Are you interested in business start-ups and especially online shopping malls? This is a top secret issue; however, we will tell you lots of valuable information. We met a student, Park Se-young in the Division of Business Administraion, who operates a women’s shoes online shopping mall. Let’s see his business start-up and life story.
1. What caused you to start your business?
When I was young, my family was rich and my father was doing business. However, we moved to Jeonju with lots of debt because of the IMF. From these circumstances, I realized the value of money and determined that I had to earn money myself. So I wanted to do business since I was a middle school student. Actually, when I was a high school student, it wasn’t exactly a business, but I started buying second-hand electronic devices for low prices and selling them for higher prices at a second-hand online website.

2. Why do you operate a women’s shoes online shopping mall even though you are a man?
I wanted to operate an online shopping mall. So when I was considering business items, I thought about fashion that I am usually interested in. However, men’s utilization rate of online shopping malls is low and my fashion sense is not good to operate a women’s clothing mall. So I selected women’s shoes.

3. What kind of trial and error did you undergo, and how did you solve it?
Recently I went through some trial and error. Back when I was a 20-year-old, I started my business in a small way, getting stuff in China and selling it. It gradually grew bigger. Based on that business, I opened up a shoe business with bigger money. However, the shoe business starting scale was so large that I couldn’t take care of each basic thing in detail. If the basic things are not strong enough, it can collapse, and actually, I felt that. To solve this serious situation, I have done basic things on my own with a “back to basics” spirit, such as packing and Photoshop work.

4. What do you think is the reason for your shopping mall’s success?
Thinking like a customer is the most important thing. At first, I didn’t intervene in each employee’s work. However, they didn’t do their best and didn’t care a lot about customers. From these situations, I realized it’s important to intervene and care more about customers. To focus on customers’ satisfaction, I give letters written with calligraphy to all customers and their responses are good. Caring for customers and making regular customers are the biggest success reasons and are my methods of operation.

5. What’s your final goal?
My final goal is that, when I die, people remember me as a cool person or a person who changed something. Also, my final dream is arranging my super cars together and choosing among them, because I have loved cars since I was a child.

6. Give advice to CBNU students dreaming about starting a business.
The most important thing is challenge. Lots of people just start businesses with their mouths. The gap between doing and not doing is really big. Adding in my own thinking, there is a road, and if you don’t move, you can’t go to another place and see it in a wide view. Also, to succeed in business startup, you have to think “I will solve the problems.” For example, I’m operating a service for expanding the ball of the foot to solve problems for customers who have wide balls of the foot. This has been very popular for customers.

You can feel a lot of passion from him. His success wasn’t built in a day. Passion and endeavor were necessary. If you don’t hesitate in face of challenges and try your best, you can achieve success like him, no matter how many hard situations come.