Late Last Year, HYBE Remove KOZ Entertainment’s Executive Board Due To Weak Sales

Late last year, HYBE removed KOZ Entertainment’s executive board due to weak sales.

In addition to its internal disagreement with ADOR, HYBE Labels overhauled the executive board of KOZ Entertainment at the end of last year. Based on insider information on May 23 KST, most KOZ board members, including CEO ‘A’, were replaced last year owing to “poor sales”. In 2023, KOZ Entertainment had the lowest sales of any HYBE subsidiary at 19.4 billion KRW (~ $14.2 million USD). CEO ‘A’ is an entertainment business veteran who has worked with KOZ Entertainment founder Zico for over 10 years. ‘A’ may have founded GRIFFIN Entertainment to manage SHINee member Onew’s solo operations after leaving KOZ. In November 2018, artist Zico formed KOZ Entertainment, which HYBE acquired in November 2020. The label handles Zico and BOYNEXTDOOR. On the HYBE-ADOR internal conflict, HYBE Labels CEO Park Ji Won said, “We hit a bottleneck when pioneering the new multi-label system. For system improvement, we’ll keep fixing things.”