E-Land Group

E-Land started as a 6 square metres clothing shop on a fashion street in front of Ewha University in Sinchon in 1980. E-Land's first ever brand was called "England", which later changed to "E-Land" due to restrictions on trademark registration. In 1994, E-Land Group introduced the first outlet in Korean market by opening the first store of 2001 Outlet. It took a form of multi story outlet stores with groceries, houseware and apparel. In 2003, E-Land Group purchased a 75% stake in New Core, a department store operating in 25 different locations in Korea. Following the acquisition, New Core was transformed to and operated as two department stores and 15 fashion premium outlets. In 2005, E-Land Group became the 37th largest corporation in Korea (excluding SOE's) with assets totaling over US$2 billion. In April 2006, E-Land Group acquired the entire South Korean operations of Carrefour which operated 32 discount stores. Carrefour Korea, despite its global presence and experiences overseas, struggled to understand the local Korean culture. Carrefour was rebranded to Homever by E-Land Group after the acquisition. The acquisition moved E-Land Group from 6th to 2nd largest discount/outlet operators with respect to total number of stores. In 2006, E-Land Group was the second largest retailer in South Korea based on number of stores (Source: Korea Rating). On 14 May 2008, the British retail group Tesco, which already operated in Korea, agreed to purchase 36 hypermarkets with a combination of food and non-food products from E-Land for $1.9 billion (976 million pounds) in its biggest single acquisition, making Tesco the second largest retailer in the country. The majority of the E-Land stores formerly belonged to French retailer Carrefour before 2006 and most of the stores will be converted to Tesco Homeplus outlets. Tesco's South Korean discount store chain, Home Plus, currently has 66 outlets. On 16 December 2011, E-Land purchased Elizabeth Taylor's Krupp Diamond ring for $8,818,500 (including buyer's premium). It planned to put it on display at their E-World theme park in Daegu. On April 14, 2014, E-Land Group announced that they will found professional football club based in Seoul and Seoul E-Land FC are competing in K League Challenge (Second division) since 2015. When E-Land refurbished the group's website in June 2022, it boldly broke the framework of the company's official website, and introduced a public home featuring "magazine-type content." As a result, the number of visitors to the official website exceeded 15 million in 2024. ==Description==