Babson College - Babsonian Yearbook (Wellesley, MA)

Page 138 text:

Byung-Chull Lee K Byung Chull Lee is founder and chairman of Korea ' s oldest and Largest trading company. Today Samsung, meaning three stars, is the umbrella for a 27-company conglomerate which includes Seoul ' s finest department store, one of the largest newspapers and broadcast companies, paper factories, life insurance, an electronics firm and numerous ventures with such United States corporations as Corning Glass Works and General Telephone and Electronics Corporation. Samsung Petrochemical a joint venture with AMOCO Chemical and Mitsui Petrochemicals, opened last year along with shipbuilding and construction operations. Mr. Lee ' s philosophy for establishing a new business is to pounce on it when the market is rock bottom The son of a Confucian scholar, Lee left Japan ' s Waseda University in 1934 to open a tiny rice-cleaning plant in the small Korean city of Masan. It did not take long for the 25-year-old Mr. Lee to notice that all of his competitors were making deliveries by slow ox cart. Therefore, he bought a truck and soon left the competition in the dust, and as he recalls, howling blue murder. .■ ' As the profits grew from his rice-cleaning mill, Lee moved into flour processing, sake brewing, and real estate speculation. Then came the years of war and chaos for merchants and manufacturers in the Orient. In 1952 following the Korean war, Lee opened what is now the cornerstone of his export-import business, Samsung Company, Ltd., stating that South Korea could only profit through trade. In 1 977 Samsung Group, with sales around $ 1 .2 billion, accounted for four percent of South Korea ' s GNP. Taxes from the conglomerate paid for 3.4 percent of the country ' s budget and it ' s export sales accounted for six percent of the country ' s total. B.C. Lee ' s Samsung Group is one of three large companies which have emerged to make tiny South Korea an.economic success, and even a competitive threat to Japan in the world marketplace. , John Erik Jonsson Erik Jonsson is what the newspa- pers like to call an industry titan . The son of Swedish immigrant par- ents, he began working as an engi- neer following his graduation froir Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute ir 1922. While working for Alcoa ir New Jersey, Jonsson became interested and involved with a small company called Geophysi- cal Services, Inc. in Newark. He joined G.S.I as head of its laboratory, and moved to Dallas in 1934, to become secretary of the company. Today Jonsson is considered the force tha ' moved that tiny firm into the outstandingly successful, multimillion dollar Texas Instru ments Company. Jonsson was promoted to treasurer of G.S.I, in 1939, and became Vice-President in 1942 Following World War II, the electronics division of the company gained equal status will the oil exploration division of G.S.I. , and following the Korean War, electronics became the major thrust of the company. In 1950, G.S.I, became General Instruments, Inc. with annual sales of over $15,000,000. In 1951, Jonsson assumed the Presidency of the company, changed the name to Texas Instruments, Inc., and boosted sales to over $20,000,000. With Jonsson as Chief Executive officer and with the development of the silicon transis- tor, and with continued exploration of the world ' s oil supply, T.I. grew eighteen-fold over a ten-year period, employing about 1 0,000 workers and doing nearly $ 1 00,000,000 in business. The growth trend continued in 1959 with a reported 110% increase in sales to over $193,000,000. That year, profits jumped over 135%. In 1978, company sales topped the 2.5 billion mark. From 1964-1970, Jonsson, while still serving as Chairman of T.I., found the time to serve as mayor of the City of Dallas, and according to one newspaperman, probably epitomized the best of the traditional thinking that had governed Dallas for the past three decades.

Page 137 text:

r 1! J p 1 1 V 5 K 1 m ■■

Page 139 text:

John H. Johnson Keep your options open, he ad- monishes others, and John H. Johnson is living proof of what can happen when you follow his advice. Now President and Publisher of Johnson Publishing Company, Chair- man and Chief Executive Officer of Supreme Life Insurance Company, Chairman of WJPC, Chicago ' s first and only black-owned radio station, and President of Fashion Fair Cosmet- ics, the 6 1 -year old Johnson has bat- tled poverty and racial prejudice and discrimination to become recognized as one of this nation ' s most outstanding entrepreneurs. He has been honored by more than a dozen colleges and univer- sities, and has been invited to the White House by Presidents Eisenhow- er, Johnson, and Nixon. It ' s all a far cry from Johnson ' s early days. As a part-time college student working for $25 per month in the of- fices of the black-run Supreme Life Insurance Company of America, his future successes could hardly have been foretold. At 24, he borrowed $500, mortgaging his mother ' s furni- ture to determine how many people would be interested in reading a magazine geared to the black community. About 3,000 interested people sent $2 each, and the $6,000 was enough to launch Negro Digest. Today, Negro Digesthas become Black World, and although no longer profit- able, Johnson continues to publish the magazine as an outlet for creative young black writers. Ambitious though he was, Johnson has no dreams of building a publishing empire. I just wanted to improve the situation I was in at the time, he states. Thus, step by tedious step, John Johnson did build an empire. In 1945 ffconvwas born, using the Life magazine format and concentrating on Negro success sto- ries. This was followed by Jet, a pocket-size weekly of black news. Black Stars, a magazine devoted to the entertainment world, and Ebony. Jr., a magazine for children. You have to set reasonable goals and move from one plateau to another, says the entrepreneur. John H. Johnson - a man who keeps his options open. 119 mmamaamaa