Lotte Shopping Co., South Korea’s leading retailer, plans to open two to three additional commercial complexes in Vietnam as it aims to more than double its operating profits by 2030, its chief executive said on Monday.
Lotte is targeting Vietnam’s upscale consumer market by embracing Korean-style marketing and capitalizing on the rising popularity of Korean food and Korean culture, tapping into the country’s expanding spending power.
“By 2030, we’ll open two to three additional commercial complexes in Vietnam like Lotte Mall West Lake Hanoi we launched in September 2023,” said Kim Sang-hyun, vice chairman and chief executive of Lotte Shopping, in an investor relations meeting on Monday.
“We’ll achieve 20.3 trillion won in revenue and 1.3 trillion won ($940 million) in operating profit by 2030,” noted.
Its operating profit target represents more than double the 473.1 billion won ($343 million) it posted in 2024. Its revenue came in at 14.0 trillion won in 2024.
South Korea’s fifth largest conglomerate has already been writing a success story in Vietnam with Lotte Mall West Lake Hanoi.
The 354,000-square-meter commercial complex, about 50 soccer fields in area, has differentiated itself from other retail stores in the country with foreign luxury and fast fashion brands.
Of its 233 stores in the complex, 40% features brands that were previously unavailable in Hanoi. High-end labels such as Chanel Beauty, Lancome and Coach have opened stores in the mall.
Cumulative sales at the shopping complex exceeded 200 billion won by the end of June and topped 300 billion won by the end of December 2024. Over the same period, its cumulative visitor number surpassed 12 million, outnumbering Hanoi’s population of 8.6 million.
INDONESIA
Lotte has also been expanding its footprint in Indonesia as it looks beyond the saturated domestic market increasingly encroached upon by online competitors.
In 2018, it became the first Korean retailer to enter Indonesia, where mom-and-brick stores dominate the retail landscape. It now operates 48 Lotte Mart discount stores and one department store across the country.
Lotte’s growth in Southeast Asia stands in contrast to its experience in China, where it withdrew in 2018, a decade after entering what was once seen as a land of opportunity.
The Korean household name had operated five department stores and 119 discount outlets across China at its peak. However, it suffered a setback following China’s restrictions on Korean goods in retaliation for Seoul’s deployment of the THAAD anti-missile defense system in 2018.
At home, offline-focused retails are losing ground to e-commerce platforms.
According to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, South Korea’s e-commerce market expanded 15.8% on-year in the first half of this year, accounting for 53.6% of domestic retail transactions.
By contrast, offline retail transactions edged down 0.1% in value, reversing their upward trend since the first half of 2020.
By Hun-Hyoung Ha
hhh@hankyung.com
Yeonhee Kim edited this article.
