NAVER Happybean is teaming up with the Small Enterprise and Market Service to help small businesses in regional areas expand overseas sales. The program covers participation in export consultation events so that local companies that have grown through domestic crowdfunding can meet foreign buyers directly.
NAVER Happybean said on the 22nd that it is operating a joint pavilion for large and small firms, called the regional win-win pavilion, with the agency at the 2026 Export Boom-Up Korea event, held for two days from the 21st at KINTEX in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province. Six small businesses from Jeonbuk State and Jeju Special Self-Governing Province that took part in the Our Neighborhood Crowdfunding program are attending the event, which is hosted by the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA).
Our Neighborhood Crowdfunding is a program run by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups and the Small Enterprise and Market Service to help small businesses raise funds and find new sales channels. NAVER Happybean and the agency have used the program to connect small businesses in regional areas with consumers nationwide. This time, they are drawing on KOTRA's overseas network to introduce the participating companies' products to foreign buyers and create export opportunities.
Online sales support is running alongside the effort. The participating companies' products will be sold through a special promotion on NAVER Happybean's Gonggam Store, widening their reach among domestic consumers.
"We will help small businesses in our neighborhoods, which have met consumers across the country beyond regional boundaries, secure new growth engines in overseas markets as well," an official at NAVER Happybean said. "We will build a virtuous cycle in which expanding sales channels for regional brands leads to stronger local economies."
NAVER Happybean and the Small Enterprise and Market Service also plan to support the participation of eight companies from the Our Neighborhood Crowdfunding program at 2026 SEOUL FOOD in Bangkok, to be held in Bangkok, Thailand, on Dec. 2.