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Sutter Holding Acquires CIC & Company, Korea’s Leading Children’s Apparel Company
http://www.fashionnewspaper.com/articles/35/1/Sutter-Holding-Acquires-CIC--Company-Koreas-Leading-Childrens-Apparel-Company/Page1.html
Maxamillion Blick

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By Maxamillion Blick
Published on 11/3/2006
 

Sutter Holding Co. (OTC: SRHI) has announced that it has acquired the assets of CIC & Company in a stock purchase transaction. Formed in 1999, CIC & Company has developed into the leading children’s apparel company in Korea. CIC’s premium brands are known for their style and quality and are sold in the leading retail apparel stores in Korea, China and Japan.

 


Sutter Holding Acquires CIC & Company, Korea’s Leading Children’s Apparel Company
Sutter Holding Co. (OTC: SRHI) is pleased to announce that it has acquired the assets of CIC & Company in a stock purchase transaction. Formed in 1999, CIC & Company has developed into the leading children’s apparel company in Korea. CIC’s premium brands are known for their style and quality and are sold in the leading retail apparel stores in Korea, China and Japan.

“We are pleased to have acquired Korea’s leader in children’s fashion and look forward to expanding their brands into the North American Market,” said Zirk Engelbrecht, Sutter’s outgoing Chairman. “This acquisition is a substantial opportunity for both Sutter and CIC’s shareholders,” added Mr. Engelbrecht. CIC & Company will continue to trade under the symbol SRHI until assigned its new trading symbol.

The company currently operates “Renoma Junior” brand, which has become the nation’s top premium kid’s apparel line, expanding to over 50 retail chains nationwide. This growth resulted in profits doubling to over $1 million on revenues of $15.6 million in fiscal 2005. “CIC’s management team is well-equipped with extensive experience in the fashion retail business and proven expertise in consumer marketing,“ said Lee Jung Woo, CIC’s Chief Executive Officer. “We are ready to enter North America and grow our business exponentially,” he added.

While CIC & Company is the leader in children’s fashion in Korea, its innovative marketing systems enable the company to create solid, long-term relationships with targeted customers through analysis of customer behavior and state of the art customer marketing tools. These combined factors allow the company to cater to the specific fashion needs of the customer and enable the retailer to provide more advanced marketing and advertising. The Company will utilize already established nationwide distribution channels, logistics and a strong brand marketing system to build upon its multinational apparel business.

CIC plans to continue with the purchase of new brands and expand their international business into new markets. As premium clothing brands are added to their portfolio, CIC expects to continue to improve profitability through manufacturing economies of scale and benefits derived from state-of-the-art marketing approaches.

Sung Park, the Chairman of the Board for CIC, said today, “CIC is excited to complete this acquisition and move into the US Market. Our goal is to create an asset which provides long-term growth for our investors. We believe our unique pairing of quality brands and state of the art marketing technologies will allow us to become one of the leaders in global fashion in the coming years.”

CIC recently opened their North America Marketing Office in San Diego, CA. CIC intends to expand this location as a base for global marketing and brand expansion.

About CIC & Company

CIC’s Retail Division: “Renoma Junior” (premium kids’ apparel: French license): This luxurious and modern kids’ apparel product line is mainly targeted for 5 to 17 year olds. This product includes formal wear (suits, dresses, and ties), semiformal wears, and accessories (hats, shoes, umbrellas, etc.) lines. Renoma Junior is a leading brand with a complete management system, consisting of its own planning & designing and merchandising & producing, and retail & franchising system. This division has 50 channel distributions all over Korea in major department stores, internet shopping-malls and road shops. Upon its launching, for the first 3 years, the brand generated consistently increasing profit. In 2004 the Company had revenues of $14.2 million (2% net profit) and in 2005 revenues of $15.6 million (7% net profit). The company’s growth will be enhanced through active acquisitions of new brands, both domestic and international. Currently, the company is in discussion with leading bands in children’s and women’s apparel segments. We believe that the Company’s value chain will be strengthened through a strong synergy effects as these segments shares the same decision makers and buying processes with the Renoma brand. Moreover, internally, the Company could achieve a higher profitability through reaching an economy of scale in operation, resulted from the mergers.

CIMS & IMMS Division (Customer Interaction Marketing Services & Interactive Mobile Marketing Services): This division supports the Company’s retail business by providing one-to-one customer relationship management system, and this in turn, will increase customer retention and ultimately improving ROI. Moreover, this division will launch Mobile Interactive Marketing Services with major cellular phone service companies in Korea such as, SK Telecom and KTF. This service not only assists the mobile carriers to enhance their customer base with interactive marketing tools, but also allows for merchants and retailers to utilize a huge database of these mobile carriers. CIC has the proprietary technology and solutions to be a perfect intermediary between these two groups, profiting on ASP service fees and profit sharing fees in some cases. This division is also equipped with a competent management team with strong industry background and marketing networks to penetrate this emerging service market. The company has a plan to replicate this business and service model in other international markets such as Japan, China and U.S. The company is already in discussion with some of the major global mobile carriers such as NTT Docomo, China Mobile, Verizon, etc. and starting to receive positive feedbacks. Besides IMMS (Interactive Mobile Marketing Service) business, this division also has other traditional direct marketing services such as CRM solutions, Data Mining services and other marketing promotion ASP services, versed in marketing tools such as mobile discount coupons. This division already has activated CIC retail brands to a full extent and is ready to move onto national and worldwide clients.
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