For Korean and Asian beauty brands

Online got K-beauty in the door. Stores, pricing and community decide who stays.

Korea now ships more cosmetics to the United States than to any other country. Most of the Korean brands we meet already know how to sell online. The harder part comes next: winning shelf space in physical stores, and holding a price that retailers and customers trust. This page is our view of where brands get stuck, and how MIJU Beauty helps them build something that lasts in the U.S. and across the Americas.

Talk to our brand team See how we work

Korean-language consultations available. 한국어로 상담 가능합니다.

By the numbers

The opportunity is real, and it is moving into stores

$2.2B

Korean cosmetics shipped to the U.S. in 2025, now Korea’s No. 1 export market¹

~50%

Share of U.S. prestige skincare dollars sold online. The other half still sells in stores³

6% vs 3%

K-beauty’s share of U.S. mass beauty versus prestige beauty, Q1 2026²

3,000

Walmart stores carrying one Korean skincare brand in 2026, after it proved itself online⁵

The reach problem

Online builds awareness. Stores build habits.

K-beauty’s U.S. breakthrough was digital. The U.S. accounted for more than half of K-beauty’s global online sales by late 2025, and on TikTok seven of the top ten skincare brands are of Korean heritage.⁴² For many brands, Amazon and TikTok Shop were the fastest way to find customers without a distributor.

But online is only part of the market. Even in prestige skincare, the most digital corner of beauty, e-commerce is now roughly half of dollars, which means the other half still happens in a store.³ And K-beauty’s share of mass beauty, sold through drugstores, grocery and big-box stores, is already twice its share of prestige.² Shoppers also discover in one place and buy in another: surveys show beauty buyers still lean on stores to find and try products, even when they reorder online.¹⁷

Big retailers have noticed. In 2026 Target added a dozen Korean brands to its new Beauty Studio, Walmart rolled out Korean skincare lines to hundreds or thousands of stores, and Sephora added a K-beauty edit to about 580 doors.⁵ The pattern is clear: national chains add Korean brands after they have proven sell-through. For most mid-size brands, the path to that point runs through independent beauty stores, K-beauty shops, beauty supply stores, salons and regional chains. That is the ground MIJU works on every day.

The pricing problem

A launch price is a promise you will keep for years

Many brands enter the U.S. with a price set for one marketplace and no plan for the rest. Then the promotions start. Event discounts win rankings: on Prime Day 2025, the top-selling beauty brand sold one of its best sellers at 52% off.⁶ That works for a weekend. The problem is what shoppers learn from it. Unless the product goes viral, the discounted price becomes the real price, and it is very hard to raise again.

Marketplaces now push in the same direction. In May 2026 Amazon began weighting a product’s “typical price” by how often it was discounted in the prior three months, and requires list prices to reflect recent actual selling prices.⁷ Amazon can also suppress the Buy Box when it finds an item cheaper elsewhere online.⁹ A brand that discounts heavily on its own site can end up hurting its Amazon listing, its retailers and its price history at the same time.

Retailers do the math too. Many U.S. stores price at roughly double the wholesale cost. If the brand’s own site is always cheaper than the suggested retail price, the store either loses the sale or matches the price and gives up much of its margin:

Example: one product, three prices	Price	Store margin
Wholesale price to the store	$10.00	–
Suggested retail price (MSRP)	$20.00	50%
Brand’s own site, “always on sale”	$13.99	28.5% if the store matches

There is a legal side as well. U.S. FTC guidance says a list or suggested price can mislead shoppers when it is well above the price at which substantial sales are actually made.⁸ An MSRP nobody pays is not only a trust problem with retailers. It can be a compliance problem.

The fix is a price structure built before launch: wholesale, suggested retail and online prices that leave room for every channel, and a clear policy on advertised prices. Many brands use a unilateral pricing or minimum advertised price policy, but the rules differ by state. California, for example, treats agreements on resale prices as illegal, so the policy must be set up carefully with a U.S. attorney.¹⁰

The positioning question

Discount product or brand? Decide on purpose

Both are real business models. Off-price and dollar-store channels are large and growing, and beauty brings them traffic.¹² For a brand with excess or discontinued stock, they can be a useful way to turn inventory into cash. Consumers are also more open to value than ever: in Mintel research, 74% of makeup users said affordable products work as well as premium ones.¹¹

But a brand that is always found in the discount bin gets priced as a discount item, and its retail partners notice. As one retail adviser told Glossy about brand image: “You can get rid of [brand image] just like that.”¹¹ The question is not whether off-price is good or bad. It is whether your core line will be a brand that full-price stores want to carry. If it will, keep clearance separate, limited and away from your hero products.

The time question

Every brand wants a home run. Lasting brands get on base first.

