[대한뉴스=송지영 기자] Recently, the grown-ups who are going for karaoke or drinking have changed to find something new to play. Some people are looking for a place like a café where they can play computer games in their childhood and play a mobile toy handled by the manual and spending time all day by doing them.
We call them a ‘Kidult’ and they love to play things that they used to play in their childhood. A market for them is growing up very fast and becoming a new trend, these days. It means people who like to assemble things and control and even collect them have places to go for their hobbies. As for CEO Hong-Sin, Lee of DROGEN Corporation was accidently finding out an item that everybody can play despite of aging and finally settled down to the drone business.
Firstly, what is a drone is a flight vehicle looking like a small airplane or helicopter no needing a driver only by a radio wave. Today, it is used for a military purpose by putting some weapons on. Depending on the goal, drones are various in sizes and functions and manufactured. It is not only for military but also for personal hobby in a tiny scale. Many are already commercialized and the variety of using is expanding. CEO Hong-Sin, Lee of DROGEN Corporation was studying for math in the university and working for a teacher in Daechi-dong as EBS math lecture and he was quite famous.
But, he got a car accident and couldn’t work for 2 years and 6 months. He was doing the RC car club on the weekends and saw now-director of the board being good at drone skillfully by chance. It made him learn how to play the drone and asked him how to do. He gave him some emails to buy the drone. It took 2 months to deliver and 3 months to get instruction and eventually 6 month to complete everything, however, the drone was broken in 5 seconds and it was shocking. Out of that experience, he decided to make drones easily and strongly. Like that, she started technique development in 2013 seriously and established DROGEN Corporation in 2015 to manufacture sports drone. As he researched and developed, he figured the pros and cons and then started to modify them into industrial design. Until the end of 2014, his company started redesigning drones without soldering. When a hobby club has been launched in January 2015, he got orders hundreds of drones and had lectures in an institute for making up for the money for materials. In a tiny little place in Ilsan, he and his partners made them with 200 million won, but nobody invested on them in the beginning. That was a harsh time on his memory.
He said, “Back then, to have some talented people to work with such as person from an overseas president, cousin who worked for 17 years at Korean Airline etc, I kept meeting them at least, three times and begged. Finally, they could be with me and it became a driving force to make this company grow quickly. And, I really appreciated them.” According to the statistics of the world, the scale of drones dollars in 2023 as predicted. CEO Lee mentioned, “Now, the market of sports drones is expanding from the racing. Usually, people are taking videos or photos in the air by that, but it would be more requested more into racing drones. From the end of last year, the number of selling was overtaking; many owners of drones in the nation are registering the competitions.”
The number of the registered companies that can produce, sell and make some profits is about 20~30 and it is a small industry yet. Even though, he thinks the future of this is bright. Yet, he is aware of overwhelming Chinese growth, which is occupying the world market. By that, his company has technologies to manufacture from motors to screws now but he will try to keep being competitive with price policy and modeling so, his company has a goal for more than half of capturing in this filed in the Chinese market of 1.2 trillion won in 3 or 4 years later afterwards.
Creating a multi-cultural place of drone throughout a cafe
<Café Drogen> was originally for RC franchise but when he saw people who were working on that days and nights, he wanted to sell coffee with thinking over their hardworking and it was a motivation. This Café is using the best beans from Café Hane that is one of best cafes in Apkujeong and roasting the beans. Therefore, there is no weird odor and they are making exquisite coffee in balance. It has been three months to sell to everybody now and initially the profit was 30,000 won but currently, it is getting popular to make the profit of 30, 400,000 won per day. Thanks to that, there are many people who want to be a franchiser and it is about 100 places now. For the first time, they will plan to expand their business structure that is nothing with the food industry to design a multi-cultural place as the 3rd industry in Songdo, Incheon. However, it would be by way of showing as example and expand the business up to 30 spots next year. <Café Drogen> wants to be not only providing food but also being a bridge for anybody to be able to get the drone by destroying the existing distribution sales to a mass production.
