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Today, we’ll introduce PowerfulX, a company that has combined sports and beauty to explore a new market. Let’s hear from company CEO Park In-cheol. 

PowerfulX has an ambitious goal of becoming the world’s leading sports and beauty brand. The company figures out exactly what consumers want and reflect it in its products. Its signature product is a muscle recovery cream, which is better known as the Park Chan-ho cream. Only South Korea and Japan have hosted all of major sporting events such as summer and winter Olympics, the Asian Games and the World Cup. But there’s no specific sports brand representing Korea. PowerfulX is the world’s first company to seek the combination of sports and beauty. 

Established in 2014, PowerfulX has created a new business model and opened up the sports and beauty market—something that had never been found before. The company boldly tapped this unexplored market under Park’s leadership. 

20 years ago, when there were no portal operators like Naver in Korea, I was greatly interested in the Internet and PC communications services. I was one of founding members of an online advertising agency, which has now become a publicly listed company named Nasmedia. I also created a leisure portal site called Netports, through which users could make reservations for accommodations, ski resorts and plane tickets via the Internet. Two decades ago, it was a pretty new concept, probably the world’s first Internet reservation service. The business was a great success. Later, I co-founded Pandora TV, a video-sharing website, and conducted various other businesses related to information technology. 

While I was working as a marketing director at Daewoong Pharmaceutical Company, former major leaguer Park Chan-ho proposed selling a pain relief cream in cooperation with the pharmaceutical company. After examining the cream, however, the company concluded that it lacked marketability and rejected the proposal. But I had a different idea. I had a firm belief that consumers would definitely want an odorless yet effective pain relief medication and that the company dismissed its market potential just because such a product had never existed before. In that cream, I saw the hidden needs of consumers. I bravely left the company and started my own business with 50 million won five years ago. That’s how PowerfulX started. 

Park is a risk-taker. He was eager to tap unexplored opportunities, as seen in his contribution to creating various new firms such as an online advertisement firm, which later became none other than Nasmedia. Nasmedia is the largest digital media lab in Korea and the first-ever Internet travel reservation platform and Pandora TV, which marked a milestone in video-sharing business. 

He turned his eyes to sports and beauty as the next target. When he happened to see a muscle recovery cream named after Park Chan-ho, the first Korean-born major leaguer, he knew by intuition that it would be a whole new product that would meet the needs of customers. 

The so-called Park Chan-ho cream was developed here in Korea from what he had used in the U.S. I thought it would be selling well if it was supplemented with some scientific elements. Six months after I started my business, I took over the business from Park and redeveloped the cream using fine ingredients and pharmacological technology. 

Then I let people actually use it so I could remedy any shortcomings and maximize its benefits. As promotion venues, I chose highway rest stops, where countless drivers stop by. I let them use the cream and listened to their opinions for six years to make the best-quality product that has now gained worldwide recognition. 

The recovery cream developed by PowerfulX had been used by Park Chan-ho in the 1990s when he played in Major League Baseball in the U.S. It helps ease pain and stiffness in the shoulders, neck, wrists, back and knees. The thing is, the product, used only by professional athletes, would not guarantee market success. 

In order to create a pain relief cream that can be used by everyone, PowerfulX focused on developing an odorless cream that could be easily absorbed into the skin without a sticky feel. Through extensive research and repeated clinical testing, the company upgraded the product every three months. As a result, it was able to develop a product that does not smell but still generates heat by only using glucosamine and MSM, unlike conventional recovery creams that contain menthol and capsaicin substances. The company then came up with a unique marketing channel to reach out to potential consumers. 

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I wondered how to meet as many people as possible to promote our product, and I thought about motorway service stations. But most people around me objected to the idea, saying that people drop by highway rest stops simply to grab a bite to eat or go to restrooms. They told me that the service areas were just not the right place to sell the product. But I was confident that among five people who have ever used the cream, at least one would purchase it. High service stations turned out to be a unique marketing channel to enhance brand recognition and even increase sales. 

PowerfulX was so confident about its product that it was willing to allow consumers to return it within a year if they found it ineffective. In addition to highway rest areas, the company provided samples to public bathhouses, beauty shops and sporting competitions to let many more people experience the product. PowerfulX also promoted the cream at markets, fishing villages and mines for many manual workers to try. 

The marketing strategy proved successful, leading to skyrocketing sales. Now, PowerfulX sells more than 1 million muscle recovery creams each year. The cream also attracts great attention outside the country, recording sales worth 18-thousand US dollars in a single day at a foreign exhibition. The company supplies its products to various foreign countries such as China, Vietnam, Russia and the U.S. 

Famous sports brands such as Nike and Adidas do not know well about beauty, while global beauty companies like L’Oreal know little about sports. My company’s goal is to become the world’s first and best company in the new market where sports and beauty come together. Another goal is to sponsor all national teams in Korea so members of the national teams will wear uniforms marked with our emblem. As a global sports & beauty brand, we aim to become a major sponsor here in Korea within three years and abroad within five years so athletes of other countries will also play with uniforms with our emblem. I’m sure we can fulfill that goal. 

PowerfulX has already unveiled various other new products that customers have wanted but no one has ever produced, such as an adhesive, elastic and easy-to-use athletic tape product and a golf ball liner with a built-in cartridge capable of drawing putting lines in just a second. 

To promote the development of innovative products, the company has given the title of “team leader” to all employees and provides each of them with 9,000 US dollars annually to encourage them to attempt anything new. Indeed, each and every one of the company workers exerts unlimited imagination to lead innovation.