Anyone can open a mall, and a shop that began as Asung

In an information age, the notes write, anyone can easily put up an internet shopping mall. Start-ups are encouraged, they say, because a small investment can create high added value, for a person and for a national economy. Buyers’ wants have diversified; an age of few varieties and small lots has arrived; and since the 1990s the market, in this telling, has moved from price competition toward quality and technical competition. The state has narrowed its intervention and supports small merchants. Young people, meanwhile, want not a simple office job but a firm of their own.

Into that weather they place Daiso Asung Industry, which began as Asung Industry in 1992 and took its place as Daiso Asung in 1997. It is, they write, Korea’s largest uniform-price shop for household goods — kitchenware, interiors, beauty and more. Sales in 2010 reached 460 billion won, after steady growth from 1997. That year’s figure stays in the window they give, not recast as a later official total.

A disputed ownership, and a CEO the paper will name

Who counts as founder is, the notes admit, a problem. Daiso Asung has been caught in a dispute over ownership with Japan, and some shares are in fact held by Japan’s Daiso Industry. This paper, looking at Daiso in the Korean market, treats the start-up as a kind of franchise and will regard the founder not as Japan’s Yano Hirotake but as the CEO they name Park Jeong-bu. From that representative’s greeting they take a pride in having dug only the one well of uniform-price household goods, a claim still to be a native Korean firm, and a market insight gained while supplying Japan’s Daiso: that Japan’s economic flow would be replayed in Korea five years later, so a 1,000-won shop would flourish. Those identifications are left as the notes write them.

Four elements, an inherent trade, and one-person households

A start-up, they write, needs four elements together: the founder and an entrepreneurial spirit; the item; funds; and a favourable trading area and site. The founder’s management and spirit affect a firm’s survival no less than item or funds. The item should be outstanding, leading, distinctive, and able to earn a proper return; Daiso’s everyday household goods, they say, belong to an inherent trade, a traditional line of goods people truly need. Funds and site are treated more briefly, as stable capital and a market of one-person households. The writer’s outlook is that pride, essential goods, stable capital and the rise of one-person households will support further growth. The same Korean report, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. The notes, a student start-up analysis of Daiso Asung Industry, with the 2010 sales figure and the naming of Park Jeong-bu left as the notes record them.

Last updated: 15 November 2026