An entrepreneur, Love Emeter, has urged youths to deepen their knowledge in other foreign languages and culture to benefit from the myriads of available opportunities.

Emeter, who is the Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Haru Africa, an online store, gave the advise at the launch of her first physical store recently in Lagos.

Haru Africa was founded in 2019 and has since attracted over 5,000 customers from all over the continent, with Nigeria and South Africa having the largest customer bases.

She said getting to learn the arts, culture and language of other countries, is one area that had not been taken seriously by a larger section of the country’s youth, leading to a loss of socio-economic opportunities.
“When we take time off to understudy other country’s language for instance, we stand to benefit a lot, considering the fact that the world is already a global village.

“On the contrary, we stand to loose the benefits and other opportunities that may come up because of language barriers. So, part of the reason for establishing a physical store is to further close the cultural and language gaps that may be existing between South Korea specifically and Nigeria, through the sales of our products, especially language books and music,” she stated.

According to her, the store deals mainly on South Korean products such as K-Pop merch (Korean cultural musics) Korean snacks, beauty products and books.

“We encourage those interested in learning Korean language, music and arts to come over to our physical store, as we have a lot of educational books and other instructional materials that will facilitate their learning,” she stated.

Emeter noted that she also deemed it fit to establish the physical store, following the huge success recorded by the online store.

She added that the store, the first of its type in the country and Africa, further aimed to bridge the retail gap between South Korea and Africa, while also promoting South Korean pop culture.

“We have a large market online mainly in Nigeria, Egypt and Ghana and so, we want to expand it by establishing this physical one and put Africa on that map. This will help create a lot more awareness, especially to the Korean government on the level of their fan base here,” she said.

Emeter added that Haru began with an online store, where customers from any African country could browse and purchase items, which were then delivered swiftly.