2005-2162

Cover Story | Hidden Champions
Provided by the company
profit surging 126 percent on-year to 6 billion
won thanks in particular to growth in China.
Lah Woo-joo, president of LMS, puts his
emphasis as much on precision manufacturing
as on trust with his clients. Like other entrepreneurs,
Lah hopes to expand into components for
other products including portable game devices
and laptops. In the wider prism sheet market
LMS made 10 percent of global sales last year,
which Lah hopes to raise to 20 percent.
Kortek’s displays are now in use at the
Bellagio, the MGM Grand and the Mirage.
Aurora world is a
company that manufactures
dolls and character
goods. It hopes to
become the next Disney
with many of its characters
winning the hearts
of young consumers
around the world.
Korea Exchange, which runs the local stock
bourse, decided to promote the 22 companies to
raise their profiles outside their individual fields,
where they may be less well known. Of course,
that doesn’t mean there aren’t other thriving
local hidden champions absent from the expo.
One is HJC, a motorcycle helmet manufacturer.
Though not well known outside the biker
community, HJC counts as a fan anyone who
owns a motorcycle or has an interest in the sport.
The company started off as small parts supplier
but started to create and market its own products
in 1980, expanding to the overseas market in
1984.
Where Samsung Electronics only managed
to beat its Japanese rivals relatively recently, HJC
had already reached first place in its sector by
1990. Today one out of every two motorcycle
helmets in the world has an HJC logo.
Another unsung hidden champion is Esencia,
which makes an unusual product: toothbrush
sterilizers.
Its small business’s founder and president,
Shin Choong-sik, turned a disgusting episode
into a lucrative idea. His inspiration for developing
the toothbrush sterilizer came when one
day he saw a roach sitting on his toothbrush.
Business didn’t start off with a boom. On the
contrary, he almost went bankrupt. But Shin
never gave up hope, and soon sales started to
pick up. Today Esencia has inspired imitators
among major electronics makers, but it still holds
a large portion of the market.
The state-run Export-Import Bank of Korea
is taking its own measures to support these
enterprising Korean firms. Exim Bank President
Kim Dong-soo focused on the subject in a lecture
in October at Hankuk University of Foreign
Studies about the global financial crisis and
opportunities for Korea.
The bank decided last month to invest 20
trillion won over the next 10 years to foster small
and mid-sized exporters, in the hopes of creating
300 Korean hidden champions by 2019.
The lender will also offer looser limits on
December 2009 korea 13