“Sales set at a specific number are empty. Our mission is to fulfill our role as 'the best partner for our customers'. Market conditions and business environments are always changing. It is more important to fulfill the mission through the best response and execution ability, but 'how much sales and how much operating profit' have little meaning.”

Be assertive.

Despite the strong will of CEO Kim Tae-won, who has been leading Hwaseong Cosmetics for the past 3 years (?), 'the numbers' over the past 3 years are at an eye-opening level.

In 2020, the first year of the Corona 19 pandemic, sales were 39 billion won, but rose to 53 billion won the following year and 76 billion won last year. The average annual growth rate is 20.7%. The average annual growth rate of operating profit and net profit during the same period was 133.2% and 150.6%, respectively.

In addition, the operating profit to sales ratio last year was 16.2% and the net profit margin was 13.6%. Compared to the Bank of Korea’s operating profit rate of 6.8% and net profit rate of 7.7% in the domestic manufacturing industry as of 2021, the operating profit rate is 2.4 times higher and the net profit rate is 1.8 times higher. Even if it is defined as 'top-tier', there is no room for argument.

“In 2019, the major shareholder changed to a private equity fund (Asterion Holdings), but we adhered to the principle of not attempting artificial changes to the fundamental elements of the company, namely the core competitiveness, the company’s culture, and the members (human resources). Even now, that principle remains unchanged. However, it is more important to remove the detrimental factors that can occur in the three keywords of 'quality, (customer response) speed, and productivity'. Our mission as mentioned above, that is, in the process of becoming the best partner for our customers, is to find and eliminate or minimize unnecessary causes that can reduce competitiveness.”

In the end, the question of not being bound by 'numbers' that CEO Kim talked about is solved here.

Hwaseong Cosmetics is a company with a solid reputation as a company specializing in point makeup, including eyebrow pencils. Its dominance in the global market, especially in the United States, overwhelms other companies rather than in the domestic market.

80% of its total sales come from overseas, and 80% of its overseas sales come from the United States. The spectrum is vast, from multinational global brands to indie brands.

Actions are already underway to break the trend toward the United States. In the first half of this year alone, overseas market projects more than doubled compared to the first half of last year.

Along with market diversification, item diversification is also keeping pace. The main structure of eye (pencil, shadow, and liner) products remains unchanged, but △ lip (stick, balm, liner, oil, tint, etc.) △ base (pact, blusher, concealer, highlighter, and primer) has increased significantly. . It does not mean that the sales of the lip category decreased, but that the sales of the other categories increased more significantly during the overall sales expansion process.

“Recently, we are paying attention to the growth of indie brands. The importance of multinational and global brands cannot be overstated, but indie brands are a new growth engine for Hwasung Cosmetics. The most important part for this is 'speedy coping ability'. Depending on the development project to be carried out over a long period of time and the issue requiring a quick response, the way to solve it must be different, and this is undoubtedly another competitive advantage we have. Discovering novel and unique indie brands, playing a role so that they can grow to a certain level, and the future of mutual growth. We will make every effort to realize this vision as a screen that completes the mission as the best partner that Hwasung Cosmetics wants to unfold.”

The reason why we have no choice but to trust CEO Kim's resoluteness revealed at the beginning of the interview is because we can see with our own eyes the thoroughly organized logic and execution for each stage and situation, as well as the achievements that have been proven so far.