On a spring morning in April 2006, a phone call came into our KTV EU Office in Karben, Germany. It was an executive from Roadstar Switzerland's headquarters. After brief greetings, what he said was short:
"Let's set up an SKD assembly plant in Italy together."
To understand the weight of that single sentence, we have to go back eleven years.
1995 — Two People at the Same Table
When EU anti-dumping tariffs struck the Korean TV industry in 1995, the one small live point remaining for KEC was Roadstar Switzerland's distribution network for sub-10-inch mobile TVs. TVs of 14 inches and larger were effectively blocked from the EU market, but the smaller segment was still alive — and Roadstar held the pan-European channel for it.
We had two choices.
One was to maximize short-term advantage — use the reduced supply as leverage to raise prices and demand more favorable terms from Roadstar. Crises are often used this way.
The other was to pass through it together. To design a Korea–Philippines–EU triangle trade structure that bypassed the tariffs for 14-inch-and-larger TVs, while guaranteeing Roadstar stable supply and competitive pricing. Our margin would shrink, but the partner's burden would shrink with it.
We chose the second path. As the third-year salesman at KEC's TV Division responsible for that account, I judged that squeezing a partner during a crisis was not what sales meant.
1995–2005: Trust Built by the Current
Over the next ten years, our trade with Roadstar never stopped.
When the 1997–98 IMF crisis drove the Korean won to 1,900 per US dollar, our price competitiveness exploded — and Roadstar was the most direct beneficiary of that current. The decision to share the burden during the crisis returned as profit fastest during the upturn.
The 2002 spin-off into KTV Global Corporation did not break the relationship. Even as the Korean entity changed, the trade commitments continued. Not once did Roadstar play the card of "we are reviewing other Korean suppliers." That was their way of returning the favor.
In 2005 I established the KTV EU Office in Karben/Niederwöllstadt, Germany, with a partner production base at Elimex GmbH. Roadstar became a stable revenue pillar from year one, helping us reach €2 million per month within the first twelve months.
April 2006 — The Reversal of Position
And then came that spring phone call.
"Let's set up an SKD assembly plant in Italy together."
Eleven years earlier, we had been the ones asking. In a blocked market, we depended on their distribution network for the small surviving channel through which our product could pass. To Roadstar back then, KEC was "one of the Korean suppliers."
What they proposed in 2006 was not simply a larger order. It was an offer to co-invest, co-bear the risk, and build a local production base in Italy together. SKD (Semi-Knocked Down) assembly in Italy would carry "Made in Italy" country-of-origin — permanent immunity to anti-dumping shocks from outside. More importantly, it was no longer a buyer-supplier relationship. It was the offer of a joint venture.
The graph of the relationship had reversed direction in eleven years.
What That Proposal Set in Motion
After receiving that offer, I made the decision that shaped the next phase of my career. In late 2006 I established Jung Consulting Ltd. in the UK with a Niederlassung in Germany, deepening the relationships with Roadstar and other European partners into a more substantial advisory base. Over the next ten years, Roadstar remained one of Jung Consulting Ltd.'s core clients.
The larger outcome — larger than the Italy SKD plan itself — was that the proposal redirected the second half of my career. The shift from operator to advisor was made possible by the bridge of trust that one partner had built, eleven years after a shared crisis.
For Today's Korean SMEs — Thirty Years Later
Two messages from this story still apply today.
First, do not squeeze your partners during a crisis. Reducing their burden means reducing your own margin in the short term. It can look like wasted selling effort. But partners remember everything. The memory that lies dormant during good times reactivates fastest when the next crisis — or the next big opportunity — arrives. Transactional restraint during a crisis is not a cost. It is an investment in the next chapter of business.
Second, big deals do not begin as big deals. They begin as small deals in which trust gets verified. In 1995 we kept the relationship alive through the small category of sub-10-inch mobile TVs. That small trade returned eleven years later as an offer to build a factory together. Many Korean SMEs cut their EU partner relationships because "small deals are a waste of time." That judgment is what closes the largest opportunities in advance.
I run my current ICT partner relationships on the same principle. The margin this quarter matters less than the relationship ten years from now.
There is always a way. And the way often opens through someone who walked beside you eleven years ago.