From a Korean Cosmetics Shop to the World's Most Advanced TV Technology — The Remarkable Story of LG Electronics

In 1947, South Korea was a nation rebuilding itself from the devastation of Japanese colonial rule, which had ended just two years earlier. The economy was fragile. Consumer goods were scarce. Imported products dominated what little was available. And into this environment, a determined entrepreneur named Koo In-hwoi made a decision that would eventually give birth to one of the world's most recognisable technology brands.

He opened a company in Seoul. He called it Lak-Hui Chemical Industrial Corp — the name drawn from a Korean word meaning "giving joy to all," and pronounced, conveniently, like the English word "Lucky."

His first product was Lucky Cream — Korea's first domestically manufactured makeup cream. It sold well. Very well. The success funded the next idea: Lucky toothpaste, which became a household name across Korea and gave the Lucky brand its first mass-market identity. And then, because the toothpaste required plastic packaging, Koo In-hwoi moved his company into plastics. In 1952, Lak-Hui became the first South Korean company to enter the plastics industry — a decision that gave it the manufacturing capability, the technical expertise, and the profit base to fund its most consequential move yet.

In 1958, using the capital built across a decade of Lucky Cream and Lucky toothpaste, Koo In-hwoi established a separate electronics company: GoldStar Co. Ltd.

Its first product was the A-501 — South Korea's first domestically manufactured vacuum tube radio.

The age of GoldStar had begun.

GoldStar's Decade of Korean Firsts

GoldStar's early history reads like the story of an entire nation's industrial awakening compressed into a single company's product catalogue.

In 1960, GoldStar manufactured South Korea's first domestic electric fan. In 1965, South Korea's first domestic refrigerator. In 1966, South Korea's first black-and-white television. In 1968, South Korea's first air conditioner.

Each of these products was not merely a commercial milestone. It was a national one. In a country that had been dependent on imported goods for the most basic household items, GoldStar was doing something with enormous cultural significance: proving that Korean manufacturing could produce the things Korean families needed to live better, at home, without depending on foreign supply chains.

The company expanded through the 1960s and 1970s — adding refrigerators, televisions, air conditioners, and audio equipment to its portfolio, and beginning to export beyond Korea's borders into markets across Asia and the Middle East. In 1982, GoldStar opened a manufacturing plant in Huntsville, Alabama — becoming the first Korean electronics company to establish overseas production in the United States.

In 1983, the two founding companies — Lucky Chemical and GoldStar — formally merged to create Lucky-Goldstar Group, consolidating under a single corporate identity the cosmetics, chemicals, and electronics businesses that Koo In-hwoi had built across three and a half decades.

Life's Good: A Rebrand That Changed Everything

Koo In-hwoi died in 1969. His son Koo Cha-kyung succeeded him. And in 1995, leadership passed to his son Koo Bon-moo — who would make the single most consequential branding decision in the company's history.

He renamed the company LG.

The two letters collapsed Lucky-Goldstar's complex heritage into something clean, global, and immediately legible to a world audience that could not easily pronounce or remember either word independently. And the name was given a meaning that reflected exactly what the founder had intended when he called his first company "giving joy to all": Life's Good.

The tagline was not just a slogan. It was a strategic declaration. As LG's own brand history notes, the original meaning of "Lak Hui" — giving joy to all — maps directly onto "Life's Good." The same idea, expressed five decades apart. Koo Bon-moo was not reinventing his grandfather's company. He was giving it a language that the world could understand.

The rebrand also came with a significant strategic move: in 1995, LG acquired Zenith Electronics — one of America's most storied television brands — giving it access to Zenith's patent portfolio, its brand equity in the American market, and its display technology research capabilities. The acquisition was a signal that LG's ambitions were not regional. They were global.

The OLED Bet That Defined a Category

In 2013, LG Electronics launched the world's first commercially available OLED television. The technology produced what LG called "perfect black" — each pixel in an OLED panel producing its own light and switching off completely to create absolute darkness, generating colour and contrast quality that conventional LCD technology could not replicate.

At launch, the product was expensive and sold to a consumer base that did not fully understand why it cost so much. Category creation always faces this challenge: the product exists before the market is ready for it. LG's response was unusual. Rather than pushing harder on product advertising, it invested in educating the consumer — in explaining OLED's technological difference at the display industry's exhibitions and through a sustained, patient marketing effort that built understanding before it built demand.

The strategy worked. Slowly, then rapidly.

By 2024, LG held over 52.4% of the global OLED TV market — a position it had maintained for 12 consecutive years. The company shipped approximately 3.18 million OLED TV units in 2024. Its brand value more than doubled from $3.1 billion in 2022 to $6.5 billion in 2024, earning it a position at number 97 on Interbrand's list of the 100 best global brands. The company that had started by selling face cream was now the world's most dominant premium television manufacturer.

