Shilla Duty Free, Korea’s major player in duty free shopping, has been expanding its presence in Southeast Asia over the past few years to capitalize on the rapidly growth of the sector there

November 26, 2013 Leave a comment

2013-11-25 15:28

Shilla opens more shops in Asia

By Lee Hyo-sik
Shilla Duty Free, Korea’s major player in duty free shopping, has been expanding its presence in Southeast Asia over the past few years to capitalize on the rapidly growth of the sector there. It is scheduled to open two new duty free shops handling  top brand watches at Singapore’s Changi International Airport, one of the world’s busiest aviation hubs, in January next year.Shilla, affiliated with Samsung Group, has secured deals to run the stores, which are each 157 square meters and 145 square meters in size, at the airport’s No. 3 terminal for five years. The firm outrivaled the world’s largest DFS and five other larger competitors.
Shilla already operates two stores selling various fashion items at the airport. It also opened two shops in Kuala Lumpur International Airport in April, drawing hundreds of Malaysian travelers every day.
“We competed hard against our rivals to secure the brand watch sites. We believe that they will create synergy with the stores already in operation, strengthening our status as a major duty free operator at Changi Airport,’’ a Shilla Duty Free spokesman said. “We will be better able to position ourselves to serve tens of thousands of travelers arriving at and departing from the airport.’’
Based on its success in Singapore, Shilla is seeking to secure deals to open duty free shops in other Southeast Asian nations.
“We have rapidly caught up with our bigger competitors on the back of our extensive operational knowhow and successful marketing strategies. We will continue to focus on Southeast Asia to target an increasing number of wealthy Asian travelers.’’ “In the future, we will move into China, Europe, North America and other parts of the world to become one of the global top five duty free operators.’’
The race to get an upper hand in the increasingly lucrative market has become fiercer, making it difficult to secure sites to set up shops at international airports. But Shilla, which currently ranks ninth globally, has emerged as a winner over the past few years ahead of DFS and other larger rivals.
The global duty free market grew 21 percent in 2012 to $55.8 billion from the previous year. In particular, the sector expanded by 24 percent in Asia. In 2011, the region became the world’s largest duty free market ahead of Europe.

Filed under Macro Trends

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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