"Always Prepared for the Worst-Case Scenario, Plans Established"

Jang Woo-jin, CEO of J-Bet, Successfully Rebounds After 6 Years
Supported by Jungjingong Re-Startup Fund... R&D Competitiveness Up

Jang Woo-jin CEO

‘Ujin Precision’. When Jang Woo-jin, CEO of J-Bet, recalls this company name, a flood of emotions arises. It carries the memories of his ambitious challenge of starting a business named after himself 10 years ago and the pain of failure that forced him to close down within just 10 months.

Although he did not succeed in his first attempt, he did not give up and carefully analyzed the causes. This was the reason he was able to seize the opportunity to restart his business after six years. In his second attempt, he avoided repeating past mistakes, and now CEO Jang leads J-Bet, which has achieved a 70% sales growth and 100% employment increase over the past two years. Amid the deepening crisis surrounding small and medium-sized enterprises, we had an in-depth conversation with CEO Jang about the specific reasons behind his ability to overcome failure and succeed in his comeback.

On the 22nd, CEO Jang said, "I analyzed the causes to never repeat the experience of failure again. While preparing for a comeback, I went back to the failure in 2012 and deeply pondered why I made those decisions at that time." Ujin Precision, which he founded in 2012, was a precision machining company for automobile and heavy equipment parts. In the early days of the startup, there was potential. However, the sudden closure of the main client and the discontinuation of parts supply due to the discontinuation of the automobile model overlapped, and reckless facility investments quickly led to a liquidity crisis that overwhelmed the company. Ultimately, in October of that year, the company had to close its doors carrying about 900 million KRW in financial institution loans and trade debts, and 100 million KRW in overdue taxes.

It took six years for CEO Jang to rise again after this failure. He did all sorts of work while fully repaying debts and overdue taxes, waiting for an opportunity to restart his business. He got a job as a sales director at a friend's company and met existing clients, and this network later became the foundation for his comeback. From 2017, he prepared the groundwork for reestablishment through in-house production process technology development and product reliability testing, and in August of the following year, he founded J-Bet, which precisely machines heavy equipment travel reducers, hydraulic operation, and power transmission parts.

The failure experience of Ujin Precision helped in growing the company after reestablishment. CEO Jang revealed that he always planned with the ‘worst’ case in mind. After identifying the break-even point in new sales, he prepared countermeasures based on the ‘worst-case scenario.’ Subsequently, he dispersed investment costs step-by-step to stabilize financial strength as much as possible. He said, "I excluded rumors about client information or order volumes and planned systematically according to the company’s management policy, considering how things would be if they went well and how they would be if they didn’t. I set aside the good situations and proceeded with work by preparing for the risks and the worst-case scenarios."

At the same time, he devoted efforts to research and development to enhance competitiveness. J-Bet has grown into a company recognized for its technological capabilities, holding patents such as a cutting workpiece fixing jig, an integrated contact-type cutting fluid cooling system, and a valve structure for hydraulic joysticks. During this process, they received support from the Small and Medium Business Corporation (SBC) for reestablishment funds. Although CEO Jang’s credit rating was low due to past failures, SBC, confident in his technological capabilities, provided working capital loans for reestablishment funds from 2019 through last year. Through this, J-Bet secured business management funds such as raw material costs and labor costs and established a stable production base. As a result, sales, which were 5.3 billion KRW in 2019, are expected to more than double to 11 billion KRW this year. CEO Jang emphasized, "Anyone can fail. If you take failure as a stepping stone and think proactively with confidence in whatever you do, the path will open."

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