Quick News Before Watching
Samsung Electronics (hereinafter referred to as Samsung) has recently made new moves:
On December 19th, Dongjin Semiconductor announced that it had recently passed Samsung Electronics’ EUV PR (photoresist) reliability test.
Samsung has reached a partnership with Tesla to begin producing chips for Tesla’s FSD (fully autonomous driving) system.
These two actions point to the field of chip manufacturing raw materials, but it is not yet known whether they will actually be used to replace Japanese made photoresists; Another Samsung will comprehensively expand the market of electric vehicles and autonomous vehicle in 2022, pointing to the hot new energy vehicle market. As a company established for more than 50 years, the exploration in the field of photoresist may be due to the risk of “adhesive breakage”, but its layout in the field of new energy vehicles appears to be insightful.
Samsung Electronics Born with a Golden Key
In 1938, founder Li Bingzhe purchased an 825 square meter shop near the West Gate Market in Daegu, South Korea, and officially established the Samsung Chamber of Commerce (predecessor of the Samsung Group) to engage in food trade. The main business is to sell fruits and vegetables from Daegu and dried fish fillets from Puxiang to northern China; In the following year, another brewery was established to focus on the beverage business, officially opening Samsung’s commercial journey.
Strictly speaking, Li Bingzhe did not start from scratch. In the 1920s, he dropped out of Waseda University in Japan due to physical reasons and returned home. Born into a wealthy family, he obtained a license from his family to buy land that produces 32 tons of grain annually. His timely grain production is equivalent to 150 acres of land, serving as his own “angel wheel”.
Li Bingzhe used the money from the “Angel Wheel” to start his first business, and after exploring the local market, he partnered with others to open a rice mill to do rice business. By selling rice at low incomes and high prices, they quickly accumulated into young local billionaires; But the good times did not last long, as we encountered difficulties in capital turnover during the business process, coupled with the rapid expansion of the business scale, we owed a large amount of loans to the local Japanese banks. In 1937, there was another bank loan withdrawal, and the assets earned from opening a rice factory were wiped out.
In 1938, Li Bingzhe, who had regained his composure, changed his mindset and used his remaining money to establish the Samsung Chamber of Commerce, choosing to operate a small profit business such as food trade. Just a year later, Lucky approached Li Bingzhe and coincidentally took advantage of the low-priced “North Korean Brewing” liquor company at the time. Li Bingzhe’s business has flourished with the help of chambers of commerce and liquor companies; Unfortunately, with the outbreak of the Pacific War, the Japanese authorities intensified their plunder of goods from the territories occupied by North Korea at that time, with grain, oil, and food being the first to bear the brunt. The business of the Chamber of Commerce was basically unable to operate normally, and it was not until the end of World War II that business slightly improved.
In 1948, taking advantage of the relatively stable business environment in South Korea after World War II, Li Bingzhe founded the “Samsung Products Company” on the basis of the Chamber of Commerce, and started the import and export business of goods. Samsung Products Company achieved over 100 types of imported and exported goods in a short period of time, with an annual profit of 120 million Korean won. But unfortunately, in time for the outbreak of the Korean War, the production company was destroyed by the flames of war, and previous efforts were wiped out.
In 1951, Li Bingzhe rebuilt the “Samsung Products Company” in Busan with a surplus of 300 million won from “North Korean brewing”. After operating for a year, it returned to pre war levels, with assets reaching 6 billion won. It has to be said that the strength of “sauce aroma technology” has been evident since the 1950s, and it can still make profits in the midst of war.
Since the 1950s, Li Bingzhe, who is engaged in import and export, has changed his mind again, and he who has completed the primitive accumulation of capital will shift from commercial capital to industrial capital. At that time, South Korea was still a backward agricultural country, most of its materials needed to be imported, and its domestic industry was still in a stage of being in a state of waste and waiting to be developed; So Li Bingzhe started with food raw materials and started the sugar industry, followed by the textile industry.
The specific operation method is to purchase industrial equipment from abroad and assemble production lines in China. This is also related to the premise that South Korea became the front line of the US Soviet confrontation at that time. South Korea received a large amount of aid from the United States and was encouraging enterprises to build light industry. And Li Bingzhe adapted to the overall environment at that time. At that time, South Korea began to restrict imports in order to protect its light industry development, and Li Bingzhe’s sugar and textile enterprises were able to seize the market share vacated after import restrictions were put into operation; So the light industry territory belonging to Samsung expanded accordingly.
In 1957, the stable environment after the war also gave rise to the development of domestic industry and commerce in South Korea, but at this time, the banking industry that provided financing and loans for domestic enterprises could not meet their loan needs well; At the same time, the memory of the failure of his first startup due to bank lending lingers in Li Bingzhe’s heart. So, taking advantage of the government’s opening up of the banking industry, Samsung purchased 50% of each of the four banks and entered the financial industry. Relying on the financial industry, Samsung has strong financial support, leveraging leverage to start major mergers and acquisitions, and has successively entered the manufacturing, insurance, securities, real estate, and cultural industries. At this point, Samsung’s commercial empire has been preliminarily established.
