INTERVIEW 15 Tim Probert – Editor, Personal Care Magazine


MARKING TWO DECADES AT THE TOP


Sungho Lee is the President and CEO of Korean cosmetic raw material manufacturer Sunjin Beauty Science. Sungho received his Master of Science in Chemistry from Yale University, and his Bachelor in Biochemistry at Yonsei University in Seoul. With 2026 marking his 20th anniversary in the top job, Sungho spoke with editor Tim Probert about his time in the industry, about Sunjin’s growth and development, plus current and future trends


Tim Probert (TP): When did you join Sunjin? Sungho Lee (SL): I joined Sunjin Chemical in 1999 from LG-EDS Systems, which was an IT company. My background is in


biochemistry but, at that time, IT enjoyed the golden age of the dotcom boom. Current tech giants like Google, Amazon, and PayPal were just emerging, and the world was obsessed with bits and bytes. Many around me were


concerned, asking why I would leave from a promising IT career at LG-EDS with bits and bytes to the old-fashioned bricks and mortar manufacturing world, which Sunjin belonged to. At that time, in 1999, Sunjin was


mostly making surfactants. It was a small business owned by my father, and it had been hit badly by the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98. I was one of the elders of my


family, and my mother strongly wanted me to help my father. To be honest, I was not super


excited to join Sunjin. In fact, I was quite reluctant! But the company was in bad shape, to the point that we were


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about to sell the family home. So, there was not much choice. Looking back, I believe luck played


a huge role in my life. While the brightest young minds were flocking to the hyper-competitive IT sector, the Korean cosmetic ingredients industry was an absolutely neglected, small, niche area. Joining Sunjin gave me the space


to grow and make a real impact. I was simply lucky to find this future blue ocean at the right time.


TP: What was your first job with Sunjin after you joined in 1999? SL: Believe it or not, there was actually no R&D at Sunjin at that time, so I became the head of R&D. Also, there was no overseas


department, so I became head of overseas sales. Within three years, I became


head of domestic sales. So, basically, I was head of sales and R&D. I became President and CEO in 2006.


TP: How did you find working in personal care and beauty compared to IT? SL: Well, of course at first I had little understanding of makeup, lipstick, foundation. It didn’t seem very manly. Back then, the IT industry


was doubling and tripling in size


practically overnight. We were in survival mode. We were making small,


incremental increases. I was frustrated at first. But now I think the reliability


and steadiness of the cosmetic raw materials business is its beauty. On the one hand, it can be a very


difficult industry to enter. On the other hand, I expect that it’s also very difficult to fade out of it.


TP: You mentioned survival mode and slow incremental progress as a small company. But now Sunjin Beauty Science has sales of around US$60m a year, with branches in China, Italy and the USA. How did you turn it around? SL: To survive, we needed to give confidence to our customers, to let formulators succeed in their formulations. But to grow, I realized that we


needed to develop something new, something innovative. I will always remember a lunch I


February 2026 PERSONAL CARE MAGAZINE


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