Part 1 Start

Hello. I am **Mike Choi**, the CEO of KAZUA, a professional sports brand specializing in soccer and futsal. Simply put, I am one of those people who find it very interesting to see how **'work methods'** or traditional work methods combined with new artificial intelligence technologies can increase work productivity and efficiency, and how customers can receive the best service or gain what they want through this, leading to a more fulfilling life experience.

With the rapid development of various artificial intelligence technologies, I believe that the **‘sportswear and equipment’** brand market I am in will also see more and more companies seriously considering how to increase their productivity and work efficiency by utilizing these AI technologies.

In the future, I would like to discuss with you on durumis how AI can help us live our lives as a ‘hobby- turned-career’ in the ‘leisure and sports’ area, which is something humans need and find meaningful, rather than taking away human jobs in the market KAZUA is in.

Sportswear DTP Business, Part of PoD Business

First of all, ‘KAZUA,’ a professional soccer and futsal brand in South Korea, primarily provides services that involve receiving bulk orders for DTP (Direct-to-garment) uniforms, customizing them according to the customer’s request, producing them, and delivering them to the team with a meticulous packaging.

The printing method allows for almost any design to be freely created according to the customer’s (team) request, so it is a method that allows for the production of each uniform with a different design and name in single units, without the expensive process of applying badges (rubber and embroidery), adding numbers and names, which would be required with pre-made patterned uniforms. Broadly speaking, it is a PoD (Print On Demand) type of business, and in South Korea, this type of business model that produces and sells clothes and goods using the PoD method is still in its infancy. However, the PoD market is growing rapidly overseas, and research institutions predict that the market size will reach $39.4 billion by 2030, or about 50.29 trillion won in Korean currency, with an annual growth rate of 26.1%. The PoD market is showing continuous growth both domestically and internationally, with a growing demand.

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(The projected growth of the PoD market in the Asia-Pacific region is CAGR - 27.9%)

However, the experience I’ve gained while running KAZUA’s sports uniform PoD service didn’t quite feel as progressive as the market size itself suggests. As I mentioned in the previous article, the ordering and work method still follows the ‘traditional work method,’ and I have found that this work method has the problem of ‘time’ endlessly increasing whenever a ‘problem’ arises in each part of the process, which goes from customer→PoD company→production plant→PoD company→customer. To solve this problem, a solution for ‘increasing productivity and work efficiency’ was absolutely necessary, and I thought that the first solution to try would be with the help of ‘artificial intelligence technology.’ If the problem is a two-way process, it is even more important to seek technological help. I believe AI technology can provide new help in this area.

Returning to the topic of **‘custom soccer uniform’** production, the most important thing in the realm of ‘customization’ today is **‘customer communication’**. And the question is how to open a channel of communication with customers and how to seamlessly guide them through the process without any inconvenience until they reach the **‘GOAL (completion of production)’**. Since there are a variety of customers, there are also a variety of communication methods that go with it. The communication method that KAZUA currently uses and pursues is the ‘online channel.’ We communicate with customers through chat consulting for customer consultation, sharing information about design drafts, completion of production, and **After Service**. Thankfully, the flow of the times has given customers experience with this method, and I believe that customers are also feeling comfortable with it based on their experience.

In Part 2, we will focus more on how to reduce the number of steps in customer communication and increase productivity to upgrade our PoD service.

Thank you for reading.

[KAZUA - Mike Choi]

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