This Okay-Beauty Distributor Wants to Be U.S. Retailers' 'Greatest Buddy' for Model Curation
Between Korea’s powerhouse magnificence retailer Olive Young partnering with Sephora and Korean division retailer Shinsegae unveiling its three-month Hyper Ground pop-up in New York City, the stateside Okay-beauty growth is displaying no indicators of slowing down. In the race to faucet into the U.S. market’s seemingly insatiable urge for food for all issues Okay-beauty, some Korean manufacturers are enlisting Muskat Beauty Inc. — a Los Angeles-based Okay-beauty curator and distributor based in 2025 — to assist place them on main retail gamers’ radars.
While it could really feel like a brand new Okay-beauty model finds a house on an American magnificence retailer’s cabinets on daily basis, there’s a calculated playbook behind this international enlargement. After all, manufacturers can’t merely copy-and-paste their Korea-specific retail methods onto the U.S. market. This is the place Muskat is available in: Founder Daniella Jung and her crew of 25 workers mastermind Okay-beauty manufacturers’ go-to-market methods throughout the nation.
As the North American working arm of Jung’s Seoul-based distribution firm Most Inc., which launched in 2019, Muskat works with manufacturers reminiscent of Biodance, Celimax, CosRX, Purito Seoul, Torriden, VT Cosmetics and NuTexture, amongst others. It’s on observe to succeed in $60 million in proceeds this 12 months.
Photo: Esther Kim/Courtesy of Muskat Beauty Inc.
Before serving to form America’s Okay-beauty panorama, Jung started her profession as a requirement forecaster for Apple and later joined Amazon to recruit Korean magnificence manufacturers onto its web site. But again then, roughly a decade in the past, many Korean manufacturers had been targeted on increasing to China moderately than the U.S.
“I nonetheless do not forget that I needed to make 200 chilly calls convincing [brands], ‘you must promote on Amazon,'” Jung tells Fashionista. “Now, all people is promoting on Amazon and I work with quite a lot of magnificence manufacturers which are lively on Amazon. But then, I noticed an enormous, enormous alternative [for] Korean magnificence for U.S. shoppers.”
Related: Sephora’s Olive Young Partnership Will Debut With 19 K-Beauty Brands
Through Muskat, Jung works intently with retailers like Costco, Target and Sephora. Just as every retailer has a distinct core demographic, they’re additionally looking for totally different qualities within the Okay-beauty manufacturers they inventory. Costco’s international enterprise mannequin is especially distinctive because it doesn’t purchase manufacturers, however moderately on a product foundation: It purchases solely a choose variety of best-selling SKUs moderately than stocking a complete product line. (This technique additionally enabled the retailer a neater entry level to change into an early adopter of the Okay-beauty class.)
At Sephora, consumers are pursuing distinctive model tales, fascinating components and a transparent founder philosophy. (“That’s not a dialogue that I’ve with Costco consumers,” Jung says.) Take Biodance, for instance: The skin-care model is stocked at each Costco and Sephora, with the previous providing 24-pack bins of the model’s standard hydrogel masks and the latter supplying a broader vary of SKUs.
Photo: Courtesy of Muskat Beauty Inc.
Target consumers are additionally searching for a singular product at a mass-market worth, particularly on the heels of its latest Target Beauty Studio launch, which gives a curated assortment from greater than 90 status rising and international manufacturers. This September, Muskat helped safe Purito Seoul and Aromatica’s slots in Target Beauty Studio. Purito Seoul is a skin-care model greatest recognized for its moisturizers (see: the Mighty Bamboo Panthenol Cream and the Oat in Calming Gel Cream), and its Target entrance has been a very long time coming. “Purito Seoul is without doubt one of the manufacturers that has been investing quite a lot of advertising into the worldwide market moderately than [the] Korean market,” Jung says.
Aromatica stands aside as the only real Korean hair-care model within the Target Beauty Studio lineup, bringing greater than 20 years of scalp experience to the U.S. retailer. “They are literally dominating that [scalp-care] class,” she notes, including that the model’s Rosemary Root Enhancer and Rosemary Scalp Scaling Shampoo have gotten “cult-favorite hair-care merchandise in Korea and [the] international market.”
Photo: Courtesy of Muskat Beauty Inc.
Despite these retailers’ totally different buyer bases, they’re all eyeing one frequent attribute: virality. “These days, consumers really need comparable issues from Okay-beauty, which is virality, as a result of shoppers uncover manufacturers on social media after which they discover [them] in a retail retailer,” Jung explains. Because of this, Jung is searching for rising social media conversations across the manufacturers that she works with, noting, “it’s not one thing that we are able to create in a brief time period.” U.S. retailers need to see Okay-beauty manufacturers’ Amazon rankings and TikTok metrics earlier than carving out house on a retailer’s cabinets, that means that they should set up momentum earlier than Muskat steps in.
“When you’re employed with Target, Ulta [or] Sephora, you might be working with specialists and you might be truly mainly launching your merchandise for two,000, 5,000, 6,000 doorways, which doesn’t occur in Korea,” Jung says. “So this scale requires advertising capability and operational excellence and worth management.”
Choosing the correct retailer for a Korean model taking its first steps into the U.S. is a serious a part of Muskat’s go-to-market technique. Launching into the biggest U.S. retailer potential could not all the time be the simplest strategy for a model trying to hook American magnificence shoppers. “There is an order of the retail that you should go while you increase your model into the U.S.,” Jung says, including that Muskat wouldn’t advocate initially launching into Costco or Walmart based mostly on their promotion methods.
Photo: Nina Fernandez/Courtesy of Muskat Photo: Courtesy of Muskat Beauty Inc.Beauty Inc.
Although U.S. and Korean shoppers share a love for high-quality skincare, their respective magnificence retail landscapes are noticeably totally different. Olive Young dominates Korea’s magnificence market with greater than 1,350 shops within the nation, whereas the U.S. is segmented into specialty retailers (Sephora and Ulta Beauty) and massive field shops (Target, Walmart, Costco). However, one of many greatest variations between the 2 nations is their magnificence promotion methods. In Korea, Jung notes that there are frequent reductions, together with providing merchandise at 50% off, BOGO offers or presents with buy. But, within the U.S., “defending the model fairness by controlling the retail worth is pretty vital,” she explains.
“I all the time work with a model and advise them to not run heavy promotions as a result of each Korean model is educated that low cost[s] [are] one of many environment friendly instruments to develop the model, however within the U.S. you must use it in a distinct and sensible manner,” Jung continues. In apply, this intentional discounting appears to be like like collaborating in semi-annual gross sales (i.e. the Sephora Savings Event) or holiday-specific promotions (reminiscent of Black Friday).
As the U.S. market continues to welcome Okay-beauty manufacturers with open arms, Muskat stands other than different distributors as an organization “rooted in Korea” managing day-to-day operations from its L.A. workplace. It goals to selectively scale the variety of manufacturers it really works with, serving as a marketing consultant on strategic U.S. expansions for Korean labels and an professional curator for retailers. But, Jung isn’t fascinated by reworking Muskat right into a Okay-beauty conglomerate; Instead, she needs her firm to take care of its “boutique agency mentality.”
“We don’t need to work with 100 totally different manufacturers and low cost them and work with all of the retailers, however we need to work as an adviser for the model,” Jung says. “We additionally need to change into a number of retailers’ greatest good friend relating to Korean magnificence curation.”
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