Korean beauty products are becoming mainstream in the U.S.
Shoppers during the grand opening of an Olive Young store on May 29, 2026 in Pasadena, California.
Kyle Grillot | Bloomberg | Getty Images
When Olive Young opened its first U.S. outpost in late May, shoppers were already camping out and the line stretched across multiple blocks.
The leading South Korean beauty retailer’s new store in Pasadena, California, had 6,000 customers walk through its doors on its opening weekend and is now seeing an average of more than 1,600 visitors per day, the company said. It has since opened another location in Century City, California, and said it plans to open more stores in the United States.
Shoppers wait in line to enter Korean beauty retailer Olive Young’s first U.S. store during the store’s grand opening on May 29, 2026 in Pasadena, California.
Kyle Grillot | Bloomberg | Getty Images
This popularity is a microcosm of a larger trend emerging in the U.S.: Consumers can’t get enough beauty products from a country thousands of miles away, causing some companies to jump ahead.
“The United States is not only the largest beauty market in the world, but also one of the most influential in shaping global beauty trends, content and consumer behavior,” said Rena Kim, global communications leader for Olive Young. “This was a natural and strategic next step in our global expansion.”
shining
Consumption of Korean cosmetics, also called K-beauty, has been increasing in the United States for years.The “first wave” occurred in the 2010s and continued until the Covid-19 pandemic.
“People were at home. They had time to learn about the 10-step skin care routine. They learned what certain ingredients did, how to put products together,” said Anna Mayo, beauty thought leader at NielsenIQ. “We’ve seen the rise of this ‘glass skin’ look and a real emphasis on healthy, glowing skin that looks great every day, but instead an increasing need to cover it up with cosmetics.”
“Consumers are already accustomed to this skincare-first philosophy that they live by,” he added.
Mayo said the “second wave” is now taking hold, with K-beauty brands successfully tapping into this appetite of U.S. consumers for skin care. According to NielsenIQ, U.S. K-beauty sales reach $2.8 billion by early 2026; This represents an increase of approximately 48% compared to the previous year. Mayo said that was faster than the growth rate of about 45 percent seen in the previous year period, an unusual acceleration.
K-beauty is also penetrating more U.S. households, climbing 28.7% in the latest annual period; This is a sign that the country is becoming even stickier.
Morgan Stanley analyst Simeon Gutman said he expects K-beauty’s growth trajectory to continue. In a March 11 note, the analyst predicted that K-beauty sales in the U.S. could reach nearly $4 billion by 2026, citing “the growing popularity of K culture and U.S. consumer demand for functional skin care products” as catalysts.
Gutman later confirmed to CNBC that these views were current.
Even if these predictions don’t come true, K-beauty’s popularity will have a lasting impact on the U.S. consumer. Medical esthetician and skin care educator Cassandra Bankson believes this popularity paves the way for cosmetics in other countries to follow suit, even in the United States, as long as information and trade channels are open.
“I think it’s coming, and I don’t think people saw it coming,” Bankson said, adding that he thinks products from China and Japan will be next, followed by Vietnam, Singapore and Thailand.
“There are underground groups in the US now in a lot of beauty groups, which I’m part of, and they’re like, ‘You guys, look at what I got from Judydoll,’ or ‘I just went to China, I went to Vietnam, look at this Thai sunscreen that we can’t find anywhere else,'” she said. “I think there’s more room for that.”
As a result, the American shopping mall began to be reshaped. At Westfield Garden State Plaza in New Jersey, the range of Asian retailers has expanded over the past 12 months, seeing new additions such as Sukoshi, which is a popular destination for K-beauty as well as Japanese beauty or J-beauty and Asian lifestyle products.
“Consumer discovery has fundamentally changed,” said Kate Sabbag, vice president of leasing for Westfield Garden State Plaza. “People don’t just find brands in malls anymore; they discover them through TikTok, Instagram, and international travel. And when they connect with a brand, they want to experience it in real life. We see this happening across our portfolio, too.”
Who can benefit?
A large portion of K-beauty sales come from TikTok Shop and AmazonAccording to NielsenIQ data, there is room for retail to capture more market share.
“There’s a huge opportunity to take this segment offline and into stores and reach people that way,” NielsenIQ’s Mayo said in an interview.
Sephora earlier this year Partnered with Olive Young Morgan Stanley’s Gutman said they will offer K-beauty products to Sephora customers both in stores and online. Ulta Beauty was also founded to capitalize on the growing popularity of K-beauty in the US
Ulta CFO Christopher DelOrefice said in its latest earnings report that “the skincare and wellness category delivered low-single-digit growth this quarter” and that prestige skincare, including Korean brand Medicube, “continued to perform well.” K-beauty brand Peach & Lily was among those driving “healthy guest engagement”, he said, and mass skincare’s “robust” growth during this period was supported by Anua’s in-store expansion.
“I expect them to continue to follow that trend in the market,” said Anna Glaessgen, a research analyst who focuses on consumer products at B. Riley Securities. “With the really successful launch of the Olive Young store, it’s clear there’s a lot of demand for K-beauty and they need to be where the consumer is.”
Ulta did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment. The company’s second-quarter numbers may provide investors with more clarity on this issue. The report is scheduled to be published on August 5.
But Glaessgen highlighted that K-beauty’s popularity poses a risk: Given that K-beauty generally carries a lower price point than prestige skin care, the overall average selling price in the category could be affected.
“If people who were a prestige skincare shopper who would normally spend $30 to $60 on something are now spending in their teens to 20s, that’s obviously putting downward pressure on the average spend in the category,” he said.
He sees this risk coming more from younger generations who are just getting into prestige skincare. “If they’re finding effectiveness in a $20 or $30 product, it may be harder to get them to trade in hundreds of items,” the analyst said.
Like other retailers Aim, costco And Walmart Further increasing its penetration of the K-beauty market could also be a way to attract a broader audience to the category.
Target has already made significant progress in this area. The retailer quadrupled its K-beauty offerings for the spring, introducing more than 150 new products and more than 10 new brands across skin care, makeup and hair care, a spokesperson told CNBC. The company plans to introduce more products.
“Beauty is a hugely important and deeply personal category for our guests, and our team is always looking to flex our merchandising authority by offering them the brands and trends they want most,” Amanda Nusz, Target’s senior vice president of merchandising, essentials and beauty, told CNBC. “K-beauty is a great example.”
Raymond James analyst Olivia Tong said products from Canada-based and owned brands such as The Ordinary Estee LauderIt has incorporated ingredients that have become popular in the K-beauty field, such as centella asiatica.
“It’s a very different way of looking at the category; it’s more about maintenance, it’s very content, and they also bring a certain speed to market,” he told CNBC. “We don’t think it’s a trend per se. We think it’s a bit of a shift in the market.”
