Trust-building key to Kwangdong’s success
Company remembers founder Choi Soo-boo on 4th anniversary of his death
Most of the salesmen considered their job done immediately after the customers bought their products. But I thought this was a beginning.
For the late Kwangdong Pharmaceutical founder Choi Soo-boo, selling drugs was not merely a way to make money, but to begin a trust-based relationship.
Born in 1936, Choi, one of the pioneering leaders of Korea’s pharmaceutical industry, always sincerely cared about the people he met, and taught the importance of it to his employees until he died on July 24, 2013. Today marks the fourth anniversary of his death.
Choi, the second eldest among seven siblings, had to support his family from the age of 12 after his father’s business went bankrupt.
An elementary school dropout, he spent most of his time in the streets selling things while his friends were in class studying. This, in hindsight, helped him learn life lessons, something that cannot be learned from books.
He first landed a sales job at a Korean ginseng manufacturer in 1960, soon after he completed mandatory military service.
Choi became the top salesman three years in a row for selling the firm’s signature product, a traditional oriental medicine “Kyung Ok Go.” Its ingredients were believed to help treat fatigue and male infertility.
Without his sincerity, it would have been impossible to convince customers to buy Kyung Ok Go, an expensive medicine, almost the equivalent of a month’s salary for an office worker at the time.
“Most of the salesmen considered their job done immediately after the customers bought their products. But I thought this was a beginning,” he recalled in his autobiography.
“What makes a medicine work is the effort put into making it. If it took me visiting customers 10 times before they bought what I sold, I visited them 20 times or 30 times after selling medicine to see if they were taking the right amount of it on time. That is what I call effort,” he added.
Choi even gave an earful to his customers who did not follow the instructions in taking the medicine, a process he called “a mother-in-law scolding her daughter-in-law,” a nagging which daughters-in-law wish to avoid at all costs.
He even gave an “ultimatum,” telling them to ask for a full refund for not following the instructions, saying the expensive medicine would be to no avail if not taken appropriately.
What he called a “confident threat” to take the medicine back was possible as he was deeply convinced about its effectiveness. “If customers did not feel better, not because the medicine was bad but because they did not follow the instructions, wouldn’t it be the biggest shame?”
This grueling yet caring after-sales service made customers see true passion and sincerity in him, which in turn helped him earn their trust.
Commonplace as it might have been for other salesmen to receive complaints about medicine as expensive as Kyung Ok Go and subsequent demand for a full refund, Choi never had any such “disgrace.”
Rather, his customers bought more saying the medicine was indeed effective, a recognition hard-earned for his years of trust-building. After he founded Kwangdong Pharmaceutical in 1963, he alone generated more than half the company’s revenue for the first few years.
He has left Kwangdong a great legacy to uphold, inspiring employees to continue on with the much-honored business mindset.
The company has firm customer confidence to this day with its signature product Kyung Ok Go. It obtained a patent from the Japan Patent Office in March for its ingredient that helps treat male infertility.
Kwangdong has successfully diversified its business portfolio, leading the industry in which many struggle to find a sustainable growth engine amid growing pressure to develop high-quality products.
Vice Chairman Choi Sung-won, the founder’s son, is confident in carrying on the family business amid the continued popularity of its signature products.
They include the herbal tonic drink Kwangdong Ssanghwa Tang; Woo Whang Chong Shim Won, which helps ease symptoms of strokes and hypertension; and Gongjindan, which helps treat fatigue in patients who have undergone surgery or those who suffer from chronic exhaustion in general, according to the company.
The firm’s major cash cow, Vita 500, a vitamin C drink, continues to be the best seller in the market. It was developed to help people increase their daily vitamin intake by offering it as a beverage rather than pills, which are harder to swallow. It posted sales of more than 20 million bottles in four months in 2001 when it was introduced.
By consolidated financial statements, the firm posted 1.56 trillion won ($1.38 billion) in sales last year, coming in third in the industry after Yuhan Corp. and Green Cross Corp.