E.Land Group (hangul:이랜드그룹) is a South Korean conglomerate headquartered in Chanjeon-dong Mapo-gu Seoul, Korea. It started as a 6 sqm small clothing shop on a fashion street in front of Ewha University in Sinchon in 1980. E.Land Group become a USD 7 billion group of companies, creating the phrase "Myth of 6 sqm (hangul:2평의 신화)". E.Land Group now takes part in retail malls, restaurants, hotels and construction businesses as well as its cornerstone, fashion apparel business. It has operations worldwide through its subsidiary E-Land World, including China, India, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, the United States and Europe (England, Italy).
| E-Land | |
|---|---|
| Hangul | 이랜드그룹 |
| Revised Romanization | Iraendeu Geurup |
| McCune–Reischauer | Iraendŭ Kŭrup |
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In the 1980s, E.Land Group revolutionised the retail channel by pioneering new markets using a franchising system. Franchising system is one of the most profitable forms of retail distribution due to its low initial investment requirement when opening new stores. Its first ever brand was called "England", which later changed to "E-Land" due to restrictions on trademark registration.
During the Asian financial crisis of 1997, E.Land Group successfully carried out several corporate reform initiatives, including corporate restructuring, overhaul of its finances and transformation of its management system. As a result, E.Land Group became the 37th largest corporation in Korea (excluding SOE's) with assets totalling over 2 billion USD as of the end of 2005.
E.Land Group transformed Korean apparel retailing, which was historically divided into high-priced department stores and low-priced traditional markets, by creating a new medium-priced market using street shops. This market has now grown to over USD 20 billion in 2006.
E.Land Group currently takes part in fashion apparel, hypermart retail, fashion outlet malls, department stores, hotels and restaurant businesses.
It currently focuses on vertical integration of production and distribution of consumer goods that include apparel, groceries and housewares. Products are sold through two different channels, namely, approximately 5,000 franchise stores and E.Land Group owned stores consisting of 25 premium fashion discount stores, two department stores and 32 discount stores.
The strength of E.Land Group lies in its ability to generate synergies between its fashion and retail businesses, and this strategy being implemented through a business portfolio that includes infant wear, children's wear, women's wear, sports wear and underwear and a multitude of channels such as outlets, department stores and super supermarkets.
E.Land Group is currently the second largest retailer in Korea based on number of stores as of September 2006 (Source: Korea Rating).
The Group's current retail business comprises Homever, Kims Club, NC Department Store, NewCore Outlet and 2001 Outlet.
In 1994, E.Land Group introduced the first outlet in Korean market by opening the first store of 2001 Outlet. It took a form of multi story outlet stores with groceries, houseware and apparel.
In 2003, E.Land Group purchased a 75% stake in NewCore, a department store operating in 25 different locations in Korea. Following the acquisition, NewCore was transformed to and operated as two department stores and 15 fashion premium outlets.
In April 2006, E.Land Group acquired the entire South Korean operations of Carrefour which operated 32 discount stores. Carrefour Korea, despite its global presence and experiences overseas, struggled to understand the local Korean culture. Carrefour was rebranded to Homever by E.Land Group after the acquisition.
The acquisition moved E.Land Group from 6th to 2nd largest discount/outlet operators with respect to total number of stores.
Using experiences accumulated from prior operations of 2001 Outlet and NewCore Outlet, E.Land Group successfully integrated its winning strategy to revive the stores after the acquisition.
During 2007, E-Land received media attention regarding new Korean non-regular protection laws. E-land laid off more than 900 non-regular female cashiers at its affiliate retailers, Homever and New Core, just before the law went into effect on July 1 2007. The group, instead, outsourced their jobs to workers from temporary agencies. The new law requires a company to grant its non-regular employees regular status after they have worked with the company for two years.[1]
On 14 May 2008, the British retail group Tesco, which already operated in Korea, agreed to purchase 36 hypermarkets with a combination of food and non-food products from E-Land for $1.9 billion (976 million pounds) in its biggest single acquisition, making Tesco the second largest retailer in the country. The majority of the E-Land stores formerly belonged to French retailer Carrefour before 2006 and most of the stores will be converted to Tesco Homeplus outlets. Tesco's South Korean discount store chain, Home Plus, currently has 66 outlets[1][2].
E.Land Group owns in excess of 60 brands in Korea.
Casual
Deco & Netishion (Women's)
Women, kids, underwear and accessories
Eland also operate the following global brands under license
Knowledge Management permeates the organisation, encouraging the generation of new ideas and sharing of best practices. E.Land's Knowledge Management network is superior to that of many leading global companies and therefore is constantly benchmarked by others.
E.Land Group has been recognised for best practices in their area by Forbes, Booz Allen and Harvard Business Review: