[Company Focus] CJ Targets North America by Adding Beauty to Food and Content... Strengthening Affiliate Collaboration with 12 Trillion Won Revenue Goal

To accelerate growth in North America, CJ Group is moving beyond the business expansion of individual affiliates and is pushing for strengthened collaboration among its food, content, and beauty affiliates. The strategy involves adding CJ Olive Young's local distribution networks to the food and content business foundations secured through investments and acquisitions, and introducing each brand together at content events such as KCON. While continuing the localization of each business, they have presented the interconnected "K-Lifestyle" as a new growth strategy.

CJ's entry into the United States began in earnest in 1995 with a 300 million dollar investment in the Hollywood film company DreamWorks SKG. At that time, CJ CheilJedang invested funds in DreamWorks SKG, which was founded by director Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen, and secured distribution rights for the Asia region, excluding Japan. This provided a foothold for CheilJedang, a food company, to enter the film production and distribution business.

In the food sector, the acquisition of Schwan's by CJ CheilJedang in 2019 served as a turning point. Schwan's is a U.S. food company that sells frozen pizzas, Asian frozen foods, and more. CJ CheilJedang expanded sales in large U.S. supermarkets and increased consumer touchpoints by combining bibigo products with Schwan's local sales and distribution networks.

In the content sector, the focus was on securing local production capabilities. In 2022, CJ ENM acquired an 80% stake in the script-based business of the U.S. production company FIFTH SEASON. The company, which changed its name to FIFTH SEASON in the same year, is a studio responsible for everything from content planning to investment, production, and distribution, and produced the Apple TV+ drama "Severance". Through this acquisition, CJ ENM secured local production crews and a global distribution network, establishing a foundation to produce and distribute works locally, going beyond merely selling Korean content overseas.

While continuing investments and acquisitions, North American sales also increased. According to CJ, North American sales exceeded 8 trillion won last year, growing more than 10-fold from approximately 800 billion won in 2017. The cumulative investment amount through the first half of this year has reached 9.7 trillion won. Last August, CJ held a global K-Lifestyle vision presentation in LA, United States, and presented a target of 12 trillion won in North American sales by 2028.

The next step for the North American business is expanding collaboration between affiliates. The strategy announced last August includes continuing the localization of each brand and the establishment of production and distribution networks, while strengthening joint marketing and business model collaboration. The plan is to find additional growth opportunities in the North American market by utilizing the business foundations and customer bases built by each affiliate together.

Along with affiliate collaboration, work to strengthen the local sales foundation of each business is also ongoing. bibigo is increasing its product lineup and stores through large U.S. retailers, while CJ Olive Young is building its own distribution network by directly operating stores and online malls.

First, bibigo continued its sales growth by expanding its kimbap sales outlets. According to data released by CJ CheilJedang on the 1st, U.S. sales of bibigo kimbap from January to July this year increased by 59% compared to the same period last year. Since entering Kroger in December 2024, it has expanded its sales outlets to 10 major distribution channels, including Albertsons, Food Lion, and Meijer, and the number of sales stores increased from 1,924 last year to 4,734 at the time of the announcement.

Along with the expansion of the sales network, the product lineup is also being reinforced. The direction is to increase options for U.S. consumers by adding kimbap to mandu and hetbahn. In the second quarter of this year, CJ CheilJedang's food sales in the Americas increased by 10% compared to the same period last year, driven by the expansion of mandu and hetbahn sales. For kimbap, there are plans to increase the variety of products from the current two types (bulgogi and spicy bulgogi) and to secure additional sales outlets.

While bibigo utilizes the sales networks of local distributors, CJ Olive Young is preparing a foundation for direct sales by equipping itself with logistics centers, stores, and online malls. Following the establishment of a U.S. corporation last year, it built a Western logistics center of approximately 2,000 pyeong in Bloomington this March. In May, it opened the Pasadena store and a U.S.-exclusive online mall, and in June, it added the Century City store. The goal is to increase the number of stores to five, centered in California, by the first half of 2027.

CJ is strengthening joint marketing among affiliates by presenting food and beauty brands together at content events. At KCON LA held this August, OLIVE YOUNG FESTA was held concurrently, and bibigo also introduced mandu, ramen, sauces, and seaweed.

KCON has established itself as a stage to experience not only music performances but also Korean products and culture. Starting in Irvine, United States, in 2012 with a scale of approximately 10,000 people, the event gathered a cumulative on-site audience of about 142,000 people over three days in LA this year. This is an increase of about 14% compared to the approximately 125,000 people last year. As the audience grows, opportunities for food and beauty brands to meet consumers are also expanding.

The plan is to ensure that after promoting products at the event, they lead to purchases through each brand's local sales networks. Local distributors where bibigo is stocked, as well as CJ Olive Young's stores and online malls, provide channels for audiences to purchase products they encountered at the event in their daily lives. CJ is focusing its collaboration on connecting brand promotion through content events with local distribution networks.

Kim Jin-sik, CEO of CJ America, said, "We will expand joint brand marketing and business model collaboration between group businesses, and organically connect consumer touchpoints such as KCON, bibigo, and CJ Olive Young."

The company is also simultaneously securing the manpower necessary for business expansion. In CJ's open recruitment for new employees in the second half of this year, 13 affiliates and business divisions, including CJ CheilJedang, CJ ENM, and CJ Olive Young, are participating, and the scale of recruitment has increased by more than 40% compared to the same period last year, making it the largest in the last four years. The intention is to preemptively secure future growth personnel in line with the expanding global interest in K-lifestyle.

Meanwhile, the trend of expanding Hallyu consumption is also working in favor of CJ's overseas business. According to the overseas Hallyu status survey by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korean Foundation for International Cultural Exchange, the monthly average consumption time of Korean content among overseas Hallyu experiencers increased from 11.6 hours in 2023 to 14 hours in 2024, and to 14.7 hours in 2025. During the same period, the monthly average expenditure also increased from 10.5 dollars to 16.6 dollars. In the United States, the proportion of people who experienced Korean cultural content and encountered movies, dramas, and variety shows rose by more than 10 percentage points compared to the previous year in 2025.

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