LEE MIN HO, INTERVIEW WITH TRUGEN MANAGER, KIM GYU MOK

City Hunter Lee Min Ho is well known and identical with Trugen, a men wear brand of Korea.

The latest popular drama in Korea, that is City Hunter, is oftenly using Trugen store as their shooting location. Lee Min Ho is also wearing the wardrobe from Trugen for this drama. It seems Trugen is become a sponsorship of this drama.

Trugen was released on 16 years ago. Seems Trugen is like ‘an old store who sell an old stuffs too’. But we can’t prove this statement because in fact Trugen is still up-to-date with its stuff from year to year. Cho In Seong had been used for Trugen Brand Ambassador until being changed with Lee Min Ho. But with using those two actors as a brand ambassador, Trugen reaches their popularity and succeed.

Now let’s meet the Vice President of Trugent who will share with us about his business on Trugen and how to develop Trugen until become a big brand like now on.

1. An old brand is usually has their own difficulties to make their stuffs is still interesting until the newest era. How is your opinion about this ?

- Well yeah, actually Trugen’s loyal customers are men whose age is between 25 – 35 years old. But in fact, men with age 20 years old and 40 years has an interested to wear Trugen collection. Trugen was renovated three years ago and then Trugen used Mr. Cho In Sung to become a brand Ambassador of Trugen.

While Mr. Cho In Sung were still on military service, so we used Mr. Lee Min Ho as the newest brand ambassador who at that time ( 2009 ) still did Boys Over Flowers drama shoot. While that drama shoot, Mr. Lee Min Ho was still a temporary one. But after the drama was done, he became the official brand ambassador of Trugen.

It’s impossible that every year to year, someone doesn’t have any changes or willingness to change for themselves. In Spring 2009, the fashion was a cloth that have a classy and smooth thing. In these current years, the sales are more than the target.

2. Trugen is marked as a men wear brand that always use the best model for its advertising and the stuff is always up-to-date. How do you say about this ?

Mr. Lee Min Ho took over Mr. Cho In Sung‘s task as a brand ambassador because of his military service. But with the full support from Mr. Lee Min Ho to Trugen, so we can broadcast the ads to the TV.

Of course we have to use the best one. Mr. Lee Min Ho has a great selling point. And the quality and the standard of his fashion is great. So I think he is the ideal one to become Trugen model.

Besides that, I also search for the customer response. And we also get some opinion about the newest man fashion icon. I am so appreciated and thanked for that. When I went to Lotte Department Store. the classy and serious style is still up-to-date.

3. Another difficulty is to find the suitable style for a professional man. As an intermezzo, from the middle until the end of 1990, the brand character in the market was worse. It was looked from the sale of the stuffs, product planning, etc. How is your opinion about the market condition at that time ?

Actually at that time, a men wear store included to a big store. But after the experience of the brand market bankruptcy on 1990s, it was a difficult problem to solve. I am now talking about the different brand beside Trugen, like New Thirty. People said that it was important to have a cloth that had a luxurious sense on it. To reach sale target 600 billion was to slow if we compare it with the sale target on the previous spring session which was 20 % better. So, at that time I just didn’t expect too much to get the perfect goal one.

4. Do you want to make a new brand besides Trugen ? In your opinion, what is the important brand business unit as a manager ?

As a Trugen hope, we hope that this men wear brand can survive for the next 30 years and also grown together with our consumers. our staffs’ dedications are so big, even bigger! The starting fee of manager division is depending on the team. QR system is also being applied into the product unit to know about the reaction from the consumers about the store.

With a great strategy of business, we can get good and hilarious result. In Trugen, I work with many people and face the problems happen together. But with releasing female wear brand, F1, I think Trugen and F1 can be succeed on their own fields and become the most popular brands. We hope in 2015, we can get a chance to reach 150 billion.

Source : okfashion.co.kr

English Translation by : Aka @ Korea.com

Credits: Lee Min Ho Fanclub @Korea.com