Amway Vice President Catherine Ehrenberger, fifth from left, and Vice President Robin Dykhouse, seventh from left, pose with Korea Health Industry Development Institute President Kim Bup-wan, third from left, and Foundation of Agriculture Tech Commercialization & Transfer head Jeon Un-seong, sixth from left, after signing a three-way memorandum of understanding on globalizing Korean technologies to develop Amway products at Grand InterContinental Seoul Tuesday. Also posing are Amway Korea CEO Park Se-joon, fourth from left, and American Chamber of Commerce in Korea President Amy Jackson, right. |
By Kim Tae-gyu
Staff reporter
Amway, the global direct selling behemoth, is striving to come up with a pair of products, possibly functional foods and cosmetics, based on Korea's cutting-edge technologies by 2012 under a scheme dubbed the Open Innovation Project.
Toward that end, the U.S.-based company signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on Tuesday with the state-run Korea Health Industry Development Institute and the Foundation of Agriculture Tech Commercialization & Transfer.
Its research vice presidents Catherine Ehrenberger and Robin Dykhouse said that Amway picked Korea as the first country for the ambitious project in consideration of the country's strong scientific communities and respect of intellectual property rights.
``Currently, we are reviewing the feasibility of in depth commercialization with some (Korean) technologies such as skin improvement technology, weight management technologies, women's health relating technology and stem cell platform technology for health functional food, cosmetics and skin devices,'' they said.
``Through the project, we are targeting to globally launch more than two products integrating Korean technologies in three years. In that case, we expect $60 million of sales per year at the maximum.''
The two senior officials precisely understood that Korea is abundant in leading-edge technologies thanks to the rise of venture start-ups under the previous Kim Dae-jung administration.
``We know that there was a big venture boom at the end of 1990s in Korea and many technologies have been developed from that time. Mostly, they are almost complete now,'' they said.
``However, the current Korean market is not enough to satisfy their desire in selling. Due to this reason, many small R&D companies have been bankrupted even though they have good technologies.''
The Open Innovation Project is also a big issue for U.S. companies in Asia's fourth-largest economy just as Amy Jackson, the president of the American Chamber of Commerce (AMCHAM) in Korea, points out.
``The MOU signing this evening is the culmination of strong cooperative efforts between Amway and the government. Amway's investment in Korea serves as an excellent model of cooperation and success between foreign-invested companies and Korean companies, including small- and medium-sized enterprises,'' he said.
``The AMCHAM is very proud of today's MOU signing event. We applaud such efforts and we encourage other companies to follow this example.''
This is not the first time for Amway to make a big investment in Korea as the global giant opened its Asian logistics hub in Busan, the country's largest port city, in late April.
The fresh facility, named the Amway Asia Logistics Hub, is the firm's third distribution center following its head office in Ada, Michigan and its European center located in the Netherlands.
The Busan hub is projected to handle an annual volume of 8,000 TEU, or twenty-foot equivalent units, of freight. This amounts to approximately 1 trillion won ($843 million) worth of cargo.
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