Last weekend, I watched a movie on IPTV. When I was little, I had to wait for 10 days and up to one month to watch a movie I wanted to see on the TV channel after hearing about its screening. Later, video rental shops popped up everywhere, and I was able to rent as many videos as I wanted. However, the world has changed once again. Video rental shops disappeared, and we can now watch a movie whenever and wherever we want. Personalized services never cease to recommend new movies that would suit my taste and preferences. To put it simply, it is the age of on-demand. Fans no longer stay home just to tune in to watch their favorite TV shows at the regular broadcasting time.

 A recent lecture I attended pointed out all the changes going on around the world in this digital age. It said that a mass-oriented approach no longer works. The fundamentals must remain the same, but we have to work out a new innovative approach. Looking back over the year, the Korean market went through a bad rough patch. What do you think the reason is? A market is put into difficult situations when sales are down. In other words, we had difficulties because our sales did not come up to our expectations. All this boils down to the customer. Sales come from customers--people who buy our goods and services. Some are active customers who continue to buy our products. Others are new, first-time customers. There are also customers who are inactive—those who used to buy our products but not anymore and those who show no more interest in our products. The difficulties we have had are the result of a decreased number of active and new customers. Simple promotional offers have now become irrelevant.

 Ever since 2000, we have talked about consistently attracting new customers. That is what is referred to as hunting, and it is critical to improving sales. Further to this, farming is also equally important as it concerns maintaining a healthy relationship with existing active customers. For that, we first have to categorize our customers, namely segmentation, and define our target customers. However, targeting must not be done with a half-cocked approach. We need to identify what customers want and how to win their hearts, all while taking an approach of customization to effectively achieve our goals.

 No matter what, we must always put our customers at the center of our business. Continue with Test & Learn to gain customers, maintain a good relationship with them, categorize and decide our target customers and examine ways to provide a more personalized, optimal customer experience. To this end, try new things continuously and if they work well, keep them and if not, improve on them to enhance our competitiveness. We were able to come this far because we have kept our focus on the customers. We put them at the center of our business as we strive to satisfy their needs and wants.

 Also, there needs to be a change in the way we approach customers. As I said earlier, the age of staying tuned to TV channels and renting videos is over. There are now a number of video content services, and people hop from one channel to another all the time to find a better rate. Mass media outlets such as TV, radio, newspapers and magazines that are focused on unidirectional delivery of message are called ATL (Above the Line). These four media outlets used to have a strong influence over the mass, but this is now dwindling. On the other hand, BTL (Below the Line) including social media are now seeing their influence grow strong. To be specific, it is more effective to use hashtags, r before & after images on the product detail pages, testimonials from numerous customers and influencers and a differentiated store experience, rather than resorting to in-store promotion events or using famous models as brand ambassadors, to attract customers and capture their hearts. Sampling strategies used to involve focusing on giving away one type of sample alone, but this too has evolved to be more personalized, providing what's right for the individual customer coming to a store.

 Everything has to be changed as the world changes. Adopt a data-driven customer management strategy to analyze customers and respond accordingly by looking into customer transactions and discount rates. This type of customer management has always been our top priority task and challenge. It is the same question we had 20 years ago, but we can now solve it with the help of AI and data analytics. I would like to encourage you all to leverage what's available to us in this digital age and work through the challenges facing us.

 Another thing we had to do is brand refresh. In other words, we must redefine our brand so that it adapts to the digital age. Think of the brand as an object. Experiment with its direction ahead, dust it off and make it shine again. Of course, brand refresh must go along with the right mix of customer segmentation and targeting. With all these efforts, we will be able to be truly customer-centric.

 Once again, look closely into our customers and find out what they want. Do not be afraid of failure but instead, push the boundaries and break out of your comfort zone. Take actions, no matter how small. Work with others even if they are not necessarily part of your team. You can start a research group or perhaps TF with people of different backgrounds and join efforts to achieve goals. This way, you will be able to effectively learn from each other. In fact, I believe you can learn more through diversity, and some of you have already demonstrated brilliant performance in this type of work environment. When different groups continue to do creative experiments, someday we will be able to see good results. It is always fun to try something new, and it is also rewarding. I assure you that it is okay to fail as what I'm looking for is one's strengths, abilities and potential. Even if you fail, you will still be able to learn from it. Keep trying, no matter how big or small they are. What matters is that you take action. We must go digital, go omni. I sincerely hope that our traditional strengths become a stepping stone to a better future, not an obstacle. Let's take these to the next level in a more omni-digital way.

 Additionally, we have to speed up a little to keep up with the fast-changing world. China is growing at breakneck speed. The old fixed idea of China being somewhat slow is outdated, which means we have to similarly speed things up. Learn and update your digital knowledge. There is so much more than we know. Rest assured that there is no shame in not knowing something and get your training renewed. As the world changes, it is only natural that we learn new things to keep up with the changing world. We will expand our digital training program. If we dwell in the past, cling to the old ways and be afraid of trying anything new, we will not be able to move forward. I want you all to look at things from a different perspective and enjoy changes.

 Lastly, let me use metaphors from bungee jumping and hang-gliding. If you have ever tried bungee jumping, you know that you cannot go any higher than from where you jump because you are tied to the bungee cord. You may feel like you are going a little higher as you are free falling and rebound, but all you do is gradually go down to the ground where you started. Hang-gliding, however, is different. You can go to another place, different from where you start, by flying along with the wind to go even higher and travel wherever you want to go. I would like you to join me in aiming higher with hang-gliding—go higher and further and explore uncharted territories and someplace your hearts are set on, instead of getting tied the bungee cord that keeps you from going further up and eventually pushes you down towards the ground and eventually back where you started. I'd like you to be Asian Beauty Creators who take the initiative to transform the way we work and pave the way for beauty. I hope you all finish the year strong and welcome the coming year that's going to be full of exciting changes and innovation. Thank you.