[Digital Times, Kim Eun] Yoon Seok-gum, chairman of Woongjin, who is called "white-collar myth", is seeking recovery in Korean home appliance leasing business. The company has exceeded 10,000 accounts and tightened the industry in a month after re-entering the consumer electronics business, such as water purifiers. Yoon is ignoring is now willing to re-take over Coway.

According to industry sources on May 1, Yoon Seok-gum, chairman of Woongjin Group, attends `Woongjin Rental` conference, a rental business brand of Woongjin Group every week.

Yoon, in 2014, presided over a weekly direct meeting in Gyeonggi Province to revive the Woongjin Think Big business, from which he graduated in one year from court administration. Also, he created a book club where he can watch books on his tablet PC. The book club was a big hit with over 100,000 members in just two years after launch.

Yoon, this time, demonstrates his ambition to make Woongjin Rent as the best home appliance rental company in Korea through utilizing the know-how of salesmen. He pointed out that Woongjin`s rental salespeople are actively involved in raising the level of welfare and treatment so that employees of competitors who have worked in Woongjin Coway have joined the company.

Meanwhile, Yoon put sales professionals in front of the management, expanding sales channels to expand the business, and building online and distributorships.

Woongjin Rental has recruited more than 10,000 accounts within a month of starting the home appliance rental business and has set a goal of securing 100,000 accounts this year. A lease account is a consumer who rents and uses household appliances for a specified period of time. Especially, 10,000 accounts secured by Woongjin Lenders are newly acquired accounts, not those taken by competitors. Woongjin Group, in February, launched eight kinds of water purifiers, air purifiers, and bidets in the wake of its home appliance brand Woongjin Rent, which secured about 500 employees of Care Star, an expert in managing them. Currently, there are 28 service management organizations and 150 sales agencies nationwide.

The group has selected Samsung Securities and Shin & Kim as advisors and is continuing negotiations to take over Coway in addition to re-entering the leasing business. It is believed the acquisition of Woongjin Group`s funding capacity will make it difficult to acquire it as the takeover price of Coway is estimated at KRW 2 trillion.

But, some people think that Woongjin Rent will take a considerable amount of time to come to orbit, as Coway, which is currently the number one, has 575,000 accounts, SK Magic has a total of 1.25 million accounts, and Chung Ho Nais has a total of 1.13 million accounts.

An expert of the related industry mentioned, "There is a risk that Woongjin will not catch up with its competitors because of the increase in the number of accounts despite the sales and marketing management capacity of Yongin Yoon is widely known."

By Kim Eun silverkim@


[ copyright ⓒ The Digitaltimes ]