[How About This Book] The Secret to 50 Years of Surplus, The Factory Owner's Daughter Without Me

Seong Rae-eun, Vice Chairman of Youngone Group, "Eternal Challenge"
Father Seong Gi-hak, Chairman, Emphasizes "You Are a Factory Owner's Daughter"
Since 1974, "Zero Deficit"... Continues Practicing "A Life That Abandoned Myself"

A child who often accompanied her father to a clothing manufacturing factory even before entering elementary school. The girl, who played with the feather filling used in goose down jackets with fascination, grew up to become the Vice Chairman of Youngone Group. Sung Rae-eun, Vice Chairman of Youngone Group, majored in sociology at Stanford University in the United States, joined Youngone in 2002, was appointed CEO of Youngone Holdings in 2016, and became the group’s Vice Chairman in 2022.

Youngone, which pioneered the domestic outdoor market, was established in 1974. The trigger came when Chairman Sung Ki-hak, then a university student, happened to meet a Japanese person wearing a goose down jacket while climbing Seoraksan Mountain. At a time when there was virtually no sportswear called hiking clothes in Korea, Chairman Sung, captivated by the goose down jacket, founded Youngone in 1974 and pioneered the domestic outdoor market. In 1980, the company became the first in the industry to invest overseas and has since grown into a global company with 90,000 employees worldwide and the largest production facilities in the world, located in Bangladesh, Vietnam, El Salvador, Ethiopia, and other countries. It is well known as a company that produces world-renowned outdoor products such as The North Face, Lululemon, and Patagonia, and has never posted a loss since its founding.

Seong Rae-eun, Vice Chairman of Yeongwon Trading Group Photo by Eunhaengnamu

Regarding the secret to this success, Vice Chairman Sung explains, “It is the result of my father, Chairman Sung Ki-hak, strictly separating the company and personal matters and willingly sacrificing himself for the company.” A clear example is the receipt sorting that Vice Chairman Sung helped with as a child. Before corporate cards existed, Chairman Sung would bring receipts for expenses incurred during the week every weekend and entrusted Vice Chairman Sung with sorting them. The criterion was simple: receipts for company expenses were marked as corporate, and those for personal expenses were marked as personal. “Never touch company money for personal use for any reason. Absolutely not. Company money must be used only for the company,” was her father’s teaching, which became a strict rule for Vice Chairman Sung. Even now, she cites the lesson “Company money is company money, my money is my money” as the most memorable ‘management lesson.’

Vice Chairman Sung absorbed her father’s teachings without objection from a young age. She always kept close to her heart her father’s emphasis, who valued production and meant that all employees were one family, saying, “You are a factory daughter.” Even during puberty, rather than feeling embarrassed by her father’s work clothes, she would proudly tell her friends, “My dad works at a factory. I’m a factory daughter.” Her father’s words, “A factory daughter should not be too flashy,” were interpreted as the teaching, “Money must not control me.”

[Photo by Eunhaengnamu]

In her book, Vice Chairman Sung also expressed the difficulties caused by prejudices against second-generation business owners. She said, “There is a common misconception that hired executives do all the work, and second-generation business owners do nothing but play and eat,” and added, “No life is a bed of roses. I too had to give up many things to stand where I am today.”

It was her father, Chairman Sung, who guided Vice Chairman Sung onto the path of management. When she was considering her career after graduating from university, he encouraged her to join the company, thinking she was a promising talent. Upon joining, Vice Chairman Sung had to give up herself. She had to abandon her dream of becoming a counselor for teenagers, and following her father’s teaching that “If you try to take care of yourself first in relationships with employees and clients, trust in you can be shaken,” she discarded ‘self.’ Vice Chairman Sung said, “There is no ‘I’ for a CEO. (Omitted) If a CEO tries to take care of ‘I,’ it means losing trust that is more precious than life itself,” and emphasized, “To build trust, ‘I’ must willingly be a non-existent entity.” She also stressed, “There is nothing wrong with my father’s teaching that ‘What you want to do cannot take priority over what you must do. Do what you must do first, then do what you want to do.’”

Time freedom is also one of the things Vice Chairman Sung has given up. She goes to bed at 10 p.m. every day and wakes up at 3 a.m. After waking, she handles all kinds of approval documents, from reports prepared the previous day to incident reports, and after going to work, she carries out a tightly packed schedule of meetings ranging from 15 minutes to an hour, organized daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly. In the evening, she has dinner meetings with work-related personnel and repeats a routine of returning home around 9 p.m.

Despite this, when people around her say she lives a life enviable to others, she confesses, “Several times a day, I feel breathless. I have often prayed earnestly and patted my chest to calm down,” and “I have often asked myself why I have to live like this.”

Although it is true that she regrets the paths she did not take, she said, “Managing a company is about taking responsibility for many people’s livelihoods and also contributing to national development. Although it is hard and tough at times, I am living a sufficiently meaningful life.”

Forever Lessons | Written by Sung Rae-eun | Banknamu | 232 pages | 17,000 KRW

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