"KT Launches 'Useful Products Contest' to Open New Markets for SMEs"

[Asia Economy Reporter Eunmo Koo] KT announced on the 22nd that it will hold the ‘Useful Products Contest’ for co-growth with domestic small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

This contest is held to help SMEs, which are struggling due to COVID-19, to develop sales channels for excellent products. It is hosted by KT and supported by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, Gyeonggi Center for Creative Economy and Innovation, and Incheon Center for Creative Economy and Innovation.

This contest is exclusively for SMEs and was organized to help them develop sales channels for excellent products amid difficulties caused by COVID-19, following KT’s voluntary co-growth cooperation agreement with the Ministry of SMEs and Startups in September last year, the first in the telecommunications industry.

The products to be recruited include ▲ marketing products such as customer gifts for kids, MZ generation, and single-person households ▲ products related to mobile devices such as Bluetooth devices ▲ products with new technologies or originality such as AI and IoT devices. KT will directly purchase products worth a total of 1 billion KRW after screening and utilize them as free gifts or paid sales items in the ‘KT Partners’ menu on the official online mall ‘KT Shop’ and in more than 2,700 KT stores nationwide.

KT offers license fee discounts for companies wishing to cooperate with the KT Partners business, a co-growth license brand, for products participating in the contest, and provides free commission benefits for products finally selected in the contest. In addition, excellent products will also be reviewed as items for KT’s private brand ‘Fab shop.’ Fab shop is a new KT brand launched this year with the goal of providing customers with simple and reasonable products.

Companies wishing to participate in the contest can apply through the official contest website from today until April 4. The final results will be announced on the official contest website on the 22nd of next month after the first document screening and the second product evaluation meeting.

Kim Byung-kyun, head of KT’s Device Business Division, said, “We hope this contest will become a new opportunity to provide practical help to domestic SMEs weakened by COVID-19 and to discover products that can capture KT customers’ hearts as well as potential business cooperation partners.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.