Sunyang chairman, Sejong professor spotlight overlooked opportunities as Thai ambassador bids farewell
The best business ideas often hide in plain sight, from gaps big companies miss to daily hassles people ignore, speakers at this week's Global Business Forum said Wednesday.
The 10th edition of the weekly forum, organized by The Korea Herald and Herald Business, runs under the theme "See the Unseen," and Thai Ambassador to South Korea Tanee Sangrat opened its second official session.
Wrapping up a three-year posting in Seoul, Tanee praised Korea's technology and invited its firms to partner with Thailand, a leading global producer of agricultural products. "You can always look to me as a friend of Korea forever and ever," Tanee remarked.
In his keynote speech, Cho Wung-rae, chairman of Daejeon-based soju-maker Sunyang, recounted how he built his businesses by finding openings others failed to see. "Keep turning things upside down, and a path appears," Cho said.
A former Samsung employee, Cho founded a phone information service in 1992. In late 2004, he bought Sunyang with no manufacturing experience and took on a market Hite Jinro and Lotte dominated.
"There had to be a crack somewhere," he recalled. "Whatever you make, others shouldn't be able to copy it quickly."
That search produced oxygen-infused soju, oak-aged spirits and, most recently, a canned blend of soju and beer, a combination Koreans love.
"Many people live alone or spend time outdoors, so I told my staff to package it so no one has to mix it themselves," Cho explained. The canned drink sold 1 million units within 40 days of its June launch.
Cho skipped celebrity endorsements and became Sunyang's ad model himself. His Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and Facebook channels logged about 250 million impressions last year.
"Don't get hung up on your credentials," Cho advised. "I don't have much to show either, but I have something that's mine."
Taking the stage next, Kim Dae-jong, a professor of business administration at Sejong University, steered small businesses toward unseen opportunities.
Kim pointed to Toss, which began when a dentist grew frustrated with currency exchange fees and built a fintech app to fix them. "If something in your daily life feels inconvenient, that is your startup idea," he said.
For existing businesses, opportunity can hide in how they charge customers. Subscriptions trade lower prices for steady monthly payments. "Every industry must now switch to getting paid monthly," he stressed.
Fresh ideas also cross borders. Just as Coupang drew on Amazon's model, Korean firms can import concepts proven abroad, and the same path runs in reverse.
"Many take what works in Korea to Indonesia or India," Kim added. "We must make what the market wants. Only then can we avoid failure."
On fears that artificial intelligence will wipe out jobs, Kim was blunt. "We can't smash AI just because it takes our jobs. We will need people who build it," he argued, urging firms to embrace new technologies to survive.
minmin@heraldcorp.com