Shinsegae

Shinsegae Department Co., Ltd.
주식회사 신세계
株式會社新世界
Chaebol
Industry Retail
Founded 1955 (1955)
Headquarters 63 Sogong-ro, Jung-gu, Seoul, South Korea
Area served
 South Korea
Key people
 Lee Myung Hee, (Chairman)
Chung Yong-jin,
(CEO and Vice Chairman)
Revenue KRW 1,430,6 billion [1]
KRW 213,9 billion [1]
KRW 3,381,9 billion [1]
Total assets KRW 370 billion [1]
Total equity KRW 1,910,2 billion [1]
Subsidiaries E-mart
Website Shinsegae English
Republic of Korea Gwangju Shinsegae

Shinsegae (Korean: 신세계, KRX: 004170) is a South Korean department store franchise, along with several other businesses, headquartered in Seoul, South Korea. The name of Shinsegae literally means "New World" in Korean. Its flagship store in Centum City, Busan, is the world's largest department store, surpassing Macy's flagship Herald Square in New York City in 2009.[2]

Shinsegae was originally part of the Samsung Group chaebol, separated in the 1990s from the Samsung Group along with CJ Group (Food/Chemicals/Entertainment), Saehan Group (Electronic Media/Apparel/Textiles), and the Hansol Group (Paper/Telecom). It owns the brands Shinsegae and E-Mart, and is in direct competition with Lotte Shopping and Hyundai Department Store Group. Currently it is the largest retailer in South Korea.[3]

Shinsegae is also famous for its long history. The main branch of Shinsegae is the oldest department store in Korea. The main building of the store was opened in 1930 as the Gyeongseong branch of Mitsukoshi, a Japanese department store franchise; Korea was occupied by the Japanese Empire at the time. The store was acquired in 1945 by the late founder of Samsung group, Lee Byung-chull, and renamed Donghwa Department Store. After the Korean War (1950–1953) began, it was used for several years as a post exchange by the American army. In 1963, the store was given the name Shinsegae.[4] The old building is currently used as a luxury shopping venue.

Shinsegae was the first credit card company in South Korea. They issued its own charge card from 1967 to 2000. In 2000, Shinsegae sold its credit card division to KorAm Bank, which was later acquired by Citibank Korea.

Stores

Shinsegae also has a small branch in Incheon International Airport, and a supermarket in Dogok-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul.

Shinsegae has launched Shinsegae Style Market, a smaller shopping mall mainly aimed at young customers, in 2010. Despite its name, the mall is managed by Shinsegae's subsidiary E-Mart.

Planned

Defunct

Discount store

E-Mart (이마트) is a subsidiary of Shinsegae and a large discount store chain founded in South Korea, having stores in China and Korea. Domestically, E-Mart is the biggest discount store chain followed by Home Plus, owned by Samsung and Tesco, and Lotte Mart.

In late May 2006, Shinsegae revealed plans to buy all 16 of the Wal-Mart stores in Korea.[7] All of the country's Wal-Mart outlets were re-branded as E-Mart on October 2006. Wal-Mart exited the Korean market soon after.

Shinsegae spun off its E-Mart department into a separate corporation (KRX: 139480) in 2012. The shopping mall was acquired by E-Mart in January 2014.

Subsidiaries

Controversies

Shinsegae banned commercial images of actress Go Hyun-jung (고현정) from their department stores following her divorce from vice chairman and CEO Chung Yong-jin.[8]

See also

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Shinsegae.
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