Gori (CEO Hyeon-seo Jeong) is a platform that supports users to continue their hobby classes for a long time without giving up halfway. It supports from the user's hobby selection stage to the next class during the hobby activity and after the hobby activity is finished. Currently, Gori provides a one-day ticket that allows you to experience a class without any burden before choosing a hobby class, and it plans to provide a class pass service that supports switch to another class even if you stop your hobby halfway in the future.

We conducted a virtual interview with CEO Hyeon-seo Jeong of Gori, a company selected for the 2021 Youth Startup SMART 2030.

Q1. Please explain the service and the development background

A. CEO Hyun-seo Jeong (CEO Jeong): It is said that more than 65% of people who attend paid hobby classes have low attendance or do not go at all after making payment. In fact, I also did not go to gym, yoga, and conversation classes that often. I determined that these dropouts were caused by a lack of information, absence of customer service, and the lure of long-term payments. I started this business thinking that if I could solve this problem, I would be able to solve the problem of giving up halfway.

Q2. What are the distinctive features of Gori that differentiate it?

A. CEO Jung: Our service is not a service that prevents users from giving up a hobby class, but rather a class that supports giving up halfway through. Users can select 3~5 classes through the Gori service, and if they want to switch classes from one of them, they can change within the selected class. This allows users to reduce the waste of money and time due to the wrong choice, and finally find the class that is right for him.

Q3. What is the market for the business sector and what are the future growth prospects?

A. CEO Jeong: One-day class platforms dominate the paid hobby market, and investment and sales for the one-day class platform are steadily increasing. However, in terms of the size of overall paid hobby market, long-term classes are dominant at about 80%. In other words, although the long-term class is huge in the overall market, active investments are made towards the one-day class. This is because long-term classes have difficulty to be sold on the platform. However, as Gori's class pass service can solve the long-term difficulty of class sales, such as the settlement problem and the distance between seller and buyer, our own market is expected to get a positive effect as the one-day class market grows.

Q4. Do you have any plans to enter overseas markets?

A. CEO Jeong: We hope to enter the Japanese market. In Japan’s hobby market, people try various hobbies that suit their aptitude from elementary school under the government’s effort. By combining these with our services, we would like to cooperate with the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs.

Q5. Please introduce to us if you have any future plans or major issues.

A. CEO Jeong: Our primary goals are to stabilize the system, secure class parameters, and secure a PR channel. First, system we aim to stabilize the system to ensure that the 'one-day ticket' currently in service can be operated normally even when many people and classes are applied. Since this will form the basis of the 'Class Pass' to be developed in the future, we aim to implement it stably.

Next, we aim to secure class parameters to acquire fixed sales and investment indicators. We will focus on securing class parameters by upgrading our sales system from the current one, which we believe will be the foundation of our business. Finally, our promotion channel will be used as a communication channel and to realize brand image.

In 2022, we plan to carry out the business with the above three goals and plan to proceed with the initial startup package and attract investment through this.

Meanwhile, Gyeonggi Content Agency, which runs Pangyo Gyeonggi Cultural Creation Hub, is supporting the '2021 Youth Startup SMART 2030' program to help young prospective entrepreneurs successfully start a business. For 8 years, 'Youth Startup SMART 2030' has been supporting the growth of prospective entrepreneurs who wish to start a business in the field of content convergence. The field of support is a wide range of content convergence fields such as publishing, film, music, content solution, design, ICT convergence, and manufacturing convergence. With the growing importance of the contents field worldwide, interest toward these businesses is also growing every year.