Huh Yeon-su Calls for Four Major Innovations in 'Customer, Distribution, Management, Culture'... "Preparing for a 100-Year Company"

Hyun-Soo Heo, CEO of GS Retail, New Year's Address
Growth into a Comprehensive Distribution Company at Euljiro Supermarket
"Boldly Streamlining Underperforming Businesses... Restructuring Focused on Profitability"

Hyunsoo Heo, CEO (Vice Chairman) of GS Retail, urged in his New Year's address on the 2nd, "Let us use our experiences of challenge and response as a stepping stone to grow into a 100-year distribution company."

GS Retail marks its 50th anniversary in the distribution industry this year. It entered the distribution business in 1974 by opening a supermarket in Euljiro, launched the domestic native brand convenience store GS25 in 1990, and introduced Korea's first TV home shopping GS Shop in 1994, growing into a comprehensive distribution company encompassing both online and offline channels.

CEO Heo said, "Although we have maintained a leading position in our core business for 50 years, this year we face a more challenging management environment than ever, including intensified competition within the industry, weakened consumer sentiment due to high interest rates and inflation, and the expanding influence of e-commerce."

He emphasized that it is time to innovate the business structure from four perspectives: customers, distribution, management, and culture. The main points include customer-centric business structure innovation, development of differentiated hit products, performance creation based on digital transformation (DX), and practicing the GS Way organizational culture.

He named 'customers' as the top priority value of the organization. He stressed that to create a solid gap, the business structure must be innovated focusing on customer changes such as the increase in single-person and two-person households shifting shopping demand from marts to convenience stores and supermarkets, and the rapid shift of media weight from TV to mobile.

Regarding the essence of distribution, 'products,' he mentioned that overwhelming competitiveness must be secured through differentiated hit products. From a management perspective, efforts in digital transformation (DX) should be connected to tangible results. As GS Retail has organized its unique working methods and mindset into eight GS Way principles in 2021 and has been striving to internalize them for three years, he called for active practice of these principles.

CEO Hyunsoo Heo said, "Last year, while strengthening the competitiveness of existing businesses, we boldly restructured underperforming businesses and reorganized our operations focusing on profitability, laying the groundwork for a further leap forward," and urged, "Rather than stopping or shrinking in the face of difficulties, let us not stop challenging ourselves to grow into a 100-year company."

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