K-beauty: is China falling out of love with Korean cosmetics?

Home-grown brands and those from Japan are growing ever more popular with mainland consumers, while K-beauty exports are slowing

South Korean cosmetics are also seeing an overall drop in sales, as Chinese consumers ditch the one-size-fits-all aesthetic to embrace individual looks

Reading Time:5 minutes

Chinese consumers are getting over their fascination with K-beauty as movements such as hanfu – which champions the rise of traditional fashion and beauty trends – are on the rise. Photo: Bilibili

Published: 9:00am, 17 Jun 2019Updated: 3:24pm, 17 Jun 2019

If you asked Chinese shoppers a few years ago, South Korea’s K-beauty industry could do no wrong. The lipsticks worn by actress Jun Ji-hyun in the 2014 hit K-drama My Love From The Star only had to be on screen for seconds to sell out almost immediately thanks to Chinese fans.

Propelled by savvy marketing campaigns and viral skincare and make-up tutorials, the industry racked up US$13.1 billion worth of sales in 2018, according to market research company Mintel. In China, as part of the K-wave – along with K-pop, K-fashion and K-dramas – the South Korean beauty industry has spent most of the past decade as an established mainstream lifestyle trendsetter in China. But today, the tide is turning.

Consumers in China – the world’s second-largest beauty market, expected to be worth US$62 billion by 2020, according to Euromonitor – are increasingly looking to local “C-beauty” offerings, as well as Japan, for their beauty fix.

Exports of South Korean cosmetics to China rose just 20 per cent to US$1.3 billion in the first nine months of 2018, according to a Financial Times report – a sharp slowdown from the annual average of 66 per cent growth recorded in the past five years.

And South Korean beauty brands are not just losing their edge to regional competitors, they are suffering falling domestic sales, too. Could this spell the beginning of the end for the era of K-beauty, and its once-powerful hold over China’s consumers?

Over the past year, AmorePacific – South Korea’s largest K-beauty producer and the parent company of 33 of the country’s top cosmetics brands, including Iope and Laneige, saw a drop in profits for the first time. AmorePacific’s first-quarter net profits fell 31 per cent to 122 billion won (US$103 million) from the 177 billion won during the corresponding period last year.

Lipsticks worn by actress Jun Ji-hyun in the 2014 hit K-drama My Love From The Star were snapped up in seconds by Chinese consumers. Photo: Instagram

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