Blending tech and business to transform a retail icon

The Seoul-based retailer with about 1,300 stores offers a compelling example of what can happen when a technology leader takes the reins of the business. COO Jinhee Lee has a background in tech startups, and over the past three years he’s led Olive Young’s digital transformation as SVP of the digital business division. Today, he oversees the tech function as well as the overall strategy and operations of the platform business.

But Lee is aiming even higher, with a bold vision to transform Olive Young into the world’s leading omnichannel retailer, seamlessly bridging online and offline channels while redefining the retail landscape.

Rewriting retail rules

Olive Young’s recent performance validates Lee’s ambitions. Despite an ongoing economic downturn, the company has maintained steady growth, especially notable since the COVID-19 pandemic. The brand’s growing popularity among international tourists has also fueled momentum, contributing to record-breaking annual revenue of over $3.5 billion last year, a 24% increase from 2023.

Olive Young’s organizational structure has continuously evolved organically alongside its revenue growth and strategic direction. Large-scale restructuring occurs at the start of each year and agile adjustments are made throughout, driven by new initiatives and emerging opportunities. One result of this evolution is the head of platform business role, created in 2023 and currently held by Lee.

According to him, the company’s platform is a vessel that encompasses every touchpoint where the Olive Young brand engages with its customers, overseeing all operational and support functions that power these interactions.

Lee describes the division as a tightly integrated organization where teams across multiple functions collaborate seamlessly. So retail, digital, supply chain, platform engineers, and, more recently, AI and data specialists all work within a single framework, bringing together several thousand employees.

This model represents a clear departure from the traditional structure of retail companies where offline and online operations run independently, and IT and business divisions work in silos. Olive Young, however, has chosen a different path — integrating functions into a single unified division that works together to create synergy.

“From the customer’s perspective, what matters is the experience of purchasing something from Olive Young, not whether it happened online or in-store,” says Lee.

He adds that CRM analysis shows customers who use both online and offline channels demonstrate significantly higher loyalty compared to single-channel users. “This omnichannel strategy clearly delivers benefits not only in terms of revenue growth but also marketing efficiency,” he says. “It’s this strategic foundation that led us to create a unified organization dedicated to the platform.”

In-house tech as the engine

Although omnichannel strategies are widely adopted to bridge digital and physical retail, effective implementation isn’t common. Olive Young, however, has taken a distinctive and effective approach. When Lee joined in 2021 as SVP of the digital business division, his top priority was to lay the groundwork for robust in-house tech and product capabilities, since most development efforts were then outsourced.

“Even with a trusted outsourcing partner, it’s hard to move as quickly or adapt as easily as an internal team,” he says. “Vendors typically operate within fixed scopes and timelines, which is why I felt it was essential to foster a culture where business and IT could move together more responsively and with greater alignment.”

After nearly two years of focused investment, Olive Young brought its tech organization in-house. While Lee oversaw the strategic push, the day-to-day leadership of it now falls under the CTO and a specialized tech team that leads key initiatives like integrating online and offline customer data and developing, maintaining, and optimizing technical infrastructure across all sales channels. The CTO and leaders of the tech organization also report directly to Lee, reflecting the company’s structure and strong emphasis on aligning digital strategy with overall business operations.

The impact of this transformation is clearly reflected in the numbers. Four years ago, Olive Young’s mobile app had upward of two million monthly active users. As of March this year, that number reached nearly nine million. Online sales now account for roughly 30% of total revenue on average, exceeding 40% during major promotional periods, and omnichannel users now make up 40% of the customer base. Their purchase histories, behavioral patterns, and product interactions are integrated into a unified dataset, enabling the company to turn data gathered during seasonal sales into predictive insights for trends one to two years out. As a result, a data-driven, decision-making culture has taken root across the organization.

With stronger online capabilities in place, Olive Young has also begun introducing tech-driven innovations to better support its offline stores. Having led the growth of the digital business division, Lee shifted his focus toward omnichannel innovation, connecting the online and offline worlds. In this process, he identified the critical role of merchandisers and believed they were the driving force behind what sets Olive Young apart from other retailers.

Guided by this philosophy, the company merged its previously separate online and offline MD teams into a unified organization and restructured them by product category. At the same time, it built a range of support systems and technical infrastructure, enabling merchandisers, marketers, and store staff to focus on their respective areas of expertise.

