Invest KOREA

-KOTRA, to help businesses get direct access to global online marketplaces
-140 Amazon sellers to be selected for sales & marketing support

Korea Trade Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA: President and CEO, Pyung-Oh, Kown) plans to run a project helping businesses get access to global online marketplaces by forming partnership among the biggest regional platforms such as the world’s No.1 Amazon, Shopee, which claims one of top three across countries in South East Asia and the fourth largest open market in Japan, Qoo10 Japan.

As cross-border business-to-business (B2B) transactions have been in decline due to the coronavirus-led implications, more and more companies, particularly consumer goods suppliers, are likely to turn to global online retailers. However, technical and contractual restrictions on accessing, along with marketing costs still remain a giant hurdle to these SMEs.

Launching the program, the investment agency shares e-commerce guide and marketing tips for SMEs by each growth stage from beginners to existing online sellers. Nearly 130 consumer goods companies have already been through a course of training and education sessions last month to start online business in Shopee and Qoo10 Japan. The same courses (this time, for applicants to reach customers on Amazon Europe) opened on Apr. 17. The program is reported to be held, inviting 800 SMEs in the first half of this year alone.

With a goal to support approximately 1,400 businesses, double the size of last year’s attendees, and push up success rate to almost 30 percent this year, the agency is set to run the courses for three weeks, featuring marketing specialists to keep the participants well informed by each platform.

Those who successfully open e-commerce business, completing the entire courses provided, will be given cash grants up to KRW 500,000, cost to help running online ad, and a one-on-one, personalized biz-coaching service for each.

Selecting another 140 brands, which already have started and grow their sales on Amazon finishing the same courses, KOTRA will focus heavily on online marketing in the first six months of the year 2020, as part of efforts to help consumer goods retailers kick start their business disrupted by the pandemics. Online registration for the service is open from Apr. 1 via www.kotra.or.kr

Source : KOTRA (2020.03.31)