"MediCube's ultimate goal is to overcome human aging. To that end, it has set a mid- to long-term goal of becoming the world's No. 1 specialized corporations in 'anti-aging.'"
APR CEO Kim Byung-hoon said this on the 19th as a presenter at the "Amazon Beauty in Seoul 2025" event held at the COEX Grand Ballroom in Samseong-dong, Seoul. MediCube is APR's flagship skincare brand. Kim said, "If necessary to achieve the goal, we believe we can go beyond being a cosmetics corporations and move into the bio field."
Hosted by Amazon Global Selling Korea and sponsored by Kolmar Korea, the event was organized for domestic cosmetics manufacturers, brands, distributors, influencers, and investors to share strategies for entering global markets and to seek collaboration opportunities. Kim gave a lecture on the theme, "MediCube, the most beloved beauty brand right now: the DNA of success."
Kim said, "Various skin conditions, including acne, are concerns that some people have and others do not. In some cases, time resolves them. But aging inevitably comes to everyone and only gets worse as time goes on."
He went on, "APR has set the sentence 'overcome human aging in 30 years' as the corporations' ultimate goal, and to make products with the best anti-aging effects, we started with cosmetics and moved on to beauty devices. Now we are trying to go beyond beauty devices to make medical devices. To that end, we are investing heavily in research and development (R&D) and meeting every day with Ph.D.s in medicine and engineering."
Born in 1988, Kim launched the cosmetics brand Aprilskin in 2014 with former co-CEO Lee Ju-gwang with seed capital of 50 million won while studying business at Yonsei University. The corporate name was later changed to APR, and in 2019 it shifted to a sole-CEO structure. APR found success with the 2021 launch of the beauty device "MediCube AGE-R," and last year's revenue rose to 722.8 billion won, more than tripling in four years.
MediCube has recently posted rapid growth in global markets. During 4th's Amazon Prime Day event, it recorded about 30 billion won in sales over four days, ranking No. 1 in search terms in Amazon's beauty category and placing high in overall search terms. Boosted by MediCube's success, APR's market capitalization has soared to more than 8 trillion won. As of the previous day's close, its market cap was 8.1225 trillion won.
He noted that the intense competitive structure of Korea's beauty market formed the backdrop for MediCube's success. Kim said, "K-beauty is like the archery event at the Olympics. A brand that competes and succeeds in Korea has already proven its quality," adding, "MediCube is the oldest among indie brands and has continued to build its own competitiveness."
He also cited product competitiveness and the Korean Wave as other success factors. Kim said, "If the product isn't good, you can never succeed. Korea's excellent manufacturing infrastructure supports brands and creates conditions to frequently improve bestselling products," adding, "Along with product competitiveness, the recent popularity of K-culture has further spread the K-beauty boom."