Type ‘sweet potato snacks’ into the search bar of an online shopping mall and a string of similar-looking products appears. Prices differ by hundreds to thousands of won. Consumers compare price before ingredients, and small companies face a reality in which they must explain price rather than quality.

Amid this, there is a small company that has recorded cumulative sales of 17 million units with sweet potato snacks. It is Growid, maker of ‘Real Iguma’ and ‘Ppaeppae Guma’. Although it opened the market, CEO Im Joo-young does not flaunt the word ‘originator’. She knows the weight of the ‘responsibility’ behind it.

‘A venture born from maternal inconvenience’

Her start-up idea did not come from a grand business plan. It began in the everyday life of an ordinary mother raising two children.

One day in 2019, while waiting for her older child to finish academy classes and feeding her younger one boiled sweet potato and banana, she wondered, ‘Could I keep the advantages of the whole ingredient while making it easier to feed?’ That small question became the starting point of the sweet potato snack ‘Real Iguma’, which would later reach cumulative sales of 17 million units.

Ironically, Im had originally worked far from the food industry. At school she worked as a counseling teacher, and at a hospital as a rehabilitation psychology counselor, doing work to understand the human mind. Yet she believed, “What a person eats and what a person sees is ultimately connected to the mind,” and that interest naturally led to food.

While working, she studied raw food and smoothies and obtained related certifications, and after she began raising children, she became a parent who carefully checked ingredient lists and country of origin. The more she studied food, however, the more disappointed she felt with products on the market. She also learned that many parents shared similar concerns. The idea of making products she could feed her own children with confidence thus took shape naturally.

But making a product and being recognized by the market were different matters. She had no budget for advertising and no brand known to consumers. She also lacked certainty that what she made would succeed in the market. Even so, holding fast to the initial aim of creating snacks she wanted to give her own children, she devoted herself to development, and that small idea from daily life became the beginning of a brand chosen by many consumers.

“If it did not work out, our relatives and we would just eat it all; that really was how I felt (laughs).”

On the day the first production began, she visited not only the manufacturing plant but also the packaging plant herself. She stood for a long time watching packaging printed with her brand come off the machine sheet by sheet. She wanted to see with her own eyes the moment when an idea in her head became a real product.

Contrary to expectations, consumer response came quickly. Word spread through group purchases and social media, followed by reviews calling it ‘a snack you can give without guilt’. She did not treat consumer reactions as mere evaluations. When product photos were posted, she personally left comments and expressed thanks. She looked at what people liked and what fell short, and the voices that accumulated in this way became the most important material for developing the next products.

“At that time, I mostly felt I was meeting parents like me. What they shared ultimately became the foundation for improving the products.”

Development of a first-in-Korea product… dreaming of K-sweet potato snacks

As ‘Real Iguma’ was gaining a foothold, Im took on another challenge. Noting that children like long, thin stick-shaped snacks, she planned ‘Ppaeppae Guma’, the first churros-style sweet potato sticks in Korea. She explained, “It was not simply about adding another product, but an attempt to propose a new form of sweet potato snack.”

However, with nothing to reference, everything had to be created from scratch. She laboriously produced a new forming mold, but that was not the end. With 100% whole sweet potato, even a slight change in thickness made it break easily, and extending the length changed the texture. To realize a form easy for children to hold and eat, she worked with partners for more than a year, repeating tests and inching toward answers.

“I heard over and over, ‘This should be good enough now.’ If we had added additives, the manufacturing process probably would not have been this grueling. But I wanted to hold to the philosophy of ‘Can I feed this to my own child?’ to the very end.”

In the end, while maintaining 100% whole sweet potato and ensuring safety, she applied retort sterilization for the first time in the industry and even redesigned the manufacturing process. Success, however, did not remain a simple joy for long. Once ‘Ppaeppae Guma’ drew a response in the market, similar products were released one after another. Online, price was compared before product differentiation. Creating new ideas and defending their value both fell to her.

Im said, “To build a new market, we invest first in R&D and equipment, but once marketability is proven, companies with greater capital and distribution networks move in quickly. This is the biggest reality facing small food companies,” adding, “As a product becomes better known, the chance to explain ‘why it costs a little more’ seems to shrink instead.”

Even so, she did not lower her standards. Some products were shelved when the price rose too high in the process of improving completeness, and in many cases development was halted because she could not accept the use of additives, but the principles were kept. She said, “Anyone can follow a trend. But to become a brand loved for a long time, we must take responsibility for upholding to the end the standards consumers trusted when they chose us.”

In the eighth year since founding, the company that began with two people has grown into a team of 16. They are preparing to enter overseas markets as well as the domestic market. With interest in K-food rising, they plan to present healthful sweet potato snacks to consumers abroad and to expand the business from infant snacks to a product lineup the whole family can enjoy together.

“I always tell the parents I meet through this work: when choosing a product, look first at the ingredient list on the back rather than the front. Someday, even without checking every line of the ingredient list, I want us to be a brand people can trust by thinking, ‘If it is Lulumom, it should be fine.’”