Invest KOREA

The Royal Relocation Treatment
Crown Worldwide Korea provides a broad range of support for inbound and outbound moves as foreign business here continues to rise

Dennis Muldowney remembers his days as a mobility consultant for Crown Worldwide Korea in 2002, right here in Seoul.

He helped people moving to Korea find a house, a school for the kids and, for the family with the daughter with asthma, top doctors. He helped take care of immigration-related paperwork. Those being the pre-Costco days, he directed clients to where they could buy a jar of spaghetti sauce.

“I was really the first person that a family would meet,” said Muldowney, now the Country Manager of Crown Worldwide Korea. “Each family has its own concerns. They need that type of customized support.”

Today, the relocations and assignment management services company handles about 1,000 services annually for corporate and individual clients moving into, out of and within Korea. Wholly invested by the Hong Kong-based Crown Worldwide Group, Crown Worldwide Korea opened its doors in 1998 and has an office in Seoul and five storage facilities. Muldowney’s 40-person staff operates four of Crown Worldwide Group’s six divisions - Relocations, World Mobility, Records Management and Fine Art.

Relocations involves the physical packing and moving of belongings, plus a range of services related to getting settled in. World Mobility is about helping companies manage relocating staff, whether it’s hundreds of employees moving at once or thousands.

“The company is very interested in having a professional company that has a lot of local knowledge, that knows where they can save costs,” said Muldowney of his corporate clients.

In the Records Management division, mobility consultants store and manage documents for companies. For Crown Fine Art, specialists handle art being moved globally, whether it’s the Mona Lisa in the Louvre or the warriors of China’s Terracotta Army.

The majority of Crown Worldwide Korea’s work is in Relocations, followed by World Mobility. Clients include everyone from shipbuilding engineers moving to Korea’s Ulsan or Geoje Island to teachers joining a new international school in Jeju Island. With the effectuation of Korea’s free trade agreements with the United States and European Union, Crown Worldwide Korea has seen a significant increase in its inbound business, in people moving into Korea, in the past year.

“Which is great news for Korea,” said Muldowney. “As Korea is trying to bring in more foreign direct investment... then we’re starting to see positive signs of that.”

Korea’s increase in foreign schools over the years is a good example of how the country has become more attractive for relocating families, said Muldowney, who calls the growth “a big game changer for Korea” that has made supporting his clients easier.

Crown Worldwide Korea has seen steady growth over the years. And in 2010, the company ranked first for quality among Crown Worldwide Group’s 265+ locations in 60 countries. The next year, it was in the top 4. This explains why the global Crown plans to open an additional office in Korea, in the southern port city of Busan.

“We have constantly reinvested money into the company to go into locations where our customers are, and where clients need us,” said Muldowney.

This need continues to rise. With companies competing for top talent nowadays, they are increasingly seeing Crown Worldwide as a business partner, offering its services as a differentiator.

“So it’s very different from just having the cheapest logistics company go in and pack and send [your things]. I mean, that’s not rocket science,” said Muldowney. “It’s really about supporting that move for that family or corporate account.”

By Chang Young (young.chang@kotra.or.kr)