When word spread last month that Chinese color cosmetics brands INTO YOU and AZTK had opened counters at Musinsa Beauty's Hongdae store, buzz built quickly around customer reviews. Without any separate marketing, daily sales per brand jumped from 300,000 won in the early days to more than 800,000 won within two weeks, with products selling out and being reordered repeatedly. Cho Seol-mae, CEO of GTM Global, which brought the two brands to Korea, said what matters more than the perception that a product is Chinese is how it actually performs in use. "Once younger consumers start responding positively, C-beauty — Chinese beauty brands — will spread naturally, like malatang, the spicy Chinese hot pot dish that became a nationwide trend in Korea," she said.
GTM Global has grown its annual revenue to about 100 billion won by distributing K-beauty products in China. It currently serves as the China distributor for eight K-beauty brands, including the color cosmetics label 3CE, running marketing campaigns on major local online and offline channels such as Douyin and WOW COLOUR to help the brands establish themselves in the market. Cho entered the beauty business in 2008 through purchasing agency services, then began operating in earnest in late 2014, expanding from door-to-door sales and duty-free distribution into a distribution business built on contracts signed directly with brands. Rather than simply buying goods and passing them along, she built the company by taking responsibility for local marketing and sales as well.
More recently, the company has moved into the reverse business of helping C-beauty brands enter Korea. It took note of rising demand, centered on consumers in their teens and 20s, for Chinese color cosmetics that feature distinctive shades and designs. "INTO YOU and AZTK, which we introduced to Korea for the first time, are top-selling brands in China, and direct overseas purchases of them are already active in Korea," Cho said. "GTM Global supplies products that have gone through formal customs clearance, testing and inspection, which reduces the uncertainty involved in buying directly from overseas." Prices were set close to official local retail prices in China rather than lowered simply because the products are Chinese.
Cho said Korea's domestic market is only one-twentieth to one-thirtieth the size of China's, but that C-beauty brands see more than revenue in entering the country. "Competing head-to-head with K-beauty, which is loved worldwide, lets them identify their own products' strengths and weaknesses," she said. "C-beauty brands want to have their product competitiveness tested in Korea and use that as a basis for pushing into global markets such as the U.S. and Europe."
Inquiries from other well-known Chinese brands are indeed following. GTM Global plans to bring in two more C-beauty brands next month and aims to operate five to 10 brands in time, growing its Korean business to annual revenue of 2 billion to 3 billion won. "With cosmetics, a good product is simply good, regardless of which country it comes from," Cho said. "We will keep bringing K-beauty into China while continuing to find promising Chinese brands."