Korean beauty products have quickly become mainstays on everything from social media to personal routines, and they're now showing up on grocery store shelves.

While US beauty sales have slowed, K-beauty is its bright spot. US cosmetics and beauty retail sales will increase 4.6% this year, down from 5.4% growth in 2025, EMARKETER forecasts.

• US shoppers spent $2 billion on K-beauty products in the 12 months ending in July 2025, up 37% YoY, per Nielsen data shared with Business Insider.
• Sephora is partnering with Korean beauty retailer Olive Young this year to expand its K-beauty selection in the US and internationally.

By positioning products for repeat purchases, top brands in the space have dodged beauty budget cuts and aligned with core consumer needs.

“US consumers are getting smarter about their beauty," said Vanan Nguyen, associate director of talent at G&B Digital Management. “They want to learn more about ingredients and products that actually work, and that is the language that K Beauty has been speaking for decades.”

Adding cleansers to grocery carts

Korean grocery chain H Mart added an “H Art” to select locations last year, an attached store that sells Korean skincare, makeup, and accessories.

While H Mart isn’t the first grocery store to sell makeup, the explicit branding and differentiation within the H Mart franchise signal a deeper investment in the category.

“Korean food and skincare are all bundled together because both are essential in the day-to-day,” said Nguyen. “It makes sense to have a physical footprint of that.”

While K-Beauty positions itself as essential, the cosmetic element is emboldened as the US consumers increasingly seek K-Pop and Korean entertainment.

“All these idols have porcelain skin,” said Nguyen. “We’re absorbing more Korean culture and seeing what their health looks like, and Americans are asking ‘What are they doing that we’re not doing?’’’

Loyalty through affordability

Medicube, a top Korean skincare brand, dominates the space by offering low prices, ingredient transparency, and basic packaging.

Medicube buyers purchased the brand 2.1 times on average over the last year with a $45.95 average total spend, signaling repeat behavior over one-off trials. The same consumers shop La Roche-Posay and The Ordinary, two brands focused on ingredients and clinical efficacy over trends.

• Value for money is the top driver of loyalty (74%), according to a July 2025 Net Conversion survey.

“Here it’s all about the branding, but with Korean skincare it’s all about the products,” said Nguyen. “Even with the most luxe brands, their packaging is pretty minimal. You can have a skincare product that is $200 and the majority of it is because the bottle is glass.”

Even luxury consumers are rethinking their beauty spending. Some 45.4% of US adults were luxury beauty buyers in June 2022, which dropped to 34.6% in August 2025, according to an EMARKETER survey.

K-beauty’s growth is more about performance positioning than virality, a blueprint for brands to drive repeat spending in a saturated market.

“In Korean culture, they’re doing this as an essential, so the price point and barrier to entry is low,” she said. “[Skincare] is just a part of their everyday life.”

Overpromising immediate results

The immediate transformations that the beauty industry promises “doesn’t really make sense when it comes to skin,” said Nguyen. She advocates for “storytelling over snappy clickbait” that actually has the room to show results.

The trust and reliability from educating on science and ingredients over overpromising results have allowed K-Beauty to retain its growth, she said.

“It might not work for [your] skin because of skin compatibility, but it’s not going to be a gimmick. I can’t say that about all American skincare and beauty products,” said Nguyen. “That friction is much lower with K-Beauty.”

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