Homeplus appoints ‘retail veteran’ Lee Jae-hoon as new CEO

Homeplus has appointed Lee Jae-hoon, currently leading Carver Korea, as its new chief executive officer, the company said Wednesday.

According to the South Korean discount chain, Lee is a retail expert who has built his career in the retail and consumer goods industry for about 30 years, spending a third of that time as CEO of many retail companies.

Lee, who is currently the CEO of Carver Korea, a cosmetics firm known for its skin care brand AHC, will start in the role at Homeplus in May.

Lee majored in business administration at Yonsei University and holds an MBA from Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He started his career at the US headquarters of Pepsi and Schering-Plough Corp., a pharmaceutical company.

From 2000, Lee moved to Pizza Hut Korea to serve in multiple positions, including chief financial officer, chief development officer and chief operations officer.

In 2006, Lee became the CEO of the now defunct convenience store chain BuytheWay, and since retained his position as a CEO in other companies, including KFC Korea, Homeplus explained.

“With his expertise in retail and consumer goods and leadership, we expect Lee will support Homeplus’ growth as a O2O (online-to-offline) retail company,” Homeplus said in a press release.

Homeplus said it aims to strengthen its business to encompass both online and offline retail, with its 139 hypermarket stores and 340 supermarkets across the country.

This year, the discount chain said it expects its online sales to reach 1.3 trillion won ($1.16 billion), and set the sales goal to 1.8 trillion won in 2022 and 2.4 trillion won in 2023.

By Jo He-rim (herim@heraldcorp.com)