Samsung said on the 21st that ahead of the Chuseok holiday, it moved to support the revitalization of the domestic economy by paying suppliers early for goods to help their smooth cash management and by running an online marketplace for employees.
On this day, Samsung explained that to ease suppliers' financial burdens ahead of the holiday, it plans to pay 1.19 trillion won in goods payments early, before the Chuseok break. Thirteen affiliates will take part in the early payments—Samsung Electronics, Samsung C&T, Samsung Biologics, Samsung Display, Samsung Electro-Mechanics, Samsung SDI, Samsung SDS, Samsung Bioepis, Samsung Heavy Industries, Samsung E&A, Samsung Welstory, Cheil Worldwide, and S-1—and each company will move up payments by as many as 12 days compared with the original dates.
Despite a difficult business environment, Samsung decided to increase the amount of goods payments by about 320 billion won from the sum it supported during Chuseok last year in order to maximize the domestic economic boost. Major Samsung affiliates, including Samsung Electronics, have supported suppliers' smooth cash operations by paying for goods three to four times a month since 2011.
To stimulate domestic demand, Samsung is operating a "Chuseok online marketplace" for employees, selling specialty products from affiliate sister villages and items produced at small and midsize companies' smart factories. During last year's Lunar New Year and Chuseok holidays, Samsung employees purchased about 3 billion won in goods, and during this year's Lunar New Year they bought nearly 1.5 billion won, helping to boost local economies and support the management of small and midsize companies that received assistance in building smart factories.
In particular, 83 small and midsize companies that received Samsung Electronics' "smart factory construction support" are taking part in the Chuseok online marketplace, selling around 101 types of products including Korean beef gift sets and fruit. Since 2015, Samsung Electronics has run a smart factory support program to help enhance small and midsize companies' manufacturing competitiveness, and by the end of last year it had carried out 3,450 projects.
Samsung plans to continue developing a "smart factory ecosystem" that enhances corporations' competitiveness through smart factory support and even helps expand product sales. Samsung is also pushing its "Smart Factory 3.0" initiative, which upgrades existing smart factories into intelligent factories by using AI and data technologies.
Meanwhile, in addition to the "online marketplace" that uses each company's in-house bulletin boards and online malls run by local governments and NongHyup, Samsung also set up "offline marketplaces" at some business sites to expand employee participation. Every holiday season, Samsung has supported product sales by opening offline direct-trade markets at business sites nationwide, but due to COVID-19, it switched to an online marketplace starting with Chuseok in 2020 and has since operated it that way.