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The Astonishing Story of Samsung: From Dried Fish to the Galaxy

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ADMIN VALUE

June 24, 2026

On June 24, 2026

How a tiny Korean grocery shop with $25 and a few sacks of noodles grew into a global empire that builds your phone, your TV, and even skyscrapers.

The incredible story of Samsung, from a 1938 shop selling dried fish and noodles in Korea, through war and reinvention, to the global giant behind the Galaxy phone. A tale of resilience and world-conquering ambition. Shop genuine Samsung at ValueHub Kenya.

A Shop Full of Dried Fish
Surviving War, Building an Empire
The Leap into Electronics
“Change Everything But Your Wife and Kids”
Conquering the World
A Giant That Touches Everything
Why Samsung’s Story Matters
Own a Piece of the Galaxy in Kenya

A Shop Full of Dried Fish

Few stories in technology begin as humbly as Samsung’s. On 1 March 1938, in the Korean city of Taegu, a 28-year-old named Lee Byung-chul opened a modest trading shop with about 30,000 won, roughly 25 US dollars at the time, and around forty employees. The business? Dried fish, noodles, vegetables, and other local groceries, which he exported to markets in China. He named it Samsung, meaning “three stars” in Korean, chosen to suggest something big, powerful, and everlasting.

It was a bold name for a tiny grocery trader, and Lee was no overnight genius, his first business, a rice mill, had already failed. But he was patient, disciplined, and fiercely ambitious. He could not have known that the little shop full of dried fish would one day grow into one of the largest corporations on Earth, all within his own lifetime.

Surviving War, Building an Empire

Samsung’s early decades were forged in hardship. The company survived Japanese colonial rule and the Second World War, and when the Korean War erupted in 1950, Lee was forced to flee, relocating his operations to the southern city of Busan. Rather than be broken by the chaos, he used it. With Korea’s economy in ruins and goods scarce, Lee diversified aggressively, moving into sugar refining, then textiles, where he built the largest woollen mill in the country.

From there, Samsung pushed into insurance, securities, retail, and even banking, becoming one of Korea’s great family-run conglomerates, known as chaebol. Lee was a master of timing and connections; he benefited enormously from government policies that shielded big domestic companies from foreign competition and gave them easy financing. He once remarked that government and industry were like husband and wife. Brick by brick, a sprawling business empire was taking shape.

The Leap into Electronics

The decision that changed everything came in 1969, when Samsung entered the electronics industry, setting up shop in Suwon with just a few dozen employees. Its very first electronic product was a simple black-and-white television set. It was a modest start for what would become a technology titan.

Through the 1970s, Samsung began exporting home electronics, took a major stake in a semiconductor company, and expanded into heavy industries like shipbuilding and construction. Then, in the 1980s, it made its boldest bet yet: pouring resources into semiconductors and producing its own memory chips. It was an enormous gamble in an industry dominated by American and Japanese giants, and it would eventually pay off beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.

“Change Everything But Your Wife and Kids”

When founder Lee Byung-chul died in 1987, his son Lee Kun-hee took the helm of the electronics business, and he was determined to transform Samsung from a maker of cheap, average products into a world-class brand. In 1993, frustrated by mediocre quality, he gathered his executives and delivered a famous challenge, telling them to change everything except their wife and children. It was a demand for total reinvention, and a relentless new focus on quality over quantity.

He meant it. In a now-legendary moment in 1995, after discovering a batch of faulty phones, Lee had tens of thousands of devices piled into a huge heap and set ablaze in front of the very workers who made them. The message was unforgettable: Samsung would never again settle for second-rate. That obsession with quality became the engine of its rise.

Conquering the World

What followed was one of the most remarkable climbs in business history. Samsung became the world’s largest maker of memory chips, the silicon that powers nearly every device on the planet. It overtook Japan’s Sony to become the world’s biggest television manufacturer, a crown it has held since the mid-2000s. And in 2010, it launched the Galaxy S smartphone, kicking off a rivalry with Apple that would define the mobile era.

Samsung went on to become the world’s largest smartphone maker by volume, pioneering huge-screen “phablets” with the Galaxy Note and, later, bendable phones with the Galaxy Fold. The journey was not flawless, a dangerous battery fault forced a costly global recall of the Galaxy Note 7 in 2016, but Samsung’s response and relentless innovation kept it at the very top. From a black-and-white TV to the foldable smartphone, the transformation was complete.

A Giant That Touches Everything

Here is what many people do not realise: Samsung is far more than phones and TVs. The wider Samsung group is a colossus that builds ships, raises skyscrapers, and runs insurance and finance businesses, accounting for a remarkable share of South Korea’s entire economy and exports. Its construction arm has helped build some of the tallest buildings in the world. Few companies anywhere touch so many parts of modern life.

Such power has not come without controversy; like many giant family-run empires, Samsung’s leaders have faced legal troubles and scandals over the years. Yet the company has proven extraordinarily resilient. After Lee Kun-hee passed away in 2020, his son Lee Jae-yong stepped up to lead. Today, Samsung Electronics alone reports annual revenue in the hundreds of trillions of Korean won and remains a global leader in semiconductors, smartphones, and consumer electronics, still shining, just as that three-star name promised.

Why Samsung’s Story Matters

Samsung’s journey, from a shop full of dried fish to the smartphone in your pocket and the screen on your wall, is one of the most astonishing in all of business. It is a story of resilience through war and hardship, of bold diversification, of an almost relentless ambition to be the best in the world, and of a willingness to burn the old to build the new. It is also why Samsung products carry such trust: behind every Galaxy phone and every Samsung TV stand decades of hard-won expertise and an obsession with quality that was literally set alight into the company’s culture. When you buy Samsung, you buy into one of technology’s greatest comeback stories.

Own a Piece of the Galaxy in Kenya

That legacy of quality and innovation is exactly why Samsung is one of the most loved and trusted brands among Kenyan buyers. At ValueHub Kenya, we stock genuine Samsung devices, from the budget-friendly Galaxy A series to the flagship Galaxy S Ultra, along with Samsung TVs and more, all authentic and backed by warranty and real after-sales support. Whether you want a dependable everyday phone or the very best Samsung makes, we will help you choose the right one and make sure it is the real thing.

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