Combining Entertainment and Merchandising
The merger of CJ O Shopping Co. and CJ E&M Corp. has birthed a new company – CJ ENM, with ENM standing for “entertainment and merchandising.”
The name, according to CJ Group, reflects a will to grow the company into a global content commerce convergence firm by combining the competence of CJ E&M and CJ O Shopping. The group hopes that the merged company can compe with such content giants as Walt Disney and Time Warner.
CJ O Shopping and CJ E&M announced on May 10 that they unveiled the merger plan and the future direction of the merged unit to its employees. The new name will go through the approval process at CJ’s shareholders' meeting on May 29. CJ expects to officially use the new name after the new company is launched on July 1.
The service and brand names of the two companies, however, such as CJ O Shopping, tvN, Mnet and CJmall, will remain the same for a while even after changing the company name.
In addition, the two companies held a meeting for their major stockholders and institutional investors on the 9th to explain the vision and business strategy of the merged unit. They said they will create a new global market that converges contents and commerce by creating a synergy based on premium contents owned by CJ.
Kim Sung-su, CEO of CJ E&M’, said, “CJ ENM will grow into a global content company. We expect its market value to rise from 6.5 trillion won (US$6.06 billion) this year to 11.4 trillion won (US$10.63 billion) in 2021. It will generate an annual revenue of 1.4 trillion won (US$1.31 billion) by 2021 by focusing on the new business opportunities generated by the merger of the two companies.”
“The merged unit will provide premium contents and differentiated commerce experience to potential customers at home and abroad on the back of CJ O Shopping’s 10 million customers and CJ E&M’s 50 million viewers and 200 million digital followers. We will evolve it into a global content and commerce convergence company that competes with Walt Disney and Time Warner,” said Heo Min-heoi, the CEO of CJ O Shopping, on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the merged unit said it would strengthen the competitiveness of premium intellectual property (IP), expand digital content studio business and set up content-based global vertical distribution platforms as its strategy to accomplish the goal.