‘Growing the Future of People and Businesses’ … Busan ‘Shoe Startup Youth Sujob Season 2’ Launches

Ministry of the Interior and Safety Re-selects Public Contest... Expanded Support for Shoe Startups and Job-Seeking Youth Through Additional Recruitment

Organizational chart for the Youth Shoe Startup Season 2 project promoted by Busan City.

[Asia Economy Yeongnam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Kim Yong-woo] This year’s project to nurture the future generation and startup companies in the footwear industry in the Busan area is set to begin.

Busan City, together with the Busan Economic Promotion Agency’s Footwear Industry Promotion Center, will utilize the startup cafe ‘Shoe in Cafe’ within the Advanced Footwear Convergence Hub Center to launch the ‘2021 Footwear Startup Youth Shoe-Job (shoe-job) Season 2 Project.’

The ‘Youth Shoe-Job’ project is a region-led youth employment initiative promoted by the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, which has been leading youth job creation in the Busan area since September 2019. Since its inception, it has been selected as an excellent case by the Ministry of the Interior and Safety and the Local Administration Research Institute for two consecutive years.

Support includes ▲providing promising footwear startup companies with startup space residency ▲matching unemployed youth under 39 years old with footwear startups for employment ▲supporting youth salaries (up to 90% monthly) ▲offering customized consulting, mentoring, job training, and industry networking programs to strengthen capabilities.

Until last year, Busan City conducted various pilot projects targeting 11 participating startups and 14 youths. Additionally, it held level-up planning meetings with the Footwear Center and participating companies to design and plan the ‘Youth Shoe-Job Season 2’ and made multifaceted efforts such as reapplying for the Ministry of the Interior and Safety’s contest, resulting in an expansion of the project volume with the re-selection of the contest project at the end of last year.

This year, additional startups and youths will be recruited, and the experience accumulated from pilot projects will be used to operate capability enhancement programs befitting ‘Season 2 Level-Up.’

Customized consulting for startup nurturing will be provided monthly, and the business cultural space function of the startup cafe ‘Shoe in Cafe’ will be expanded.

Furthermore, a professional marketer will be deployed to pioneer overseas export channels and prepare for non-face-to-face online order consultation meetings. A focused course including overseas buyer matching and catalog production will be operated in the first half of the year. Established footwear companies within the Hub Center will participate as mentors in a quarterly ‘Established-Startup Mentoring Day’ to jointly address startups’ difficulties.

In addition, a separate permanent class linked to the Ministry of Employment and Labor’s human resource development project, the ‘Footwear Industry Workforce Training Project,’ will be organized to nurture young footwear specialists through quarterly education.

For this footwear startup nurturing, the Footwear Center is publicly recruiting new participating companies and youths to join the ‘Youth Shoe-Job’ project.

The recruitment targets are prospective footwear entrepreneurs or existing startup companies within 7 years who wish to start a business in the Advanced Footwear Convergence Hub Center, with the recruitment period from January 18 to February 5.

For youth jobs, the target is unemployed youth under 39 years old who wish to work in footwear startups. Recruitment fields include marketing, web design, MD, online sales, brand management, etc., with the recruitment period from January 21 to February 10.

Shin Chang-ho, Director of the Future Industry Bureau of Busan City, said, “We hope for active participation in the ‘Youth Shoe-Job’ project to nurture the future generation and footwear companies of Busan, the footwear city.”

For more details, click on the Footwear Industry Promotion Center website.