Design consultants help social startups navigate challenges

By Lee Min-young

Today's competitive business world demands a sharp strategy that hits the bullseye, especially in the startup world.

However, companies in their early days tend to direct their energy into just staying afloat, paying less attention to fixing minor hiccups that could throw the whole system into a tailspin.

To prevent that from happening, some external help can be useful in shaping their long-term strategy.

The Korea Institute of Design Promotion holds a performance-sharing event at Space Wadiz in Seoul, Dec. 15. Social startups shared the results of a five-month consulting program supported by the institute. Korea Times photo by Kim Kang-min

While Korea has seen a rapid growth in the number of entrepreneurs building social startups to resolve various social issues, it's true that most of them face a myriad of challenges and adversities along the way.

To provide practical support, the Korea Institute of Design Promotion (KIDP), a government-affiliated institute that implements national design policies and strategies, runs business consulting programs where experts provide professional business advice, from early-stage market research to the actual planning and execution of tasks.

As part of its efforts, the KIDP held a performance-sharing event at Space Wadiz in Seoul on Dec. 15. There, social startups shared their experiences and results after receiving a five-month business consulting service supported by the institute.

The event invited 20 social enterprises that had participated in the KIDP's 2021 Social Enterprise Design Consulting Program.

Consultants listen to presentations given by startup CEOs who received professional design consulting services. Korea Times photo by Kim Kang-min

After being assigned to each social enterprise, corporate consultants have been focusing on improving service design, evaluating the firms and identifying any potential issues to assist them in business model improvements, user experience, user interface and brand consulting.

Kim Jung-ok, CEO of Jeju Mami, a food company that use locally sourced produce from Jeju Island to revive the local economy and provide healthy food for its customers, said she needed the opportunity more than anything to better understand where the business needs to go.

Her business started out as a small firm run by four middle-aged women who just moved to the island as a career shift. While they have been focusing on producing quality food and creating brand recognition over the past four years, Kim was unsure whether her food business was heading in the right direction.

"I was thinking of ways to upscale our business by creating a strong brand, so we received brand consulting services. We ended up creating a great slogan to better express our company's vision and also came up with a new catchphrase. They advised us on the types of products we need to develop, and which farm produce to highlight, in a way that lives up to our new slogan and provides the best of what Jeju's culinary scene has to offer," Kim told The Korea Times at the event.

The event invited 20 social enterprises that had participated in the 2021 Social Enterprise Design Consulting Program. Korea Times photo by Kim Kang-min

Conducting customer analysis can be difficult for companies in their early stages. While it's crucial to draw an accurate picture of demand for their goods and services based on a concrete hypothesis, Seo Soo-jung, CEO of eco-friendly household supplies maker Barun Fingers, said she was struggling to understand her customers before receiving professional help.

"I have been vaguely assuming that our main customers were married women in their 30s. Now, we have identified a more specific demographic group, and after speaking to the people who fit this description, we realized that corporate employees in charge of purchasing office supplies could be an important client for us," Seo said. She also has been able to discover a new consumer group for her products after running surveys.

"We also discovered that there was clear demand for eco-friendly products that companies could hand out as gifts and promotional items. So we created a new eco-friendly product that was tailored specifically to this need."

Social enterprises could face more challenges than profit-driven ones as they, by nature, care more about improving health, safeguarding the environment and creating more economic opportunities rather than just earning a profit. However, KIDP says this does not mean they cannot build a profitable business model if they have the right tools for innovation and some professional help.

"Companies that are new to the market usually focus more on building 'hardware', which is the core product and system of a company, but we help them better utilize the 'software' design tools, so to speak, aimed at shoring up any weaknesses they may have," said Kim Yoo-jin, assistant manager at KIDP's Service Experience Design Division.

So far more than 130 social startups have received benefits, either funding or consulting services, from various support programs designed by KIDP since 2019.