At the early stage of Korean wave, cultural contents like Korean soap opera and K-POP played integral parts, but now the baton was handed over to Korean luxury brands. As Korea has emerged as the global hub in regard to cultural contents, consumers abroad has been interested more in Korea’s beauty. Against this backdrop, Korean luxury brands are actively trying to enhance their brand values. The era of ‘Korean luxury brands’ are in full swing.
K-Beauty becoming the vanguard of K-Wave
The spearhead in the era of Korean luxury brands is indeed K-Beauty. Recently, the Korean cosmetic industry has not relied on Korean wave, and there come many brands targeting local consumers abroad with noble ingredients and high techonology based on distingushied brand stories.
Sulwhasoo, Korea’s beauty brand, are reckoned to be Korea’s luxry brand in Thailand and China with the concept of ‘Holistic Beauty’ which gives you the beauty of harmony and balace with Asia’s philosophy and wisdom. In particular, the brand storytelling gains much attention since it wins the sympathy from Asian consumers. Sulwhasoo’s storytelling where traditional herbal plants like ginseng, familiar to Asians, recreate new power to care fundamentally your skins with advanced dermatology has strengthened its brand value as Korea’s representative beauty brand. In addition, Sulwhasoo is also making an effort to optimize its customers’ needs by conducting a regular survey and making the result reflected on the product as the follow-up.
Through these strategies, Sulwhasoo are enjoying popularity among local celebrities. In Thailand, Sulwhasoo succeeded to be localized with targeting many celebs, called ‘Highso’ in brevity of High-Society. In China, Jang bai-ji, Chinese top star, purchased Sulwhasoo’s Perfecting cushion in Xin Guang Tian Di departmentstore, Beijing, and it went viral to make the brand become more popular. Liang Jing, winner of Chinese Oscar, Golden Horse Award is also widely known as Sulwhasoo mania.
Korean top stars catching Chinese women with their charm to be models
There are some Korean luxury brands which enjoy popularity by appointing Korean top stars as their main models. As for Bean Pole, it appointed Kim Soo-hyun, Korean actor who gains affections from many Chinese as its model to obtain Kim Soo-hyun effect in China.
In response, Sulwhasoo has shown its products made with Korea’s traditional herbal ingredients and technology since it launched in the Chinese market in March, 2011. With this effort, it has been reckoned to be No. 1 herbal beauty brand and the luxrury brand with noble ingredients and advanced techonology, so Chinese tourists think Sulwhasoo’s beauty products are on the top of their shopping list when they travel to Korea. This is evidenced by the fact that Sulwhasoo was ranked the 1st in the survey of ‘Chinese most favoriate Korean luxury brand’ conducted in last October by Chinese press, Renminwang.
With its growing popularity in China, Sulwhasoo has constantly increased the number of local stores from 22 in 2012, 28, in 2013, 46 in 2014 and 48 in 2015. The revenue in Chian is also proportional to the increasing number of local stores, recording 193 percent of growth. There are five stores which achieved the sales up to more than 100 million Korean won, showing quantative and qualitative growth. As of 2015, Sulwhasoo is launched in more than ten countries including Korea, Chian, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, Vietnam and America to become Asia’s beauty creator.