Interview with the 4th 2017 Startup Express Winter Season Team
On ‘2017 Startup Express Winter Season’ held last December, enthusiastic and brilliant ideas were raised by pre-entrepreneurs at our Startup Institute. On this event organized by Startup researcher and Seung Myung-Ho Center for Entrepreneurship Education, the prizes went to △Brotherhood (1st prize) △Goody Scholars with Makeup (2nd prize) △Dreamary (3rd prize) △Picasso (special prize). We met for interviews with 3 startup teams from Iljin Center for Startup Incubation, located on level 2, KUBS Main Building.
makeup products for men
‘Grooming Peeps’, a new term for men who care about their appearance. (CEO=In-Yeop Park) targeted on male makeup products, which is a growing market. The team started their interview by saying “our goal is to develop an iconic brand in the male grooming and makeup market”.
came up with an idea that they produce a kit that contains half the size of regular BB creams and tinted lip balms. They put 2 products into one kit, thinking that their target consumer is male who is interested in makeup yet not familiar with. They said “we focused on what male consumer demands and what sort of issues they have in terms of makeup and grooming. In fact, quite a few of consumer care about their appearance but they do not know where to start. And in fact, it is expensive buying all the necessary products when you first start makeup. So we developed a product that comes with essential products in one kit so that the consumer can try each out”.
is working on context-specific marketing strategy. For example, on April they will release a makeup kit for job interview. The team continued, “We needed to come up with a smart marketing strategy, so we asked ourselves on what occasions men need makeup/grooming. Many of our friends are students who are looking for jobs, so we came up with ‘job interview’ makeup kit. Our coming up products are makeup kits for first-year university students, and for sports occasion”.
The team’s male members are trying on their product every day to test out their products. One of the members said “I am not a makeup kind of man honestly, but since I started putting makeup on, everyone has been commenting on me I look good. So I guess I can proudly present our products on the market”.
A Win-Win Service for Connecting Hairdressers and Clients
Ever thought about getting your hair done by Cheongdam-dong hairdressers for free? Apparently, it is possible if you use the service by (CEO=Geon-Woo Shim, Tae-Hoon Lee). Dreamary offers service that connects clients and apprentice hairdressers. thought it is a 'win-win' for both hairdressers and clients because it provides apprentice hairdressers with chances to practice, which can be assumed from their name “dreamary”.
It was brought up from CEO Tae-Hoon Lee’s own experience, “I have this friend of mine who was an apprentice hairdresser. Knowing that he needed as many chances to practice his skills, I let him do my hair for 5 years. That is how I came up with the business idea”.
acts as a mediated platform between clients and hairdressers. That is, once apprentice hairdressers register and pass the screening process, they are eligible to provide service to clients. On the other hand, clients must make a one-time payment of 3,000 KRW to register for the free service. CEOs added, “eligibility is determined by applicant’s license and work experience. Their service will be evaluated by the users’ review”.
is about to release their first website. If successful, they plan to develop a mobile application as well. The CEOs, Mr. Lee and Mr. Shim’s thorough market research and legwork made it possible to develop such structured business idea.
Their goal is to build a platform that is connecting other relevant beauty industries, nail products for example. is also thinking of creating a database of hairdressers and building a network, just like Linkedin. “In the future, we hope we would be able to support and give advice to starting businesses”, they added.
Managing data for contents creators
‘Contents Creation’ refers to the creation of a new form of arts or cultural product that is made on Multichannel Networks (MCN) such as YouTube and Africa TV. (CEO= Se-Ryung Lee, Business’14) paid attention to the audience’s huge interest in contents creators. Ms. Lee said, “I named after Picasso hoping that my business would achieve success in every dimension”.
collects, analyzes and visualizes data of contents creators. The members joined the team because of their interest in social media platforms (Africa TV, Twitter, YouTube) as well as their belief in their success.
“I visited my family on New Year’s holiday, and I saw my 10 years old cousin watching toy reviews on YouTube. I was fascinated by the fact that the MCN market is growing.”
makes sure to analyze the information of subscribers. They collect and categorize data of subscribers by gender, preference, nationality and so on, and sell their data analysis to business on the market. “We hope we could match the most appropriate channel to business. The key is to provide accurate data analysis to our clients” they added.
is now in a phase of data collection and web server construction. As soon as they visualize their front-end data, they are all set. “Hopefully we will start our service within a month. We cannot wait to get feedback from customers, and work it out from there too.”
