🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

The TOPS program fits within a wider national strategy

• Its goal of reaching 3,500 businesses serves as a narrow slice of a larger government push to help small firms stay competitive as online distribution habits change.
• The ministry’s 2025 ‘Small Business Online Sales Channel Support Project’ plans to support up to 100,000 small business owners 1.
• The same agenda also targets digital inclusion through one-on-one, on-site training for small business owners plus other digitally vulnerable people aged 50 or older 1.
• Work beyond e-commerce includes the ‘OpenData X AI Challenge,’ which backs startups that use public data to build AI-based solutions for the public, including small businesses 2.

This public-private approach can connect to commercialization and export support

• TOPS can serve as a feeder route that spots strong small businesses and moves them toward larger national support tracks.
• In Busan, firms picked through a city-level effort later won KRW 60 million in commercialization funding after clearing the first round of the Ministry of SMEs and Startups’ 2025 ‘Strong Small Business’ audition 3.
• Its attention to sectors such as beauty matches national export goals, since cosmetics helped drive record-high SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) exports in 2025 4.
• Private platform companies surface promising online sellers, then government programs and funding help them grow with room for international expansion.