As spending habits of people in the modern world are shifting more and more toward being value-oriented, the number of smart consumers is increasing. Nowadays, rather than simply spending on daily necessities, consumers spend their money based more on corporate values and culture, product safety, and the transparent manufacturing and management process of products. In keeping with this trend, in recent years, companies have started to change the manufacturing processes of their products to open processes as well as open up their workspaces. The reason such changes are being made may be that a company's manufacturing factories and workspaces are its heart where everything about the company is revealed plainly.
Spaces created by a company represent the direction and value of the company
Spaces containing the brand's philosophy move the hearts of customers.
Brand space marketing — the practice of showing the value of a brand
via spaces created by the brand — is a global trend
For some time, photos of specific companies' offices and those of factories where actual products are manufactured have been gaining popularity on social media like interesting behind-the-scenes stories. For instance, videos of the manufacturing factories of various food brands and videos of the manufacturing processes of various products uploaded on one popular YouTube channel garnered an explosive response. Then, the question is: How did consumers become so interested in companies’ factories and workspaces? Perhaps the answer is because they want to know the truth lying behind companies’ glitzy public relations activities. Factories are where products are actually made and managed, so everything about the products may be revealed there. Consumers, in turn, want to determine the stability and excellence of the products by taking a look into the factories. Globally-esteemed company Apple's Apple Park and Amazon's Amazon Spheres situated in San Francisco have also been built with such consumer sentiments in mind, and they each serve not only as a state-of-the-art workspace but also as a brand space that customers can visit and have fun together in; they are each a space that ensures the highest work efficiency for the employees and provides pleasant experiences and healing for the consumers so that they can experience the brand's values and products to the fullest. As such, spaces created by a company or brand have become vital spaces for its customers — the ones who make actual purchases — where they can verify the company's products, and these spaces now actually have a significant influence on consumers’ affinity for the company.
Spaces created by brands that inspire trust in consumers
CJ CheilJedang proposes a future with its state-of-the-art technology
Through such spaces created by companies, consumers can develop more trust in the companies and brands, and these kinds of spaces are also emerging in South Korea. One example is CJ Blossom Campus, a smart factory newly opened this year in Jincheon, Chungbuk by global food company CJ CheilJedang. Through CJ Blossom Campus, CJ CheilJedang is showing the best technology, optimized manufacturing processes, and the futures of the CJ CheilJedang brand, K-food, and food in general that will be built based on the former two. Unlike opening an office building to the public, opening a factory to the public is not an easy decision. Doing so is difficult and puts considerable pressure on the company because not only will it expose the company’s product technology and know-how, but it will also have to reveal what consumers are most curious about, such as the safety, hygiene, and cleanliness of the manufacturing process. Nevertheless, CJ CheilJedang has confidently unveiled its factory — the company’s core and the brand's heart — and consumers can now in turn trust CJ CheilJedang's technology and products all the more. CJ Blossom Campus is a space where global food company and representative K-food company CJ CheilJedang is realizing innovations that will lead the world through its food products and sharing such value with its customers.
Global food brand CJ CheilJedang's smart factory,
CJ Blossom Campus
South Korea's first, largest, and best comprehensive K-food production base
built with state-of-the-art digital technology
CJ Blossom Campus is the largest processed food factory in South Korea with an annual production capacity of 120,000 tons. It is also a perfectly prepared smart factory boasting state-of-the-art facilities for safe product production and CJ CheilJedang's unrivaled food technology. The main products produced here include convenient frozen foods such as Hetbahn, bibigo Korean Royal Court Dumplings, processed meat, and home meal replacements. Therefore, CJ Blossom Campus can be called a K-food forward base responsible for exporting K-food. In addition, CJ Blossom Campus is also called a smart factory because it was built as an intelligent production factory that can improve productivity, quality, and customer satisfaction, by composing all its production processes with the latest digital technologies and applying ICT fitted with digital automation solutions. IoT has been installed in the factory's facilities and equipment so that data relating to the production process is collected in real time, and real-time monitoring and response processes for the manufacturing process and quality control have also been adopted to establish for the factory a manufacturing process that ensures the highest efficiency.
