KCC was founded by Honorary Chairman Chung Sang-young, a younger brother of the late Chung Ju-yung, the founder of the Hyundai Group, also late father of Chairman Chung Mong-koo of Hyundai Motor Group. But now Chung Mong-jin, the oldest son of the founder, has been running the company after taking over its management in 2000.
He has been focusing on the silicon business as CEO of a construction materials company. Since 1990s, he has been visiting silicon plants in foreign countries in Europe, Russia and China to learn from their operations and become familiar with the technology. He played a key role in setting up the company’s silicon business by building its base. He waved off demands of foreign silicon companies for loyalty for silicon technologies, starting the company’s own R&D on the technology at the KCC Central R&D Institute, which paid off handsomely.
Because of such efforts, the company boosted its performance last year by a large margin with its first- to third-quarter sales rising to 2.52 trillion won with an operating profit of 228.7 trillion won, which represented a 10 percent rise from the same period in the preceding year. The company’s net profit expanded very much as it included the sales proceeds of the company’s shares in Cheil Textile, an affiliate of Samsung Group. CEO Chung has pledged that the company will continue to perform this year as well as it did in the preceding year.
The KCC CEO’s major focus of late has been changing its operation from B2B to B2C, under the marketing strategy that keys on home-shopping, online shopping and specialized commodity sections meet the increasing trends in the number of the customers preferring to purchase interior materials directly.
In order to fully meet the trend, the CEO managed to hire women interior experts from April this year to take care of selling all construction materials, especially the interior materials to customers. They are called “interior planners.” They are responsible for making calls to customers and discussing with them their needs for interior decorations. They help them with plans for interior decorations, work out a budget and sign agreements with them, along with providing after-service.
Chung has positioned the company to set up interior sales outlets, Home CC Stores, across the country, starting with the Seoul area, Youngnam, Honnam, and other areas, in addition to some 30 flagship stores that cater to all kinds of construction materials including interior decoration materials.
The company also launched a professional interior website with both online and offline functions, It offers all kinds of one-stop services, including consultations. The company also aired ads on its Home CC Interior TVs and in other media, strengthening its marketing effort.
The company’s moves to expand marketing for construction materials has been the product of Chung’s management policy to diversify the company’s marketing channels to increase sales revenue.
The company was able to cover the painting section’s 14 percent loss with excellent sales in the construction materials department last year, which showed the diversification of KCC’s operation is working.
The KCC chairman ordered the company to carry out a marketing campaign attuned to the customer’s needs as part of his strategy to push the company’s diverse operations, including the existing areas in construction material sales and the B2C online marketing operation, closely reflecting customers’ needs so that KCC will be a leading global concern.
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