When it comes to South Korea, what comes to mind first? It's kimchi, Korean dramas, or South Korea's top chaebols. Like the Blue House Curse, South Korea's top chaebols have always been the focus of attention.
In South Korea, there are five chaebols that have always firmly grasped the economic lifeblood of this country, and the chaebol we are going to walk into together today is LG Group, one of the five chaebols.
When the average person mentions the chaebol, its corresponding image is basically mixed, and there will be some scandals, but unlike the other four companies, LG Group's evaluation in South Korea has always been very good.
Whether it is the image of the group in front of the public, or the credibility of the group as a whole far exceeds that of the other four chaebols, LG Group is also known as the clear stream of Korean chaebols.
So why did LG Group have such a public image, and how did it step by step become the top chaebol group in Korea today?
Tell the story of the original business founder and pass on the business wisdom. This issue of Founders' Watch takes you into the LG family.
Mr. Gushi's family
When it comes to the development history of LG Group, we must first understand a family, which is the helmsman of LG Group, the Gu family.
LG Group was originally founded in 1947, and the founder of the LG Group was the president of the Gu In Society in the Gu family, as a high-caliber student graduated from Seoul National University, the Gu In Society has different insights and visions.
At the beginning of the development of the enterprise, Gurenhui focused on the direction of skin care, in that era of rapid development, Gurenhui aimed at the gap in market demand, and established the first chemical company in Korea, the name of this enterprise is "Lexi Chemical Industry Association".
With a highly responsible attitude towards consumers, they focused all their energy on the development of a product, and for a long time, the company produced only one cosmetic product called "Lexi Cream".
After Lexi Cream became famous, more and more people noticed the company, and orders from all over the world soon reached the hands of Gu Renhui, and the packaging bottle of Lexi Cream was very fragile at that time.
Chemical enterprises
In order to enable the outer packaging to adapt to the challenges brought by long-distance transportation, Gurenhui quickly made a decision to enter the plastics industry while operating cosmetics, and personally design packaging bottles for his own products in order to produce packaging bottle caps that are not easy to break.
In the field of plastics industry, Gurenhui and its employees have produced solid and durable toothbrushes, soap boxes and combs and other plastic products that are often used in life, and gradually, the tough Gurenhui has made a name for itself in the washing industry.
The basic raw material of the chemical industry is crude oil, in order to further expand its business scope, Gurenhui finally directly established a refinery to operate and produce the entire chemical industry from the source.
Maybe GuRenhui didn't think about starting a big business at first, but from the current point of view, we have to admit that every step of Gurenhui is very correct.
From the source of chemistry to chemical products, in the era of GuRenhui, he has laid a very strong foundation for the subsequent development of the enterprise through the most primitive industrial chain.
It is hard to imagine that a cosmetics company that only sold "Lexi Cream" decades ago has now developed into a world-renowned company.
From a store with only one person at the beginning to more than 200,000 employees and as many as 81 group companies, its business covers chemical energy, electronic equipment, communications and services, etc., whether it is a development path or a development strategy, it is worth learning.
The Xu family
Unlike other chaebol groups, behind the LG Group, we can see the figure of two families, in addition to the Gu family we just introduced, we should also know another important family, the Xu family.
From 1947 to 1997, the Xu family and the Gu family have always complemented each other, just like our ancient Chinese aristocratic marriages.
Since a hundred years ago, the two families have been maintaining the connection between the two families through marriage, and the Xu family has always been slightly better in terms of financial resources.
In that turbulent era, the two families abandoned their power and scheming, helped each other, and forged a deep friendship. The young Gu Ren would obey the arrangements of the elders of the family and marry Xu Yishou of the Xu family.
Originally, gu ren, whose family's economic conditions were not very good, received help from the Hsu family after marriage, and not only entered the Jishui Elementary School, which was only accessible to the Hsu clan at that time, but also received financial support from his father-in-law's family after being admitted to the university, and entered Seoul National University without any worries.
In fact, not only the financial support, on the way to the establishment of the Gurenhui, whether it is the wife from the Xu family or the brother of his wife, he has made a lot of contributions to the Gurenhui.
After 1997, due to the different concepts of the two families, the business differences between the Xu family and the Gu family gradually increased.
After friendly negotiations, the Hsu family took a stake in GS, and the two families began to run their own family businesses.
But even so, the relationship between the two families is still very harmonious, and the giant fight that can be played dozens of times in Korean dramas does not appear in the middle of these two families.
To this day, there are many members of the Xu family who still work diligently in the LG Group, and this friendship between the two families can be regarded as a good story in today's society.
Transfer of power
Since its establishment in 1947, the LG Group has seen a total of three transfers of management rights, and unlike the Samsung Group, which is also a Korean chaebol, the transfer of power of the LG Group can be called a very "peaceful".
Even the brothers we usually see in Korean dramas turning against each other rarely. In fact, the LG Group's transition of power has continued to uphold the primogeniture system established by the Gurenhui.
On May 20, 2018, shigeru Gokumoto, the third helmsman of LG Group, passed away, and with his death, LG Group and the Ku family are also building momentum for the official appointment of the fourth helmsman, Shigeru Komo.
The favorable growth environment, open group structure, and arduous entrepreneurial experience are constantly inspiring every member of the Gu family.
Compared with the Samsung Group, or the Lotte brothers in order to compete for the right to operate the company, the Gu family and the LG Group seem to be so united, but also south Koreans call it a clear stream in the chaebol.
The reason why South Korea's chaebol groups have an extraordinary social status is largely because Korean companies are more or less involved in political aspects, such as Samsung Group.
But it is in this social environment that the decisions made by LG group are different.
In 2002, there was a serious donation scandal in South Korea, and many leaders and groups were exposed by the media to have detailed recovery records, and LG Group was also involved.
The head of the group who served as LG at that time was the third chairman of the helm, Shigeru Ubmoto, and after hearing about this, he personally called the person in charge of the LG group to his office and ordered him to explain everything clearly.
Soon after this incident, LG personally went down to publicly apologize to the ordinary people in South Korea, and withdrew all the advertisements that LG Group had spent heavily on at that time, and expressed its own group's apologies to the people of South Korea with huge economic expenditures.
Since then, LG Group has been deliberately far away from the official circles of South Korea and only focused on the industry in which it is involved, and now we have to sigh at the magic of LG Group's strategy.
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