV home shopping market, currently dominated by TVD Channel.

“Our home shopping channel in Thailand can break even within 26 months, the fastest among all overseas operations,” Sung Nak-Je, CEO of CJ O Shopping Co, told the Bangkok Post.

O says nearly half of its existing Thai customer base are repeat customers and the average spend is 2500 THB, or about US$76.

Its most popular items are lingerie, personal products and IT gadgets.

Sung told the Bangkok Post that Thailand’s TV home shopping business has “tremendous growth potential” with the market estimated to be worth 22 billion baht by 2019.