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There is an online shopping mall called 'Let's Buy Value' that the Ministry of SMEs and Startups created two years ago for small business owners. It was found that 5.5 billion won of money went into it, but the operation was so bad that the businesses that entered the store could hardly raise sales.



Correspondent Han Sang-woo.



<Reporter> This is



'Let's Buy Value', an Internet shopping mall exclusively for domestic small business owners.



From furniture to home appliances and stationery, more than 2,000 companies have entered the store and are selling a variety of products.



It was created by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups in 2019 to develop a market for small business owners, and the sales commission is 3% of sales, which is much cheaper than private shopping malls, which average 13%.



However, it has been two years since its launch, and the sales performance is embarrassing to say.



From January to August of this year, the average monthly sales of the entire shopping mall were 112 million won, and the average company was 54,000 won.



Even this is only 39,000 won per company, excluding June and July, when sales increased due to the Korean accompanying sale.



One in three stores has not made any sales since opening.



[Responsible for entering the store: Because sales are not actually made, because of that… .]



Home appliances from the US and manufactured goods from China are sometimes sold for domestic small business owners.



This is because companies that sell imported goods are not filtered out.



The government budget for building this shopping mall was 5.5 billion won.



There was hardly any marketing activity that only made it, strengthened the link with private shopping malls, or informed consumers.



[Ja-Geun Koo / Rep. of People's Power (National Assembly Living Self-Defence Committee): This is a typical case of wasted budget wartime administration that spends billions of won in taxes and pays nothing to help small businesses at all.

We need to abolish the business itself and come up with a proper plan to open up new markets.] The



Ministry of SMEs and Startups said that it would come up with a plan to activate it, saying that it is having difficulties due to insufficient advertising and PR budgets.



(Video coverage: Kang Dong-cheol, video editing: Lee Seung-yeol)