Amorepacific Appoints Strategy Expert Seunghwan Kim as President... Can He Turn Crisis into Opportunity?

Graduated from Yonsei University Department of Business Administration... Overseas Business Expansion

Kim Seung-hwan, the new president of Amorepacific. Photo by Amorepacific

[Asia Economy Reporter Moon Hyewon] Amorepacific Group is changing its leader for the first time in five years. This move is seen as a response to continued sluggishness in its China business. The new CEO, Kim Seunghwan, known for his strategic expertise, is expected to become a savior who will help overcome the crisis by focusing on expanding overseas businesses outside China, such as in North America, Japan, and Europe.

On the 17th, Amorepacific Group announced that it plans to appoint Kim as CEO through the shareholders' meeting and board of directors scheduled for March next year.

Born in 1969, Kim graduated from Yonsei University with a degree in Business Administration and earned a graduate degree from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He joined Amorepacific in 2006, handling strategic planning and human resources. At that time, Amorepacific Group and Amorepacific were split, and the holding company system was launched.

Since then, Kim established himself as a strategist within the group by serving as head of the Strategic Planning Division in 2010, head of the Strategy Unit in 2015, and head of the Human Resources and Organization Office in 2017. After being appointed as the holding company's CEO last year, he has been promoting the group's structural improvement projects.

Going forward, Kim plans to focus on expanding Amorepacific's overseas business and discovering future business opportunities. Amorepacific is currently pursuing a strategy to reduce its dependence on China by pioneering the European and North American markets.

Attention is focused on whether Amorepacific can achieve a performance turnaround amid difficult internal and external environments with Kim's appointment.

Amorepacific has recently experienced a decline in overseas business sales due to sluggish domestic duty-free channels caused by the impact of COVID-19 and the continued lockdown policies in China, a market on which it heavily depended. Based on consolidated figures for the third quarter of this year, Amorepacific's cumulative operating profit was 157.276 billion KRW, a 102% decrease compared to the same period last year. This is less than half of the 317.83 billion KRW cumulative operating profit recorded in the third quarter of last year. Annual operating profit has been declining from 596.4 billion KRW in 2017 to 482 billion KRW in 2018, and 427.8 billion KRW in 2019, shrinking further to 143 billion KRW in 2020 due to the direct impact of COVID-19. The outlook for the fourth quarter of this year is also not optimistic.

However, the North American region shows a clear growth trend, creating an encouraging atmosphere. North American sales in the third quarter grew 97% year-on-year, and Europe also saw a 60% increase in total sales, supported by strong sales of Laneige and Innisfree.

An Amorepacific official said, "Kim has been an expert continuously in charge of the strategy division" and added, "He plans to accelerate Amorepacific's global business expansion and future business discovery."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.