LG Elec CEO pledges cross-industry design innovation

MILAN, Italy – South Korea’s LG Electronics Inc. will focus on upgrading its home appliance designs to reflect the latest design trends in various industries from furniture to automobiles and home decoration, its Chief Executive Cho Joo-wan said on Thursday.

“Our customers communicate and interact with their valuable people in spaces,” Cho was quoted as saying on the sidelines of Milan Design Week 2022 in Milan, Italy.

“It’s important to raise the value and dignity (of our products) with user experience-based designs.”

For the design event, LG unveiled its premium built-in kitchen appliances under the Signature Kitchen Suite brand.

It teamed up with global luxury furniture and high-end design brands, including Moooi, a Dutch design company for furniture, interior and lighting, to showcase a combination of design, lifestyle and technology.

Cho also spent considerable time carefully looking around the exhibition booths of other brands, including those of Bosch and Siemens, both of which are owned by the same conglomerate.

The exhibitions that drew his keen interest were those of Molteni&C, Italy’s iconic high-end furniture brand; Lexus, Japan’s luxury car brand; IKEA, a furniture and kitchen appliances company; and Moooi.

He emphasized the importance of design innovation during the trip to Italy, accompanied by heads of LG’s home appliances, TVs, design and user experience divisions.

LG elaborated that the business trip to Italy was aimed at gathering ideas to develop differentiated products and services, breaking up the boundaries between business divisions and products.

Since installed as CEO late last year, Cho has visited Europe and North, Central and South America to keep track of business trends in the regions.  

About 800 in-house designers at LG Electronics are working on new user experience-based designs to produce customized products.

Underlining its focus on designs, the company elevated a research team under the Design Management Center to a research institute at the end of last year.

Meanwhile, its bigger rival Samsung Electronics Co. has expanded its product line of customized home appliances under its premium Bespoke brand, including AI-powered washers, dryers and a kitchen package.

Samsung will also be introducing AI-enabled kitchen appliance package with improved connectivity as if they were a single electronics appliance.

Write to Ji-Eun Jeong at jeong@hankyung.com
Yeonhee Kim edited this article