Chairman Suh Kyung-bae of AmorePacific Corp. delivers his congratulatory 

speech at the company’s 68th anniversary on Sept. 5 at the company’s auditorium.

AmorePacific Corp. celebrated its 68th anniversary on Sept. 5 with Chairman Suh Kyung-bae pledging to expand the company’s overseas operations, stressing again the importance of foreign markets for the company’s overall performance.

Pointing out that a number of its cosmetics brands such as Laneige and Mamonde have surpassed their domestic sales abroad, making AmorePacific a global cosmetics brand, the company, therefore, should redouble efforts to expand overseas sales of its other cosmetics lines.

The cosmetics company’s Q2 sales overseas amounted to 147.1 billion won, up 41 percent YoY, while domestic sales came to 549.1 billion won, up just 4.4 percent YoY.

The chairman has been working on a plan to set up its overseas subsidiaries by brand names to strengthen its overseas operations since the early part of this year.

In the meantime, the company opened the Story Garden at its Osan Beauty Product Center in Osan, Gyeonggi Province, to show its history of growth from its launching and development to its future vision in the form of a story. The story hall will be open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day and admission is free to viewers on weekdays.

Amore-Pacific Corp. has a special relationship with China, which began before China started to open its doors to foreign investors in 1993 with the establishment of its subsidiary in Shenyang.

The cosmetics firms knew beforehand that China has huge potential to be a great cosmetics market and its market for beauty products would grow fast. The company began to supply its leading cosmetics lines including Mamonde and Amore to Chinese department stores and cosmetics stores in such cities as Jiangchun, Harbin, and Shenyang.

Excellent quality and growing demand have kept sales of Amore-Pacific cosmetics products growing rapidly, consistently ranking 4th or 5th in market share in the cosmetics market of northeast China.

Not satisfied with business conditions, the company introduced to the market a new line of its cosmetics products, Laneige. For three years before launching the new line, the company surveyed the market, interviewing 3,500 consumers, and set up its marketing strategy for Laneige focusing on large department stores in China.

A scene of AmorePacific’s 68th anniversary ceremony on 

Sept. 5 at its auditorium.(Photos:AmorePacific Corp.)

In May 2002, the company entered the cosmetics market in Hong Kong, a center of the cosmetics markets in Asia where well-known global brands compete for market share. The results were very successful. The company opened its first Laneige sale counter at a top department store and it is now sold in 23 stores in the former British colony, with each store now averaging 100 million won in monthly sales.

The cosmetics company, highly satisfied with its performance in Hong Kong and its accumulated experiences operating in China, set up its wholly-owned subsidiary in Shanghai in 2002 and began turning on its marketing offensive with the Laneige brand. Now, the cosmetics line is sold at 290 major department stores in some 100 cities in China. Last year, the company stepped up its marketing activities across China, redecorating its stores to strengthen the brand concept and introducing non-cosmetics products including water sleeping bags, and water bank lines, which have become hit products, putting Amore Pacific on the upper levels of the cosmetics market in China, competing head-to-head with some of the world’s premium brand cosmetics products.

Laneige and Mamonde have been boosting their sales across China, especially Mamonde, which is being sold at 900 department stores and 2,500 cosmetics stores in 270 cities in China. Sulwhasoo, a cosmetics product whose ingredients include medicinal herbs used in Oriental medicine and a leading cosmetics product in Korea, has been expanding its sales outlets in China since its launch in March 2011, starting with its first sales counter at a famous department store in Beijing.