Chomnad Thongkamsopa, an expat from Thailand, was assigned to the Seoul branch of her company nine years ago. Now, with help from the “Trade Academy” program offered by Seoul Global Center, she runs her own business.

After being transferred to Seoul almost a decade ago, Chommad saw potential in the booming online e-commerce industry in Korea and sought a job at a local company to capture the rapidly changing trends. She began to work for a company which supports local online shopping malls heading into overseas markets, and had created a global business division at the point of hiring the Thai employee.

Chomnad soon began to consider running her own online e-commerce company and took the opportunity to participate in an e-commerce training course offered by the Seoul Global Center.

Chomnad said the course gave her a boost of confidence. With this training, years of experience and fluency in Korean, she was able to start her own company, “PK Korea Plus.” 

“A foreigner cannot easily purchase goods in a wholesale transaction in Korea. Many domestic businesses are not willing to do business with foreigners, and tend to reject business offers unless they are in large quantities. However, some SMEs that I directly met at the forum were very cooperative in allowing me to use their product images and content and accepted small quantity orders.” Her online store is now on Lazada, the largest e-commerce portal in Southeast Asia.

The Seoul Global Center has been offering a “Trade Academy” program for international residents in Seoul. Marking its second anniversary, the academy provides education on trade and e-commerce business, one-on-one consulting, business matching with domestic manufacturers, onsite practices, and follow-up programs. The trade academy provides access to free training and education and gives SMEs in Seoul an opportunity to promote and sell their products to those newly trained global marketers. 

Suh Tae-young, a member of the consulting group of the Seoul Business Agency, is acting as a mentor at the Seoul Global Center’s Trade Academy.

“A total of 660 trainees, including 182 this year, have completed trade-related educational course since 2015, and all of them are very grateful for this well-run course that gives them significant help in understanding how the trade business works, and none have expressed any regrets,” he said.

“Above all, select a business that you know best, can do best, and are interested in. In that way, your business is likely to have a low probability of a failure,” he added.

To find more information about the trade academy for expats, contact the Seoul Global Center at (02)2075-4180 or visit the website http://global.seoul.go.kr. (khnews@heraldcorp.com)