Attention is focusing on why CJ Olive Young took part in producing the global beauty variety show Perfect Glow, which recently began airing. The program features Korean beauty experts and entertainers opening a beauty shop in the heart of Manhattan, New York, and showcasing Korean-style makeup services to local consumers. Olive Young is the main sponsor.
Olive Young is set to enter U.S. offline retail by the first half of next year. In the process, a key task is to build an edge against local multi-brand retailers such as Ulta Beauty and Sephora. Rather than leaning on a few famous brands, Olive Young is approaching the U.S. market with a strategy that puts K-beauty culture itself at the forefront.
According to the beauty industry on the 14th, Olive Young took part in the planning and production of tvN's new variety show Perfect Glow, which aired its first episode on the 8th of this month. Olive Young set up an Olive Young Zone in the show's beauty shop where visitors can experience K-beauty products and trends. It supplied a range of K-beauty products needed for the program. As a result, the brand logo Olive Young (OLIVE YOUNG) appears throughout the broadcast.
Olive Young's goal is to successfully open its first U.S. offline store in the first half of next year. To that end, Olive Young established a local corporation in Los Angeles, California, this year. It is currently selecting store sites and sourcing products.
Perfect Glow will be distributed worldwide through the over-the-top (OTT) service Amazon Prime Video. Accordingly, Olive Young is expected to boost its visibility in the United States.
However, for Olive Young to succeed in the U.S. market, a key task is to secure competitiveness against local offline powerhouses such as Ulta Beauty and Sephora. Ulta Beauty is North America's largest beauty specialty retailer, operating about 1,400 stores across the United States. Sephora is a global multi-brand retailer strong in premium and luxury beauty, operating more than 400 stores in the United States.
The popularity of K-beauty is spreading around a few brands, including Medicube, Beauty of Joseon, Laneige, and Anua. But most of these brands have signed exclusive distribution deals with U.S. companies. Even if Olive Young opens stores in the United States, it cannot immediately sell products from those brands.
Accordingly, Olive Young is focusing on promoting K-beauty culture itself rather than riding on the popularity of certain brands. Its participation in producing the Perfect Glow program is seen as serving that purpose.
There is also an outlook that Olive Young will pursue differentiation in the United States by putting forward its experiential services, which it is introducing sequentially at each store. In some stores in Korea, Olive Young offers services such as: a Skin Scan (skin and scalp diagnosis) service that measures an individual's skin type and recommends suitable products; a service that provides customized skincare methods by skin type; a service that teaches area-by-area makeup tailored to an individual's face shape; and a personal color diagnosis service.
Olive Young piloted these services at Olive Young N Seongsu, a large store in Seongsu-dong, Seoul, which opened in November last year, and confirmed results such as reaching a cumulative 1 million visitors in just four months. Olive Young plans to expand experiential services to about 100 medium and large stores in major commercial districts nationwide by the end of the year. Various services of this kind are also mentioned in the Perfect Glow program, which Olive Young helped produce.
Earlier, in 2018, Olive Young explored the possibility of opening offline stores by setting up a local corporation in New York. But at the time, because Korea was not part of the mainstream of the global beauty market, Olive Young's attempt to open a store in central Manhattan fell through.
Whether Olive Young will successfully enter the United States next year and establish itself as a key platform driving the spread of K-beauty is a point to watch. A beauty industry official said, "There has never been a time when global interest in Korean skincare and makeup was as high as it is now," adding, "It is the optimal time for Olive Young's K-beauty retail model to take root in the U.S. market."