Global Expansions: How an architectural design firm landed a piece of a $400 million project in Korea

Rossetti Associates Inc. has a who's-who roster of sports-arena clients. The Detroit-based architectural design firm has been involved in everything from Ford Field and The Palace of Auburn Hills locally to the training facility of the Los Angeles Clippers of the National Basketball Association. Despite its national reputation, however, Rossetti President Matt Rossetti knew the company needed an overseas project. "We knew we needed to 'go global,' whatever that meant," said Jim Renne, the firm's principal and director of sports design. Several misfires had occurred in the late 1990s in attempts to get into South Africa and Taiwan. The big break came in 2007 when a South Korean associate at Rossetti was approached by a connection in Seoul who needed help with a stadium, a Rossetti specialty. The $400 million project, headed by Hyundai Construction, was for a 20,000-seat soccer venue in Incheon, home to Incheon United FC. The project also included 600,000 square feet of retail, three 50-story residential towers and a parking structure for 1,500 vehicles. A meeting in Seoul was arranged between the two firms. In true Korean business style, the Rossetti team was treated to dinner and drinks — Korean barbecue and soju, or Korean vodka — at a nice restaurant in Seoul. The Rossetti team went into it with a measure of skepticism based on its previous experience. "We were cautious, knowing we had some not great luck in the past," Mr. Renne said. "We wanted to make sure we better understood the strength of our partner and see how real the project was. This first meeting allowed us to better understand all that." The Korean firm had a strong portfolio and had worked with Hyundai Construction in the past, so Mr. Renne felt confident arranging more trips to South Korea. On the second visit, they signed the deal. The stadium was completed in 2012. The project opened the possibility of continued business in South Korea, a market Mr. Rossetti sees as primed for a spate of stadium building. The firm is looking at a handful of projects with the country's sports ministry, Renne said. Mr. Rossetti also hopes to get some of the work from the 2018 Winter Olympics in the Korean city of Pyeongchang. Mr. Rossetti was able to do all this because it had a Korean colleague to carry the firm across the cultural threshold. "We didn't start at the top and come down," Renne said. "We came in at a low level through a Korean colleague who was able to infiltrate." This is more important than it might seem. A great amount of Korean business and career activity is done through "circles" of acquaintances — friends from high school, college, past jobs and so on. These connections are maintained much more closely than in the West. Everyone has a network of "seniors" and "juniors" from these circles, and it's expected that they will call on one another for favors — so much so that it's hard to get much done without them. "If you come in as an American saying, 'I know about all this stuff, let me talk to your mayor,' it's a hard way to approach and get business done," Mr. Renne said. Seung Lee, the senior designer and associate at Rossetti who made the first connection on the Incheon project, retired after the stadium was built. Now project manager Sung Jung makes the rounds in South Korea, building on the momentum from the stadium project as well as Rossetti's work for another Korean company: LG Chem, part of the LG Corp. conglomerate. Mr. Rossetti was lead architect for LG Chem's Michigan battery plant in Holland. Mr. Jung managed that project. Mr. Jung, a Korean native who attended the prestigious Yonsei University in Seoul before coming to the U.S. for graduate studies, works his connections — such as a family one to LG Corp. — and uses Mr. Rossetti's growing resume with Korean clients to develop more inroads. He has found working with sports teams and leagues directly, as well as local governments and universities, to be more effective than going through other firms. Mr. Rossetti has had to get acclimated to working in another culture. There are different industry conventions. Being an outsider firm means sometimes being left out of the conversation when important things change, forcing Rossetti to play catch-up. The language barrier remains a source of unease. Managers used to handling their own communications can't help fretting over whether some important nuance was missed in an email. Or in a meeting where English is not the language at the table, it's mystifying to hear three minutes of translation after two guys have spoken for 20 minutes straight in Korean, much of it probably dismissible small talk. But it makes for an uneasy situation nonetheless. Mr. Renne also learned not to take things for granted. Deep into the stadium project, he visited the site and saw that Rossetti's name didn't appear on any of the signs. "It made me lift an eyebrow and say, 'What's going on here?' " he said. Thanks to Mr. Jung, the local press was aware Mr. Rossetti designed the stadium by the time it opened. But the firm had cut it too close. "We were barely known by the time it opened," Renne said. "It was an important lesson for us." However, the larger goal of building an international reputation was met. Mr. Renne has found that conversations with people from other countries move along more quickly once they know Mr. Rossetti has done work overseas. "They recognize you're not an amateur in the global market," he said. "It's not so hard to bring you over and work with you." This story first appeared in Crain's Detroit Business.