CJ Olive Young opens first US store, raising K-beauty hopes

South Korea's beauty industry is watching closely as CJ Olive Young opened its first US store in late May, betting the launch will serve as a catalyst for K-beauty in the world's largest beauty market.

According to CJ Olive Young, the store in Pasadena, Los Angeles, drew lines stretching some 400 meters — several city blocks — when it opened May 29. To manage the crowds, the company capped simultaneous entry at around 200 customers, and queues to enter and check out continued until closing time.

US media including CNN and CBS News gave extensive coverage to the opening-day rush. Brianna Gonzalez, a local shopper who joined the line, told CNN she had been waiting since 6 p.m. on May 28. "I'm most excited for the skin care analysis," she said.

CJ Olive Young plans to open its second US location this month at Westfield Century City, a major shopping mall in Los Angeles. The company aims to operate five stores in the western United States, primarily in California, by the first half of next year. To support the expansion, it has built a distribution center in Bloomington, California, with plans to extend its logistics network and store footprint to the East Coast and South Central regions in stages.

South Korea's beauty industry sees the US Olive Young stores as a new indirect channel for overseas expansion. Major players with US operations — including Amorepacific and LG Household — have relied on large local retailers such as Amazon, Sephora and Walmart to reach American consumers, partly to offset local logistics costs. Olive Young's US entry gives them an additional channel that puts K-beauty front and center.

"K-beauty still accounts for only about 3 to 4 percent of the US beauty market," an executive at a major Korean beauty company said. "Olive Young's move into the US is an opportunity to grow the overall size of the export market."

Smaller indie brands stand to benefit most directly. The vast majority of the roughly 400 brands and 5,000 product lines carried at the first US store are from Korean small and medium-sized enterprises. CJ Olive Young also asked its key suppliers to comply with US Food and Drug Administration cosmetics manufacturing standards, which are stricter than those in South Korea.

CJ Group Chairman Lee Jae-hyun, who attended the opening, urged employees to "take pride in building a bridgehead that discovers capable small K-beauty brands and grows them into global mega-brands, and in creating a sustainable K-beauty ecosystem."

Demand for K-beauty in the United States has been rising sharply. According to the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety's 2025 cosmetics production, exports and imports report, the US last year overtook China ($2 billion) to become the top export destination for Korean cosmetics for the first time — the result of efforts to reduce dependence on the Chinese market and diversify. NielsenIQ data show US sales of K-beauty products climbed roughly 37 percent year over year to $2.4 billion (about 3.6 trillion won).

CJ Group Chairman Lee Jae-hyun called the opening of Olive Young's first US store "a great beginning toward advancing to the world."

이재현 CJ그룹 회장 “올리브영 美1호점, 전 세계 나아가는 위대한 시작”

https://biz.heraldcorp.com/article/10760390