Fashion and beauty corporations are accelerating efforts to expand their business portfolios and secure future growth engines. They are moving beyond their core businesses into areas such as food and beverage (F&B) and medical devices to secure growth momentum.
Handsome, an affiliate of Hyundai Department Store Group, added retail distribution as a new business purpose at its regular shareholders meeting on the 24th. The move is aimed at directly distributing and selling food and beverage (F&B) products linked to its brands.
Handsome is expanding the business around the "Cafe TIME" in-house F&B space inside the "TIME" flagship store in Cheongdam-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, and "The Handsome House Seoul" in Daechi-dong. The strategy is to strengthen the fashion brand experience in offline spaces and increase dwell time to drive sales.
In fact, The Handsome House Seoul recorded sales at 120% of its target over 30 days after its opening in February. The company said Cafe TIME served as a key traffic driver.
In particular, given the characteristics of the Daechi-dong commercial district, where many private academies are clustered, demand from so-called "Daechi moms" was concentrated, according to the analysis. About 75% of total store sales came from women in their 40s and 50s, and visitors accompanied by children accounted for more than 30%.
Beauty corporations are also speeding up business diversification. APR plans to table an agenda item at the shareholders meeting on the 31st of this month to add three medical device–related business purposes.
Specifically, they include the development, manufacturing, and sales of medical device consumables; the development, manufacturing, and sales of medical supplies; and medical device repair services. The move aims to extend its business structure, centered on cosmetics and beauty devices, into the medical device space.
APR is currently building a medical device factory and undergoing certification procedures, and it plans to launch one "energy-based device (EBD)" medical device within the year. EBD refers to professional hospital-use aesthetic medical devices that act on skin tissue using various forms of energy such as heat, light, electricity, and ultrasound.
In the rental industry, CUCKOO Homesys and Coway are reflecting new fields such as robots and healthcare in their articles of incorporation. CUCKOO Homesys will add services such as providing robot solutions related to the food and beverage industry and selling automated cooking robots, while Coway also plans to add businesses including the manufacturing, sales, rental, and servicing of robots.