JEJU — "We plan to expand annual exports of Jeju Samdasoo from the current 10,000 tons to 100,000 tons within three years. To do that, we will develop premium products suited to overseas markets."
Kim Do-young, CEO of Jeju Province Development Corporation, met with reporters at the company's office in Jeju City on the 14th and said the company is "comprehensively reassessing the market potential of each country." He added that it is "conducting market research focused on countries with strong water demand and high potential in the premium bottled water market."
Kim, who took office last month as the 13th head of the corporation, outlined plans to expand overseas business during his three-year term. With growth in the domestic bottled water market stagnating, the company intends to develop overseas operations as a new growth engine. The core of his overseas strategy is selection and focus. "We will narrow our export markets, currently spread across 16 countries, to about six — including the United States, China and the United Arab Emirates — and concentrate on them while expanding the scale of those markets," Kim said. Samdasoo's annual output is about 1 million tons, of which overseas exports account for only about 1%.
China is the first target. While local bottled water brands hold a dominant position there, Kim pointed to the market's size and well-developed online distribution networks as signs of strong growth potential. "We are making China our first target because you need a large market to build a business," he said. "If we draw on the 'K-premium' image that Jeju and Korea have, we should be able to appeal to consumers to a certain degree." In May, the corporation shipped about 110 tons of Samdasoo to the Chinese market through JD.com, and it plans to analyze consumer response before working out a sales expansion strategy with local partners.
The company will also launch premium products exclusively for overseas markets, actively leveraging the regional brand "Jeju" alongside Samdasoo, which is well known at home. "Overseas, Jeju is better known than Samdasoo," Kim said. "Jeju is linked to K-culture and has established itself as a brand with a strong image in the global market, so I believe there is value in making more active use of the Jeju brand asset when entering overseas markets." The corporation plans to differentiate product design, brand storytelling and marketing approaches, and to set prices according to income levels in each country.
Kim also expressed frustration with the government's label-free rule for bottled water. To reduce plastic waste, the government has since January required domestically manufactured bottled water sold online or in multi-packs offline to be produced without labels. Single bottles sold offline will go through a transition period through the end of this year before the label-free rule takes effect next year. Bottled water manufactured abroad and imported, however, is not subject to the same requirement and can continue to be sold with labels attached. "The same standards should apply to products competing in the same market," Kim said. "Because only imported bottled water from countries such as China is sold with labels on, domestic bottled water is facing reverse discrimination in terms of visibility and other factors."