CJ Group Chairman Lee Jay-hyun presides over this year’s management strategy meeting in Japan. (Photos: CJ)

CJ Group Chairman Lee Jay-hyun presided over this year’s management strategy meeting in Japan to strengthen the ramp up of the group’s global field management. Such a meeting took place in the United States last year to accelerate globalization management.

CJ Group Chairman Lee toured the group’s operation in Japan and presided over the 2019 management strategy meeting in which he received a briefing on the group’s business strategies and major business projects in Japan.

Chairman Lee’s selecting Japan as the venue of the 2019 management strategy meeting may be construed as a sCheme to accelerate efforts to realize a vision of rising to a No. 1 position on the global market.

Chances are high that the Japan could emerge as a market to expedite a 3rd hallyu (Korean Wave) with a potential spreading of the rage with a focus on generations in their 10s and 20s and serve as a test-bed for the group’s market entry.

Chairman Lee said, “A chance to make a 3rd hallyu fever all the rage should not be missed.” He stressed the need for enhancing Korea’s national reputation by spearheading the spread of K-lifestyle in Japan. To this end, he also called for securing world-class manpower.

Japan was a market in which CJ Group had once learned a bitter lesson as it suffered a setback. In 2016, CJ Foodville acquired a Japanese company to run “Bibigo” a Korean food outlet, and “Hanchae” a Korean fast food, but failed to set a foot there and had to withdraw the Bibigo outlet in 2016.

The following year, CJ Foodville Japan, the group’s incorporated entity in Japan, was liquidated.
Chairman Lee’s selecting Japan as the venue of the 2019 strategy meeting was based on his judgement that Japan has emerged as an essential market for CJ to expand its global presence since a hallyu has begun to spring up again. In reality, Japanese are paying a rising attention to K-food. CJ Cheiljedang’s food business was on a roll with a rising sales of food items such as micho, mandu (Chinese dumpling), and kimchi.

For instance, “Petitzel Micho” a fruit vinegar drink concentrate of pomegranate, pineapple and grape, produced by CJ Cheiljedang, raked into about 3.2 billion won in sales in Japan last year, an about 70 percent jump over the previous year.

CJ Group held the 2018 strategy meeting in Los Angeles and took stock of the group’s operations in the United States. Vietnam is expected to emerge as the venue of the next strategy meeting as the Southeast Asian country is deemed as a bridge to enter the ASEAN market.

CJ Looks to Rise to Global Top Position by 2030

CJ Group plans to redouble efforts to realize its vision “World Best CJ” calling for making three businesses or more No. 1 in the world by 2030.

Amid a slowing global economy in 2019, CJ Group has a two-track strategy to expand its global business turf in an aggressive fashion and to brace for a recession.

The group strives to implement projects to expand global businesses through the strengthening of unmatched capabilities in Korea and abroad while focusing on ramping up fundamentals and enhance profitability through normalizing of structural reform to brace for a recession or low growth. These strategies were materialized at the group’s global management strategy meeting, convened in Los Angeles last Dec. 13.

CJ Group Chairman Lee Jay-hyun told a meeting of major group executives and subsidiary CEOs CJ’s ultimate goal is rising to a global No. 1 lifestyle and culture company. He urged them to be more desperate since the group’s future will hinge on global achievements in the next one or two years.

The group made all-out efforts to secure competitiveness through the restructuring of major businesses before the two-track strategy is implemented in full force.

CJ The Center, a newly renovated CJ Group headquarters in which CJ Corp., the holding company of the group, has recently moved.