One example of this integrated strategy is a system where product demand is first tested in the online store, and then successful items are rolled out to physical locations based on customer response. The company also redesigned its inventory and display strategies by leveraging data on foot traffic and sales potential. Olive Young’s brick-and-mortar stores are no longer just retail spaces — they’re evolving into experiential hubs, incorporating technologies like AI-powered skin diagnostics. Various technology and marketing experiments are also being conducted to increase the time customers spend in stores.

Leadership at scale

Olive Young’s success has been a collective achievement, made possible by numerous leaders within the platform business division who developed strategies and executed them in close coordination with their departments. Lee, in turn, has focused more on creating an environment where communication and collaboration between teams can thrive, and on fundamentally transforming how people work.

“Working at Olive Young made me realize that the kind of leadership required in a large organization is completely different from what’s needed to run a startup or manage a small team,” he said. “I’ve led teams before, but they were usually made up of just a few dozen people. Back then, I could easily communicate my vision and strategy through quick meetings or casual conversations. After leading an organization with thousands of employees, though, I’ve learned that important messages need to be echoed again and again — sometimes hundreds of times — before they truly resonate across every corner of the company. So now, I repeat our goals and vision clearly, consistently, and often.”

Even the way leaders make themselves visible evolves as teams expand. When he was a startup CEO, Lee believed that a visible leader was essential to inspire and guide. But in a large organization, he finds it more effective to step back and create a system where team members take the lead, deliver results, and get the spotlight themselves.

Lee also avoided assuming that one working style fits all. As a company with over two decades of history rooted in offline retail, Olive Young had developed a field-oriented culture that valued clear hierarchy and accountability. In contrast, newer teams were encouraged to adopt a flatter and autonomous style of working.

“It’s not about one culture being right and the other wrong,” says Lee. “We needed both. My goal was to strike a balance by combining the stability of a large corporation with the agility of a startup.”

His first step toward achieving this balance was introducing the squad-tribe system. A squad is a small, cross-functional team focused on a specific feature or function within a product or service, bringing together planners, developers, designers, and others to collaborate organically. Multiple squads are then grouped into a tribe. To support fast and fluid collaboration within this new structure, Lee implemented tools like Slack and Jira, helping tech teams integrate their workflows more seamlessly with other departments.

He also redefined the company’s hiring strategy. Rather than prioritizing candidates from large corporate IT departments, he actively recruited people with startup experience or entrepreneurial backgrounds. These hires, unbound by conventional processes, brought a spirit of autonomy and fresh problem-solving approaches that created productive tension within the organization. Naturally, some struggled to adapt to the hybrid culture. “It took about a year to find people who truly understood a company where corporate and startup cultures coexist, and to help embed that culture throughout the organization,” he says.

With a background in software development, Lee took the lead to bridge the communication gap between tech teams and non-IT departments. To do so, he asked internal engineers to rehearse explaining their work in plain language before presenting it to non-technical teams. And when discussing strategy, rather than imposing top-down decisions, Lee respected the operational expertise of frontline employees. He took time to understand their workflows and operational context before stepping back to identify ways to improve the overall system. It’s a leadership style grounded in respect, empathy, and a keen sense of how to drive change from within.

Strength from diversity

According to Lee, one fortunate factor behind Olive Young’s transformation was the company’s deeply rooted culture of embracing diversity. He believes this openness made it easier to implement the changes he introduced. The beauty industry, by nature, is fast-paced and trend-sensitive, requiring teams to stay ahead of the curve every season. As a result, employees tend to be highly receptive to change. A relatively young team, including executives in their 30s, has helped cultivate a dynamic and agile work culture despite the company’s scale.

“From our frontline staff to the executive team, including the CEO, everyone here has DNA that welcomes change and diversity,” Lee says. “That cultural aspect made a strong impression on me and was one of the reasons I decided to join Olive Young. I believe the success we’ve seen wouldn’t have been possible without leadership alignment and support at the highest level.”

Years into leading the integration of online and offline channels, Lee is now setting his sights on international markets. His vision is to position Olive Young as a global K-beauty platform. Currently, the company ships products to over 100 countries through its cross-border e-commerce platform, and is preparing to open its first offline store in the US. The product range is also expanding beyond beauty and health into the broader wellness category.

“Today, business innovation starts with IT, regardless of the department,” he says. “My experience as a tech leader has been an invaluable asset. It gave me a solid foundation to expand my leadership into broader business areas. I hope to see more IT leaders in Korea stepping up to take on business leadership roles in the future.”