KITA wraps up first North America K-Premium Consumer Goods Fair in LA

The Korea International Trade Association (KITA) announced Sunday that it co-hosted the "2026 LA K-Premium Consumer Goods Fair" with Exporum at the Magic Box exhibition venue in Los Angeles from Thursday to Saturday (local time).

The K-Premium Consumer Goods Fair is a B2C-linked exhibition and business-matching event that KITA holds annually in major cities abroad, including Tokyo, Paris and Jakarta, connecting Korean consumer goods companies directly with local buyers to generate tangible export results. This year's edition was held in LA for the first time, targeting the North American market where demand for Korean consumer goods has been surging — K-beauty exports to the United States rose more than 40 percent year-on-year in the January–September period.

A total of 85 domestic consumer goods companies seeking to enter the North American market participated across 120 booths, representing the cosmetics, fashion, food and lifestyle products sectors.

The opening ceremony was attended by KITA Executive Vice President Jang Seok-min and Consul General Jeong Gang of the Korean Consulate General in Los Angeles, among others. Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Dilpreet Sidhu visited the venue and presented KITA with a city certificate recognizing its contributions to economic and cultural exchange and trade expansion between South Korea and the United States.

To help participating companies open new overseas sales channels, KITA invited buyers with distribution networks across North America — including the United States, Canada and Mexico — to the venue for one-on-one business matching sessions. More than 120 local distributors took part, including H Mart, a leading Korean-American grocery chain in the United States; Sally Beauty, which operates more than 4,000 beauty stores worldwide; and Del Sol, a major brick-and-mortar retail chain in Mexico. Over three days, they conducted more than 400 export consultations with participating companies.

Alongside the B2B program, the fair also featured B2C events for general consumers, including product experience zones and K-pop activities. More than 16,000 local visitors attended, trying out base and color cosmetics as well as anti-aging functional products at a K-beauty makeup show, and sampling K-food — including snacks, processed foods and street food — through live cooking demonstrations and tasting sessions by chefs.

In addition, a range of hallyu fan events were held, including a fan meeting with singer Ailee, a K-pop idol album raffle and a cover dance competition.

"As hallyu has become embedded in the lifestyles of consumers around the world, global demand is rapidly growing not only for Korean food and cosmetics but for Korean consumer goods across the board — including fashion and living products," KITA Executive Vice President Jang said. "Building on the LA event, we will expand our export marketing support using hallyu into Latin America, actively backing Korean consumer goods companies as they advance into global markets and achieve real results."

Meanwhile, KITA has been broadening its export support activities across various sectors, including signing a multilateral MOU with KOTRA, the Korea Agro-Fisheries & Food Trade Corporation (aT), the Korea Testing & Research Institute (KTR) and the Korea Food Research Institute (KFRI) to strengthen support for export companies entering the halal market.