CJ Olive Young has opened its first global-focused store in Seoul's Hongdae district, stepping up efforts to win over foreign shoppers. With sales climbing on an influx of overseas tourists, the health and beauty retailer is turning Hongdae into its densest store cluster in the country.
Olive Young opened the Olive Young Hongdae L7 store on Yanghwa-ro in Seoul's Mapo district on the 16th, according to industry sources. Spread across two floors and about 170 pyeong, or roughly 560 square meters, it is the chain's first new store in Hongdae in about a year and five months, following the Olive Young Hongdae Nolryteo store that opened in June last year. Including one more store slated to open this year and a permanent pop-up, Olive Young will have 10 locations in Hongdae, surpassing Myeongdong, which has eight and had been its largest cluster.
Olive Young entered Hongdae in 2012 with its Hongdae Main Gate store and has steadily added locations since. Apart from Hongdae Town and the Hongdae Nolryteo store, however, most are small to midsize outlets of less than 100 pyeong, and the company said it designed the new store as Hongdae's first global-focused location to meet rising demand from foreign customers. Global-focused stores carry a different product mix and layout tailored to what foreign shoppers buy and how they move through a store.
Foreign sales in Hongdae have been rising quickly. From 2023 to 2025, sales to foreign customers in the district grew at an average annual rate of 102%, the company said. Foreign customers' share of total sales rose to 83% in 2025 from 79% in 2024 and 63% in 2023.
The store's layout also reflects how foreign tourists shop. The first floor features a section selling Olive Young's own-brand goods and tarpaulin bags, while the second floor houses an "EAT'S K-FOOD" area — the largest among the chain's Hongdae stores — stocked with popular Korean food items such as Binggrae banana milk and HBAF honey butter almonds. EAT'S K-FOOD debuted at the Central Myeongdong Town store in March and has since been introduced at five stores, including the Hongdae L7 location.
"Since Olive Young's own-brand goods debuted at Central Myeongdong Town in March, sales to foreign customers in September were up about 600% from March, when the lineup was introduced," an Olive Young official said. "Tarpaulin bags have also proved popular, with cumulative sales reaching 2.27 million units as of the end of September."
The company also put extra effort into its skincare lineup, given the category's clear popularity among foreign shoppers. About 40% of the floor space is devoted to skincare, with a focus on sheet masks, the Advanced Derma range and beauty devices. From January through September, Olive Young's sheet mask sales to foreign visitors rose more than 40% from a year earlier, while beauty device sales climbed 17%. Sales of Advanced Derma, launched in March, more than tripled in September from its first month on shelves.
Competition in Hongdae's beauty market is also heating up. Musinsa opened its first standalone beauty flagship, Musinsa Beauty Hongdae, last month, and beauty retailer Off Beauty opened its first Hongdae store, measuring about 100 pyeong, the same month.