Samsung C&T Brand Guidelines: Samsung Sanghoe 1938, Raemian & the 2015 Cheil Merger

A 1938 trading house, a 1951 company and a 1995 merger.

Samsung C&T traces itself to Samsung Sanghoe, the trading house that the Samsung group’s founder, Lee Byung-chul, set up in March 1938, according to the company’s own history. English Wikipedia places that first business in Daegu, then under Japanese rule, as a small trading company with about forty employees dealing in dried fish, locally grown groceries and noodles. The sources used for this guide do not say how Samsung Sanghoe operated during the occupation of 1910–1945.

The trading company as such was formed after liberation. Samsung C&T dates Samsung Mulsan Gongsa to November 1948 and the incorporation of Samsung Mulsan, the Korean name it still uses, to January 1951; English Wikipedia gives 1947 for the first venture and says it began as a joint investment with the founder of what became the Hyosung group. The company says it opened its first overseas branch, in Tokyo, in 1953 and a New York branch in 1964. In May 1975 it was designated Korea’s first general trading company, a government designation to lead overseas sales, English Wikipedia says, and it listed its shares that December.

Construction came later. The company says Samsung Jonghap Construction was set up in February 1977, and in December 1995 the trading company and Samsung Construction merged; afterwards, English Wikipedia says, the combined company worked through offices in more than 50 countries. The company names the Yeongjong Bridge of 1995 and the passenger terminal at Incheon Airport, begun in 1996, among the large infrastructure jobs of that period.

Four groups under one name.

Today Samsung C&T is a listed company with four groups: Engineering & Construction, Trading & Investment, Fashion and Resort. English Wikipedia credits the construction group with work on the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which the company says it won in 2004, the Petronas Towers and Merdeka 118 in Kuala Lumpur, Taipei 101 and Incheon International Airport; the company dates the completion of Merdeka 118 to January 2024. English Wikipedia lists the Mersey Gateway in England and the Riyadh Metro among its civil projects, and the company describes the Riyadh line, opened in December 2024, as Saudi Arabia’s first urban railway. Global Construction Review reported in February 2016 that the port, railway and mine package Samsung C&T had built for the Roy Hill iron-ore project in Western Australia had been handed over that month, and called the company the largest construction group in South Korea.

At home the construction group sells apartments under Raemian, launched in January 2000, which the company calls Korea’s first apartment brand. The company says its Raemian Gallery won an iF Design Award in 2023. Korean Wikipedia reports that the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport ranked Samsung C&T first in its construction capability evaluation every year from 2014 to 2021, and the company says the run reached twelve years in July 2025. In October 2020, Global Construction Review reported, Samsung C&T confirmed it would stop new coal-related construction, investment and trading, while going ahead with the Vung Ang 2 power plant in Vietnam.

The trading group deals in chemicals, steel and other industrial goods and organises power and resource projects; Korean Wikipedia lists a stainless-steel processing plant in Romania among its investments. The fashion group carries labels started by Cheil Industries, among them the menswear brand Galaxy (1983) and the casual brand Beanpole (1989), as well as the women’s label Kuho and the fast-fashion chain 8 Seconds. The resort group runs Everland, which opened at Yongin in April 1976 as Yongin Farmland, the Caribbean Bay water park and golf clubs including Anyang Country Club, according to the company.

Design and documentation.

Asia’s large construction and engineering groups tend to present themselves through scale rather than ornament. A short wordmark or a set of initials, often in a bold sans and a single strong colour such as red, blue or green, sits above aerial photographs of towers, bridges, dams, plants and rail lines. Larsen & Toubro, for example, greets visitors to its website under its initials, “L&T,” and describes its aim as being “a builder of nations.”

Their websites are usually organised by business rather than by product. Building, civil works, plant and housing appear as separate divisions, and Korean Wikipedia describes Hyundai E&C’s business in exactly those terms: civil engineering, building, housing and plant. L&T adds manufacturing, defence and technology arms alongside construction, according to English Wikipedia.

Housing often carries a second identity. In South Korea the large builders sell apartments under their own consumer brands: Hyundai E&C uses Hillstate and THE H, according to Korean Wikipedia, alongside the company name. Overseas work is presented project by project, with named highways, ports, stadiums and metro lines standing in for a portfolio; a metro extension in Noida, reported by IBEF in November 2026, is a recent example for L&T.

Corporate reporting is part of the identity too. Annual reports, annual reviews and sustainability reports sit alongside the project pages; L&T, for instance, offers an Annual Review for 2026 on its corporate pages. This guide sets out what can be checked about each group — who founded it, who owns it today, and what it builds — and marks clearly what rests on the company’s own word.

A 2015 merger and a shared group identity.

The present company is the product of a September 2015 merger. Korean Wikipedia explains that the legal survivor was not the old trading company but Cheil Industries, the former Samsung Everland. That company began in December 1963 as Donghwa Real Estate to manage group land, was renamed Joongang Development in 1967 and Samsung Everland in 1997, took over the original Cheil Industries’ fashion business in December 2013 and adopted the Cheil Industries name in July 2014. In September 2015 it absorbed the old Samsung C&T and took its name. Global Construction Review described the merger as difficult in a 2016 report. English Wikipedia notes that the company is often regarded as the holding company of the Samsung group because of its stakes in other affiliates.

Samsung C&T works under the Samsung group’s corporate identity rather than a mark of its own: its history records Joongang Development changing to the current Samsung CI in March 1993. The company describes the merged business as a “Global Business Partner & Lifestyle Innovator,” and its consumer names — Raemian, Everland, Beanpole — each keep their own identities.

For a design guide, Samsung C&T shows how one group identity can sit over towers, trading desks, clothing labels and a theme park at once. Compare Samsung, whose group identity it shares, and Samsung E&A, another Samsung engineering company. For this guide we use a deep navy, a steel grey and a warm stone with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Samsung C&T’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.