Also, the biggest goal is to make the place as a communication tool for young students, especially elementary school students for the future in a multi cultural place. Actually, they are doing the racing competition with about 100 million won for top twice per year but got no support from outside. So, it happened the number of operators was more than the number of candidates but lately, it was solved out. The second competition is on 4th November and thousands of people would be in. the scale is the top third and by that CEO Lee of DROGEN Corporation said, “Eventually, we have to make efforts to discover national talented people in terms of making a great touristic programs and we can have a fine future in the drone industry when they are up to the top level in the world. I hope Korea would be the center of the drone field and could make it to the national interest.”
Differentiated affinity to the staff leads to make more profits
DROGEN Corporation recently moved to a big place which size is about 340 py is like a fun workplace but cares about employee’s working conditions and welfare system. There are 10 corporation cars and he would change his car into a smaller car since he feels the current car is uncomfortable. He is quite humble as much as he is using pubic transportations. “My employees get paid but there is none to give the salary.”
The attendance time for working is 10am but there is no certain time to leave work. Besides, if someone is sick he/she doesn’t need to ask for a day-off or a half-day off at all. Even if interviewee for working is dressed up, she/he would be failed to get a job here. Like this, this company feels so free. Also, there are cafeterias to be efficient and is a backyard where pets are running. When he has to give his desk to a newbie or staff, he does gladly. From his attitude like that, we could see his affinity for his workers. The promotion system of DROGEN Corporation is different from other companies and it comes from German style. There is no job title. There are divided into only employees who can join the company’s policies and employees who cannot join them. However, there are 4 grades such as T (Technical control officer), B (Bridge maker), S (Senior) and J (Junior). The board of directors is 8 executive members but some are promoted. Among the general workers, they give a promotion for 1 or 2 people who have a loyalty, and then they can take parts in company policies meetings except for a general meeting for stockholders.
Now, three who were general workers at the start got promoted and one more this year got promoted. The reason why he is setting up like this is helping his objective decision and for the company in the long term. CEO Hong-Sin, Lee of DROGEN Corporation is supposed to launch a brand for practical clothing, goggle and helmet to give them employees considering their safety sooner or later. On the other hand, he created a drone insurance sticker, which is if anybody buys their products, then they can automatically get the insurance for 6 months.
Standing in the center of the development, DROGEN
CEO Hong-Sin, Lee of DROGEN Corporation showed his lofty plan, “Now, we have 60 members from 2 corporations composed of 52 and others from China branch. When opening Daegu and R&D, it would be about 200. And we are establishing R&D institutes in Hong-Kong, Sinchon and the states and the value of them are up to 600 billion top. Thinking of increasing the value, we are currently an unlisted company but expecting next year. And, we are planning to merge with other unlisted company that we need to make drones for one-stop manufacturing system and do the win-win share with a processing company and company for sensor.
He added, “So far, we have made a platform to make drones for sports, video taking and special industrial use but have a shortage of competition with other companies that have huge money. So, we will make our line divided and special to be professional by each department with a goal to hire 150 people, I believe.” He talked about there was difficulty because there was no emergency line since they deputed a task to other factory. Therefore, they are building up the line for urgent orders. He has many goals including some things and said, “The finish of manufacturing toy droens in Vietnam would be done until March or April next year, I suppose. It would make profits to sell over 600 thousands per year, expectedly. And, by cultivating Incheon for sports and airline drones and other locations for industrials, I would like to launch 400kg weight of attractors by the year after next year.” He was pondering many ways of niche market of drones and possibility of development. On the other hand, he gave one hit on the way to approach things with software mind. “Although they once invest on the money for R&D the value of the future would be higher but most of Korean drone companies are thinking of the current value and there are many to assemble drones like PC. They say that they would develop beyond the overseas companies after making the money in that way. However, there is no improvement since they are doing the same thing every day.” He was sorry for that they have no adventurous ambitions. Lastly, he addressed, “Because of a start-up company, we are very sensitive about leaking materials or techniques. I think we would reward with better products if people are just looking and being interested if we are keeping and managing.” DROGEN Corporation is that making from screws to propellers monopolistically made in Korea and focusing on building up the nationalized market. DRON GENERATION means a generation for drones but ‘drugs’ in German as well. For now, we hope they would suck interesting fun play cultures addictively like drugs to be a great cornerstone to make the best drone country not only IT industry.
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