CVS announced last week that it is adding a K-Beauty HQ to 2,100 of its stores this month, offering a range of 100 Korean beauty products curated by celebrity K-Beauty specialist Alicia Yoon. This news, along with Target’s similar initiative in January of this year, likewise with Yoon, signals a growing awareness of the Korean beauty phenomenon at the mass level.
Also in 2017, Nordstrom introduced a K-Beauty pop-up in seven stores and online in February, featuring 500 products; it has carried select K-Beauty items for some time but sees the pop-up as an opportunity for consumers to try new brands. The online K-Beauty destination Glow Recipe similarly launched a pop-up in Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood in March.
K-Beauty has been a trend among U.S. consumers in the know since at least 2014. Specialty chains including Ulta, Sephora, Topshop, and Urban Outfitters have been carrying K-Beauty items, subscription boxes such as EsianMall have kept fans supplied on a monthly basis, and publications from Elle to Vogue have been highlighting new products.
While licensing has not made big inroads in this space to date, a few of the leading K-Beauty bloggers and celebrities—of which there are many, based both in Korea and in the States—have introduced product lines and/or entered into endorsement deals.
Yoon is the author of the Peach & Lily blog and a distributor of K-Beauty products under the latter brand. Not only has she been working with both CVS and Target, but she also launched her own line of sheet masks at the end of last year and expanded that to an affordably priced cosmetics and accessories collection called Peach Slices, available exclusively at CVS as part of her broader deal. In addition, Hye-Min Park, who blogs as Pony Makeup, has created products for Memebox, while Irene Kim has collaborated with Estée Lauder on K-Beauty content.
There are dozens of K-Beauty brands available in the U.S. market. Some include Amorepacific, Tony Moly, Too Cool for School, Peri Pera, Skinfood, Etude House, Chosungah 22, Neogen, and Misscha, to name just a handful. At least one, J.One, is a celebrity tie-in product, launched by actress Ha Ji-won. She is one of an abundance of Korean actresses and K-pop artists who have launched cosmetic lines or forged licensing and/or endorsement deals with K-Beauty brands in their home market.
K-Beauty is attractive to retailers for a variety of reasons. The regimens typically involve multiple steps (up to 12) and multiple products—serums, toners, sheet masks, skin swabs, jelly shadows, and on and on—which helps spur incremental sales. Products tend to be packaged in shaped boxes or bags featuring cute and colorful graphics, often involving characters or animals, which stand out on shelf. Cutting-edge ingredients, from Sc-glucan and snail mucin to fermented yeast and yuza, help differentiate Korean brands from their Western counterparts. And K-Beauty regimens emphasize customization, which appeals to millennial consumers. Once fans discover K-Beauty, they tend to become loyal shoppers who are excited to discover new products.
Sales numbers confirm the growth of K-Beauty outside of Korea. According to the Korea International Trade Association, the country’s beauty exports have grown from $800 million in 2011 to $3.9 billion in 2016, representing a nearly fivefold increase during the five-year period.
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