There are many barriers when starting up an on-line shopping mall, but the barriers are becoming fewer. In turn, on-line shopping malls have continuously cropped up in the past three years. More people in their 10's , 40's and 50's have turned up as owners of on-line shopping malls, which have been dominantly set up by people in their 20's.
On Dec 13th, Simple X Internet (a Korean-based IT company) running café 24 (its web-hosting service) said, "The number of Internet shopping malls have been on the rise, hitting 71,000 this year, up 22.4% from 58,000 in 2007. This shows that the rush to on-line start-ups, on the heels of last years' global financial turmoil, have yet to lose momentum."
One of the most intriguing trends of the past three years is a continued rise in the number of teenage owners, with a 7.6% increase this year, which is almost four times higher than the growth of 1.9% in 2007. As vocational high schools started to offer classes in e-commerce and educational materials on how to start an on-line shopping mall grew in volume, more high school students or graduates that have jumped on the bandwagon.
For instance, Café 24 has given a helping hand to students by gratuitously distributing "schoolmall", an educational shopping mall solution designed to give students an idea of what it would be like to set up a shopping mall and how to run it on their own.
Moreover, the performance of owners in their 40's and 50's is also, noteworthy. A majority of them are men, who are characterized by liberal-spiritedness and free lifestyles and some of whom are just as hip as young people.
