Lotte plans open 20 department stores in China by 2018

Lee Chul-woo, President of Lotte Department Store (Lotte Shopping Co.) said in the evening of August 24^th that the company aims to achieve the 2010 full year objective of making its perating profit exceed 1 trillion won (about 840 million U.S. dollars).This is because that the recent increase in sales of the company after a series of acquisition. Lotte Department Store is South Korea's largest department store chain and the 3^rd largest discount chain operator. The company's operating profit reached 8,785 billion won in 2009.

Lotte Department Store currently operates a total of 31 department stores, including 29 domestic chain stores in Korea, one in Beijing, and one in Moscow. The company also operates 186 discount stores, including 100 overseas and 86 domestic chain stores.

A spokesman of the company said that the company plans to increase the number of its discount stores to 200 by the end of 2010. And it will focus on the new emerging markets such as Russia, India, etc. However, many of these new emerging markets have not yet open to the multinational companies. Lee said the company plans to open 20 department stores in China by 2018. In addition to the current store in Beijing, the short-term plan is to open another store in Tianjin in 2011.