A man walks past a TIRTIR store in Seoul, South Korea, May 23, 2025. REUTERS
Women check out cosmetic products of TIRTIR at its store in Seoul, South Korea, May 23, 2025. REUTERS
Foreign tourists shop at an Olive Young store in Seoul, South Korea, April 28, 2025. REUTERS
Jin Se-hoon, Executive Vice President at Olive Young, poses for photographs before an interview with Reuters in Seoul, South Korea, April 28, 2025. REUTERS
SEOUL, June 5 (Reuters) – Emboldened by roaring online success in the U.S., South Korea’s cosmetic startups are expanding their bricks-and-mortar presence in the world’s biggest consumer market, confident their mass appeal will offset the hit from tariffs.
Brands like Tirtir, d’Alba, Torriden, and Beauty of Joseon are in talks with major retailers to stock their U.S. shelves, company executives have told Reuters.Korean beauty, or “K-beauty”, products are able to compete globally on quality, price and snappy marketing and have benefited greatly from the success of the Asian export giant’s other consumer hits, namely its music, film and television.
“K-culture — things like PSY in the past, BTS, and then Korean dramas and films like ‘Parasite’ — those really paved the way,” Tirtir CEO An Byung-Jun said.
“In the U.S. market, there was already growing interest in South Korea. Then Korean cosmetics entered the scene. The quality was good, but the prices were lower than the existing luxury brands like L’Oreal or Estee Lauder.”
Tirtir’s profile shot up last year following the viral online success of its cushion foundation shades designed for dark skin. The product will be sold at some U.S. stores of Ulta Beauty this summer, An told Reuters, adding it aims to double U.S. sales this year.
Retailers in the U.S. from Sephora and Ulta Beauty to Costco and Target are in talks with Korean cosmetics brands to launch sales in their physical stores, according to Reuters’ interviews with a dozen people including cosmetics company CEOs, executives and industry experts.
They also expect Korean brands to weather tariffs better than rivals, thanks to higher margin business models. Many of them outsource production to contract manufacturers like Cosmax and Kolmar, dubbed the Foxconns of fast beauty, to keep costs down.
South Korea overtook Germany to become the world’s third-largest beauty product exporter after France and the U.S. in 2024. Four fifths of its $13 billion cosmetics output are for exports, which have predominantly been driven by e-commerce sales.
Yuliet Mendosa, a 25-year-old visiting Seoul from America, is a fan of K-pop boy band BTS, which led her to greater interest in K-beauty products.
“They go straight to the point to fix what you need to fix and your skin,” she said at an Olive Young store.
CHANGING LANDSCAPE
The U.S. push comes at a tricky time for the world’s big exporters with President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs unsettling global trade.
But while the levies create uncertainty for Korea’s beauty exporters, strong demand is expected to mitigate some of this, executives say.
South Korea’s dominant beauty retailer Olive Young plans to set up its first U.S. store in Los Angeles as early as this year, Jin Se-hoon, Executive Vice President of the company’s global platform business, told Reuters.
“The U.S., especially California, has by far the most customers for our global online shopping platform,” Jin said.
He said Washington’s tariffs were a burden but not enough to hurt K-beauty’s popularity and value-for-money proposition.