[Content Commerce] Africa-Traversing Travel YouTuber's Secret to Selling Glasses

Travel Creator 'TeddyYeohaenggi'
Running a Travel YouTube Channel While Working as an Optician
Creating Content from Travels to 77 Countries
Also Operating an Eyewear E-commerce Business During Travels
Utilizing 'YouTube Shopping Exclusive Store'

"You are truly a 'real' travel YouTuber. Thank you for creating videos that show how local Africans live."

The YouTuber 'TeddyYeohaenggi' visited a village of the Samburu tribe, a traditional tribe in Kenya, last November. Traveling far from the capital Nairobi, he stayed for a day in a traditional Samburu house and experienced their way of life. Subscribers who saw the video of the African indigenous people's dwelling, which is usually hard to encounter, expressed amazement.

Im Seung-bae, CEO of Teddy Travel. [Photo by Cafe24]

TeddyYeohaenggi (real name Lim Seung-bae) is a travel creator with 210,000 subscribers. He creates content introducing local areas while traveling around the world. Besides the video of staying in the Samburu tribe’s house, he also highlights Korean missionaries volunteering in the slums of the Dasmarinas area in the Philippines and spends a night in the desert, vividly conveying everything from simple tourist spots to local lifestyles. Especially, a video showing him being invited by a local K-pop fan in Ukraine before the war and being served Korean food surpassed 3.3 million views.

Although he is now active as a travel creator, Lim’s original profession was an optician. Before starting as a creator, he worked as an optician in an eyeglass store for five years. Feeling the work was exhausting and less rewarding, he quit his job and set off on a world trip.

Uploading videos on YouTube was not initially intended for becoming a creator. At first, he filmed videos solely to record his travels, but after uploading them on YouTube, they rapidly gained popularity. This led him naturally to become a full-time creator. Recently, he also appeared on TV travel entertainment programs, gaining more recognition. On his TeddyYeohaenggi channel, you can find over 860 video contents covering travel stories from 77 countries.

Lim explained, "Being an optician is one of the professions where changing jobs is relatively easy. Since I didn’t build a long career in one place, I thought I could open my own business or get hired elsewhere and return whenever I wanted, so I boldly started traveling. Then, seeing the positive reactions from viewers who liked my content on YouTube, I felt it was an opportunity and decided to switch to full-time."

Recently, leveraging his optician experience, he ventured into e-commerce. He opened the 'TeddyYeohaenggi' store and sells various products such as glasses, lenses, cleaning solutions, and anti-fog sprays within his YouTube channel. He naturally connects content and commerce by using photos of himself wearing the products for sale or featuring the products in his video content.

However, to produce travel content, which is his main job, he must constantly travel. Despite the ongoing overseas travel schedule, the reason he could enter the e-commerce business was Cafe24’s 'YouTube Shopping Dedicated Store.' Unlike other direct-to-consumer (D2C) stores, it allows easy construction of a YouTube shopping-dedicated store.

Lim said, "It was convenient because I didn’t need to set up a separate shopping mall; I just registered the products to sell and linked them directly to my operating YouTube channel and content to start selling immediately. Creators don’t have to say much; products can be naturally exposed alongside the content. Also, I thought I had differentiated products, so there was no reason not to start the business."

Lim’s future goal is to create his own eyewear brand. He added, "Even though I just started the business, I was amazed to see purchases happening. In the future, I’m considering ways to naturally connect review content and travel products for sales. Thanks to my experience as an optician and selling online, I can offer good products at affordable prices. If the business goes well, I want to create and sell my own brand of glasses in the long term."