In addition, the factory is also equipped with a world-class eco-friendly food safety system, whereby the occurrence of pollutants and odors is prevented through combination with a smart HACCP management system and high-efficiency renewable energy applied. Such facilities show consideration for consumers who have a distrust of the safety and hygiene of processed food, and they also bespeak thorough management of food and a sense of responsibility for food. Furthermore, CJ Blossom Campus plans to expand the production lines for its major products including Hetbahn and bibigo to accelerate CJ CheilJedang’s overseas market penetration, and it also plans to spread its production facilities and technologies overseas based on its differentiated R&D and manufacturing capabilities, thereby speeding up the development of localized products. CJ Blossom Campus is slated to play the role of raising CJ CheilJedang's manufacturing competitiveness and R&D capabilities for processed food to the world's highest level with a focus on future growth item “home meal replacements,” and therefore, it would be no exaggeration to say the future of K-food may depend on CJ Blossom Campus.
Is this a museum? Is this a factory?
A space that embodies the history, present,
and future of CJ CheilJedang
CJ Blossom Campus consists of a factory for product production and theme-based spaces for experiencing the brand. The factory section, which used to be carefully hidden from view, has been opened to the public so that customers can develop confidence in the brand by seeing how the brand’s products are manufactured with their own eyes and touching the resulting products with their own hands. On the other hand, each of the customer experience spaces has been designed based on a narrative with a focus on multi-sensory experience so that visitors can experience CJ CheilJedang’s history and its vision for the globalization of K-food in content form.
Video introducing CJ Blossom Campus
Tour review video
HISTORY THEATER
History Theater is a space where you can watch the history of CJ CheilJedang and the stories of its various brands as if watching a movie, in three-dimensional picture form on a 360-degree screen at a Circle-Vision 360 cinema. CJ CheilJedang is notable in that it is a company and brand that has always been with Korean people in their everyday lives since a long time ago and is now always with people around in the world in their daily lives like a close friend. Kind explanations from professional guides immediately following the viewing of the video will raise expectations for the brand as well as for your CJ Blossom Campus tour.
HETBAHN MUSEUM
Hetbahn Museum consists of two themed spaces, Hetbahn Hall and Hetbahn Smart Factory. The power of Korean people comes from rice, so it is rice power! Hetbahn Museum is a space specifically built for Hetbahn, an iconic rice power product, and this space provides the opportunity to see and feel everything about Hetbahn and, by extension, rice, and cooked rice.
HETBAHN HALL
Hetbahn Hall is a space in the shape of a modern rice mill designed after the square rice bowl where rice was traditionally stored in South Korea. At Hetbahn Hall, you can experience everything about rice from the history of rice to changes in the way of cooking rice to the food revolution brought about by Hetbahn while touching all related objects in the flesh. In addition to showing the history of rice and cooked rice, Hetbahn Hall also exhibits various tools related to rice and provides a wide range of experiences. The tools exhibited range from the cauldron of the past to the pressure cooker to the microwave, which is used in the contemporary Hetbahn era. The participation rate among visitors is high for the experience program space where you can cook rice while fanning it. In the experience program space, changes in the dining tables and meal arrangements of the Korean kings of the past are portrayed as mockups, adding to the visual fun.
HETBAHN SMART FACTORY
In addition, at Hetbahn Smart Factory, you can witness the actual manufacturing process of Hetbahn that consumers are so curious about. Hetbahn Smart Factory provides visitors with detailed explanations of Hetbahn's advanced mechanization process as well as its hygienic sterilization and packaging procedures so that they can learn in detail about what they have always wanted to know about Hetbahn. Watching the manufacturing process of Hetbahn where everything is mechanized to ensure the highest level of safety will make you feel as if you are watching a technology from the future. As such, Hetbahn Smart Factory serves as a space that is turning the concerns of consumers into trust through kind explanations and easy-to-participate experience programs.
Technology Hall
Technology Hall is a space where you can learn through digital content the cutting-edge technologies of CJ CheilJedang as well as the performance of the branded products produced on CJ Blossom Campus into various international markets. The most popular space among tour participants, Technology Hall is a great place to take pictures for posting on social media because it features a giant wall that depicts CJ CheilJedang's various products. At Technology Hall, you can experience a variety of package designs from CJ CheilJedang’s brands, which are leading the global market in terms not only of the taste and technology of products but also of packaging design.
CAFETERIA
At Cafeteria, you can experience a neatly arranged meal made up of CJ CheilJedang's home meal replacement (HMR) products. Cafeteria is also the place visiting customers get most excited about. The taste of your meal at Cafeteria is beyond compare because it is made up of products freshly made on CJ Blossom Campus itself. In addition, at Cafeteria, you can also directly purchase excellent products produced by CJ CheilJedang.
