Korea Small and Medium Venture Business Distribution Agency, Recruiting Agencies for Online Sales Support Project for Small Business Owners

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups and the Korea SMEs and Startups Distribution Center announced on the 16th that they are recruiting implementing agencies for the 'Small Business Online Sales Channel Support Project.'

This year, a financial evaluation of the platforms participating as implementing agencies was newly introduced to protect small business owners participating in the support project. This is to select platforms that are financially sound and can pay the sales proceeds to small business owners participating in the support project according to the settlement cycle. To ensure a fair evaluation, evaluation criteria such as capital adequacy, liquidity, profitability, and stability were established after gathering expert opinions, and for online platforms, standards were set to select reliable platforms within the scope that does not hinder innovation.

Korea Small and Medium Venture Business Distribution Agency announced that it is recruiting organizations to carry out the 'Online Sales Channel Support Project for Small Business Owners.' The photo shows the homepage of Panpandero. Photo by Korea Small and Medium Venture Business Distribution Agency

Through this, the financial soundness of platform companies will be comprehensively evaluated, and only platforms that pass this evaluation will be granted eligibility to participate as implementing agencies.

This year, the Ministry of SMEs and Startups and the Korea SMEs and Startups Distribution Center plan to support about 34,000 small business owners in pioneering online sales channels through the 'Small Business Online Sales Channel Support Project' worth 63.7 billion KRW, to help small business owners struggling with growth due to high interest rates and high inflation enter the online market.

This year’s 'Small Business Online Sales Channel Support Project' has been reorganized to provide continuous support tailored to the level of online adoption of small business owners, allowing step-by-step support from the online sales preparation stage to infrastructure building. The main projects include ▲Preparation stage (product improvement, content production, etc.) ▲Practical stage (support for online shopping mall sales, TV home shopping, etc.) ▲Leap stage (smart logistics and after-sales management, etc.) ▲Infrastructure building (digital commerce specialized institutions, etc.).

Lee Tae-sik, CEO of the Korea SMEs and Startups Distribution Center, said, “Small business owners are still facing difficulties due to the increasingly challenging economy, frozen domestic market, and the 3 highs (high interest rates, high inflation, and high exchange rates). We will do our best to support small business owners’ online sales channels by mobilizing all the capabilities our institution has.”

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