South Korean skincare retailer Olive Young has opened two stores in the Los Angeles area in the past month, its first locations outside its home country.
The stores in Pasadena and Westfield Century City represent the K-beauty company’s foray into the global market and its first steps in a planned expansion into U.S. retail, Bloomberg and CoStar report.
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Three more California stores are planned to open in the coming months, Bloomberg reports.
“We will aggressively expand and increase our store count within California, and from there, we plan to scale our brick-and-mortar footprint across the US,” Chief Operating Officer Jinhee Lee told the publication last month.
A U.S.-based distribution network for the retailer is also in tow. Olive Young has already opened a 39K SF warehouse in Bloomington, California, to serve as its regional logistics hub for North America. Bloomberg reports that it is planning to sign an agreement for a second hub on the East Coast later this year.
Olive Young has also launched a dedicated U.S. online market.
In January, the company announced that it landed an agreement to launch curated K-beauty sections in Sephora stores.
Olive Young is set to start rolling out the sections in the second half of the year, beginning with the U.S. and Canada, as well as global markets like Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Hong Kong. It expects to expand into the Middle East, the UK and Australia in 2027. Thirty-five countries will be included in the rollout, Bloomberg reported.
The retailer hopes to derive 90% of its sales from overseas customers within a decade, Bloomberg reported, compared to its current 30%, which includes purchases by foreign visitors buying Olive Young products in Korea.
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