In his New Year’s message, AmorePacific Chairman Suh Kyung-bae said his company should be up to the challenge for innovation in the digital and mobile areas.
“A ‘New Real Era’ with a combination of the real world and virtual world or another new world will open up,” he said.
Following Chairman Suh’s directive, AmorePacific has accelerated efforts to pursue digital transformation. These efforts have paid off. AmorePacific’s official online shopping mall “APMall” is a platform that is at the front line of its digital transformation. Thanks to the strengthening of customer differentiation services via IT technologies, APMall has achieved explosive growth, with an 88 percent jump in sales in the first quarter of this year over the same period last year.
AmorePacific is preparing for the development of core technologies to cope with the advent of the 4th Industrial Revolution. In 2016, AmorePacific introduced a “digital innovation lab” to establish a roadmap to employ promising new technologies, including IoT, AR and VR, in the beauty industry. For instance, Laneige has developed and operated the mobile application app “Beauty Mirror” in which virtual make-up can be demonstrated via mobile camera. The app for demonstrating make-up ranging from base to coloring is the first time “mirroring technology” has been employed in Korea.
AmorePacific Introduces In-House Venture Program
In 2015, AmorePacific came up with an in-house venture program in which a team of four company officials is tasked with producing and selling products. For one year, the team was not required to report their business performance to the company. This year, an additional budget of 500 million won has been allocated to the program. The items produced by the team have already hit the shelves of such outlets as E-Mart and Lotte Mart.
The sun cream brand “Outrun” was the first such brand to be created under AmorePacific’s first in-house venture program. The program, dubbed “Lean Startup,” is designed to create new brands by making the most of AmorePacific officials’ volunteer activities and creativity.
AmorePacific Chairman Suh Kyung-bae proposed the Lin Startup program, since any team that can move in a nimble manner and make new attempts could be able to create new brands. The quicker a team can produce a product and correct mistakes, the more successful it can be.
Outrun debuted after being selected as AmorePacific’s first in-house venture program in a companywide contest last year. The idea for Outrun came from the husband of Ko So-jin, a member with the Marketing Brand Team, who floated the idea. Kim Sul-bin, another member with the Global Marketing Team, Kim Jung-sung, a researcher specializing in skin care, and Huh Sun-woong from the Institution Cooperation Team joined forces to bring the product to life. Their goal is to produce Korea’s “representative sun care brands,” similar to Vertra of the United States and Coco Sunshine of Japan.
The team opened an office at WeWork’s Gangnam Station branch in Seoul, where a concentration of venture companies are located, so that members can work in a creative environment in an open space. They do not commute. They schedule meetings and make official tours freely. The team holds official meetings through its frequent Kakao Talk conservations.
They have toured such areas as Yangyang, Gangwon-do, and Busan to familiarize themselves with people involved in such sports as surfing, who buy and use Vertra products first hand. Surfers want to get strong sun care products.
The team created the “Extreme Sun Stick” tailored to meet the needs of athletes who spend a lot of time outdoors, like surfers. The team commissioned a clinical examination involving 10 physical education college students to test that the sun cream does not wash away by sweating and is successful in blocking ultraviolet rays. The Ultra Marathon Sun Cream is the first Korean sun care product that can claim to block ultraviolet rays for four hours.
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