India: Where Cricket and Consumer Electronics Converged

LG's India story is one of the most studied consumer electronics market entries in the country's business history.

LG Electronics India Ltd. was incorporated in January 1997. The company established its manufacturing facility in Noida, Uttar Pradesh — one of the earliest and most significant decisions it made, and a strategically crucial one. Import duties in India at the time were prohibitively high. By manufacturing locally, LG could price its products competitively against both imported products and domestic competitors — giving it immediate commercial viability in one of the world's most price-sensitive markets.

The Indian market entry came with a marketing strategy that was neither generic nor timid.

LG was the first consumer electronics brand to enter Indian cricket sponsorship in a significant, institutionalised way — sponsoring the 1999 and 2003 Cricket World Cups and investing more than $8 million in cricket-related advertising and marketing. It brought four captains of the Indian cricket team to endorse its products. Cricket, in India, is not a sport. It is a religion. LG's early, deep, and sustained investment in that religion gave it a cultural presence that television commercials alone could never have purchased.

The product technology strategy for India was equally considered. LG differentiated its colour televisions with "Golden Eye" technology — a feature designed to adjust brightness automatically to protect viewers' eyes in varying lighting conditions. Air conditioners were marketed with the "Health Air System." Microwave ovens carried the "Health Wave System" branding. Each of these was a technology-differentiated feature that gave LG a quality and health narrative at a time when Indian consumers were increasingly receptive to both.

The Marketing Strategy That Built a Life's-Good Nation

LG's global marketing strategy has evolved across seven decades — but its most consistent and distinctive elements have remained remarkably coherent.

"Life's Good" as an emotional architecture, not a slogan. The genius of LG's core tagline is that it does not describe a product feature. It describes a feeling — one that technology should produce in the people who use it. This emotional framing — technology in service of human joy and daily ease — has proved extraordinarily durable across product categories, decades, and markets. From a black-and-white television in 1966 Seoul to an OLED panel in 2024 London, the question LG has always been answering is: does this make life better?

Category creation through patient education. When LG launched OLED in 2013, it did not have an existing market to sell into. It had to build one. The decision to invest in education rather than advertising — explaining what "perfect black" meant and why it was different from any previous display technology — was a long-term brand investment that competitors who entered OLED later benefited from but did not pay for. LG bore the cost of creating the OLED category; it reaped the reward in 12 consecutive years of market leadership.

Cricket as culture in India. LG's early and sustained investment in cricket sponsorship — including the 1999 and 2003 Cricket World Cup sponsorships at a cost exceeding $8 million — was not a media buy. It was a cultural positioning. By associating the brand with the game that occupies the emotional centre of Indian life, LG embedded itself in the cultural fabric of a market where brand trust is built not through specification sheets but through shared cultural membership.

Technology differentiation with health language. LG's India product marketing — Golden Eye for televisions, Health Air System for air conditioners, Health Wave System for microwave ovens — reflected a precise understanding of what Indian consumers in the late 1990s and early 2000s needed to hear. Health and family protection were not just features; they were the emotional purchase drivers. LG translated technology advantages into health benefits, making the decision to buy LG feel like a decision to care for one's family.

ThinQ AI as the platform for the next decade. LG's current strategic bet is the ThinQ AI platform — its proprietary connected home ecosystem that integrates appliances, televisions, air conditioners, and other devices into a single, AI-managed home intelligence system. The 2024 'Experience Happiness' campaign for its OLED evo TV generated over 2 billion impressions and was credited with a 25% sales lift. The platform strategy positions LG not as a product manufacturer but as a life solution company — one whose ecosystem becomes more valuable with every device added to it.

From Lucky Cream to the World's Best Screen

LG Electronics' 2025 revenue was ₩89.2 trillion — approximately $78 billion. The company employs over 75,000 people worldwide. It operates in over 80 countries. It dominates the global OLED television market with a 52.4% share. Its brand value stands at $6.5 billion, placing it among the world's most valuable technology brands.

The name Koo In-hwoi gave his cosmetics company in 1947 — "giving joy to all" — has proved to be the most accurate mission statement in the history of Korean industry. Seven decades later, in the language his grandson chose when he renamed the company, it still says exactly the same thing.

Life's Good.

It always was. LG has spent seventy-eight years finding new ways to prove it.

Founded 1947 as Lak-Hui Chemical. GoldStar established 1958. Renamed LG 1995. OLED market leader since 2013. Revenue $78 billion in 2025. Still making life good.