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customers. For example, color cosmetics showed the most 2021, allowing visitors to the cafés to experience its beauty and
improvement, with make-up products being more male-centric personal care products.
in terms of the appointment of brand ambassadors, as well as Some analysts predict that the already popular ‘Lifestyle
new product development. Also, nail products are following the Center’ culture in South Korea –a trend in which consumers
genderless trend. Ohora, a gel nail strip brand, collaborated enjoy diverse activities such as dining, gaming, or watching
with the Wooyoungmi menswear brand in May 2022, showing films or concerts during shopping trips, in a one-stop location
male models wearing colourful nail strips. –will evolve even further. Today, both department stores and
However, the biggest trend may not be reflected in a product’s health and personal care stores (like Olive Young), flourish
packaging, ingredient list, or branding. Rather, it may be found due to their ability to offer a more convenient and varied retail
in the consumer’s relationship with the shopping itself. Korean experience. But the pressure is on to both diversify product-
customers don’t simply look for the best prices at stand- offer, in the name of convenience, and also, to offer additional
alone shops. Rather, they are increasingly opting for a holistic reasons for a consumer to interact with its retailer.
shopping experience that comprises both convenience & Shops that offer nothing more than the beauty product itself
lifestyle center services. The trend, analysts say, emerged as a and/or a sale, are, in fact, failing. Mass beauty brands are
result of the dominance of online retail. shutting down their own roadside shops. Many of them are
One can understand this evolution by taking a instead placing their brands/products in Olive young outlets
deeper look at what’s happening in the South or other health and personal care stores. Standalone outlets
Korean landscape of distribution channels. continue to lose sales (to department stores, health and
personal care stores, and e-commerce). And sales at beauty
How THE RISE of oNLINE specialists also decline, as beauty consumers have largely
SHoPPINg HAS SHAPED BRICK shifted to Olive young or online platforms. Some retailers are
& MoRTAR’S VALuE offER falling out of the market. Sephora, which studied South Korea’s

Consumers have been increasingly turning to internet retailing beauty and personal care market for over two years before
and home shopping channels as alternatives, enjoying its launch, failed to gain market share. By January 2022, the
cheaper prices than department stores might offer. This upturn Sephora Myeong-dong outlet had closed. LOHBs, a drugstore/
in ecommerce has resulted in interesting initiatives on the part parapharmacy brand, planned to close all its 67 outlets across
of retailers. Take, for example, Market Kurly. Adding to the the country during 2022.
competitive e-commerce beauty space, online grocery retailer Olive young, on the other hand, continues to prosper. With high
Market Kurly launched Beauty Kurly in 2022, focused on beauty penetration both online and offline in the country, the company
brands, encompassing both luxury and affordable brands, such is considered a gateway to success for start-ups and is known
as Estée Lauder, La Mer, Mac, Aveda, Lancôme, Biotherm, Lush, for supporting its smaller brands. Start-ups with innovative
La Roche-Posay, Dr Jart+ etc. Worthy of note: Market Kurly had products often want to take their first step at Olive Young to
also announced plans to leverage its signature “early morning have this retail giant as a partner. Olive young, some say, is
delivery” service via Beauty Kurly. setting the bar higher on what it means to be “omni-channel”
upping the ante on what all brick-and-mortar and mortar shops
must be able to provide. A deeper dive into Olive young’s
activities reveals the lengths to which brick-and-mortar shops
have to go in order to swim and not sink.

CASE STuDy: oLIVE youNg

As one of South Korea’s first movers in this distribution channel,
(of health and personal care stores), Olive young quickly
occupied strategic retail locations, before competitors could
expand into them.
As its competitors streamlined or closed their businesses, Olive
young saw even more success. For example, in 2022, GS Retail
announced its plan to permanently close its Lalavla health and
personal care business, shutting down both offline and online
With over 52% of sales coming from online marketplaces, stores by the end of November 2022. In 2022, Lotte Shopping
brick-and-mortar shops have also been forced to evolve, or announced its plan to shut down roadside shops in its health
close shop. To compete with e-commerce, offline retailers are and personal care stores chain LOHB’s. Instead, LOHB’s is being
offering experiential marketing and promotions, such as pop- converted into LOHB’s Plus, a shop-in-shop format located in
up stores, in-store events, and cafés inside outlets. For instance, Lotte Shopping’s Lotte Mart hypermarket outlets.
Daycell Cosmetics acquired a café brand, Rendeja-vous, in Olive young’s dominance can also be attributed to maximising

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