Korean beauty exports are booming, and small and mid-size companies are driving much of it: SME cosmetics exports reached about $5.1 billion in the first half of 2026, up roughly 31%.¹⁶ Many of these brands are backed by investors who want fast, visible traction. That pressure pushes brands toward big launches, heavy promotions and quick wins.

Discount-driven growth has a treadmill effect. After one Korean brand had Amazon’s No. 1 beauty product on Prime Day, it dropped out of the top ten the next year, a fall observers tied to repetitive campaigns and smaller discounts.⁶ The brands that last tend to build the other way: steady placement in stores that reorder, education that turns first purchases into habits, and expansion to new regions only after sell-through is proven. Get on base, then advance.

The coverage question

The U.S. is not one market

The U.S. and the wider Americas are large and diverse, and some of the most valuable beauty shoppers are easy to miss with one national message. Hispanic shoppers make up 14.4% of U.S. beauty households but 16.6% of beauty dollars.¹³ Asian American beauty buyers spend 18% more than the average buyer, with facial moisturizers far ahead of the norm.¹⁴ The professional channel has its own communities too: nail salon workers in the U.S. are mostly immigrants, many from Vietnam and Korea.¹⁵

Reaching these shoppers takes people who are part of these communities: who speak the language, know the store owners and understand what sells in each neighborhood. That is why MIJU has team members dedicated to Spanish-, Korean- and Vietnamese-speaking customers and the stores that serve them, and customers from the U.S. to Canada, Mexico, Ecuador and Costa Rica.

Where MIJU fits

What MIJU does for brands

Each brand has different needs. One formula does not work for every brand, so we build the plan around yours.

Education

Customer education and brand exposure

In-store events and product education so shoppers and store staff can meet the brand, try it and understand what makes it different. This is how a first purchase becomes a reorder.

Community

Teams inside the communities we serve

Team members dedicated to Spanish-, Korean- and Vietnamese-speaking customers and the stores that serve them, with regional insight you will not get from a national ad campaign.

Segments

Attention for segmented markets

Salons, lash and brow studios, beauty supply stores, K-beauty shops and community markets each buy differently. We plan for each segment instead of treating them as one channel.

Pricing

A price structure retailers can trust

We help you set wholesale, suggested retail and online prices that leave room for every channel, and we watch for gray-market and relabeled stock that undercuts them.

Regions

Coverage across the Americas

Customers across the U.S. as well as Canada, Mexico, Ecuador and Costa Rica, so a brand can grow region by region with one partner.

Operations

Import, compliance guidance and logistics

We act as your U.S. importer, guide you through labeling, claims and MoCRA requirements, and hold inventory in California so reorders ship domestically.

How we work with brands

Step 1

Conversation

Tell us about your brand, your products and your goals for the U.S. We can talk in Korean or English.

Step 2

Fit and market review

We look at your products, current prices and channels, and U.S. readiness for labeling and claims, and we tell you honestly where we see the opportunity.

Step 3

Launch plan

Together we set the price structure, choose channels and segments, and plan education and events for the first stores.

Step 4

Launch and grow

We place the line with retail and professional accounts, support it in store, and build reorders before expanding to new regions.

Is MIJU the right partner?

A good fit

You want a lasting presence in U.S. stores, not only online
You are willing to keep pricing consistent across channels
You will support product education, samples and events
You are planning for growth over years, not one season

Probably not a fit

You mainly need to clear excess or short-dated inventory
Your plan depends on deep, ongoing discounts
You are looking for a one-time order rather than a partner

Questions from brands

We already sell on Amazon. Can we still work with MIJU?

Yes. Many of the brands we talk to already sell online. We focus on the offline and wholesale side, and we help you line up pricing so your online and retail channels support each other instead of competing.

Do you set our prices for us?

No. You decide your prices. We share what U.S. retailers in each segment expect, model the margins for each channel, and help you build a structure that holds. For advertised-price policies, we recommend working with a U.S. attorney.

Do you handle MoCRA registration and product listing?

We guide you through U.S. labeling, claims and MoCRA requirements. Your brand completes its own filings, so you keep your own documentation.

Which markets do you cover?

The United States, with customers in Canada, Mexico, Ecuador and Costa Rica as well.

Can we talk in Korean?

Yes. Our team works in Korean and English, and we also serve Spanish- and Vietnamese-speaking retail communities.

Talk to our brand team

Tell us about your brand and where you want to be in three years. We will tell you honestly whether we are the right partner.

Contact the brand team Read MIJU Insights

Preparing to enter the U.S.? Contact us. 미국 시장 진출을 준비 중인 한국 브랜드라면 연락 주세요.

Sources

This page is general business information, not legal advice. Figures are from the sources above as of the dates shown.