Shinsegae’s Chung Yong-jin hits home run with bet on baseball club

[Photo by Lee Chung-woo]

Avid baseball fan Chung Yong-jin hit grand slam with timely investment in KBO baseball franchise as SSG Landers ascended to Korea’s first wire-to-wire champion under new ownership of Shinsegae Group while sales at the retailer flourished through baseball and fandom marketing.

The vice chair of Korea’s biggest retail conglomerate bought SK Wyverns at 135.2 billion won($98.9 million) in January last year.

He transformed the team’s home stadium in the western port city of Incheon, Korea, as one-stop hot retail stop by locating outlets of all brands under the family - SSG.com, Emart, Shinsegae Department Store and No Brand.

“Each of those coming to see the games could be our customer. Our brands must deliver impression to be remembered,” Chung had said, visualizing his plan with the first baseball club.

Shinsegae indeed did not spare any money.

It recruited major league players Choo Shin-soo from Texas Rangers and Kim Kwang-hyun from St. Louis Cardinals paying 22.7 billion won, the largest among all 10 professional baseball clubs in Korea and more than twice the total 9.8 billion won runner-up Samsung Lions earned.

Shinsegae spent 4 billion won in remodeling of the club house, dugouts and affiliate facilities for 10 months until March. With the upgrade, a goods shop has been opened with a lineup of about 140 products developed by Emart’s buyers, and fast food hamburger chain No Brand Burger’s Incheon SSG Landers Field store sells an exclusive stadium burger package.

On the back of such full support, spectators to the home stadium exceeded 980,000 this year, the largest among all the national league teams. The club successfully reversed to an operating profit of 7.06 billion won last year from a loss of 850 million won a year ago, and its revenue expanded 22.5 percent to total 52.9 billion won in the first year of operation under Shinsegae Group.

The group’s income jumped 49 percent on year in the third quarter while sales rose 17 percent. Emart sales also rose 22.1 percent to 7.7 trillion won during the same period.

[Provided by Hyungji Elite Inc.]

Partners also enjoyed the halo.

School uniform retailer Hyungji Elite Inc. who supplies the baseball club’s hats, uniforms and other club logo-printed items under a five-year supply contract saw revenue from the sportswear business soar 144.3 percent on year to 4.9 billion won from July last year to June this year and expects to raise more than 10 billion won for full year.

by Hong Sung-yong and Lee Ha-yeon