Korean beauty belongs behind the counter.
We build curated Korean beauty corners in pharmacy and specialty retail worldwide — brands selected, fixture supplied, staff trained, content done for you.
K-Beauty at Galeries Lafayette, Boulevard Haussmann — curated by AGASKIN
The category is exploding. The one channel built to sell it is empty.
And it isn't only Europe
| Market | Korean cosmetics exports | What's happening |
|---|---|---|
| Mexico | +149.9% | The fastest-growing K-beauty export market in the world |
| Brazil | +115% | RD Saúde opened a store format giving 65% of floor space to beauty, with a dedicated beleza asiática category |
| Poland | +111.7% | Moved from 14th to 9th largest destination in a single year |
| UAE | +67.2% | Korea–UAE CEPA in force since May 2026 |
| UK | +53.8% | Boots up 5× year on year; Superdrug went 30 → 400 stores in under six months |
| Canada | +52.2% | Now Korea's 12th largest destination |
| Chile | +753% | Since 2019. Salcobrand reports "exponential" growth in Korean products |
The pattern is identical in every market: demand arrives faster than anyone can build a shelf for it.
And yet the average French pharmacy captures about €1,600 a year of a category growing at 71%. Not because the demand isn't there, but because nobody can evaluate eight hundred Korean products from a buying office in Paris — or Riyadh, or São Paulo, or Johannesburg.
The only place this has been done properly is Korea itself, where one brand entering roughly 300 pharmacies saw channel sales rise 893% in three months. Nowhere else has replicated it. That's the gap we work in — from both sides of it.
A curated Korean beauty corner, run for you
K-Beauty Corner
A curated Korean beauty corner in your doors. We select the brands, supply the fixture, train your staff and provide the content — you stock a proven, curated range instead of evaluating hundreds of Korean brands from a buying office.
- A curated 12–16 SKU range, built as a routine your team can actually sell — not a catalogue
- Free fixture, planogram and content, plus a 90-minute staff training in your team's language
- One fulfilment partner — one delivery, one invoice, standard wholesale terms
- Monthly sell-out reporting, with the freedom to rotate the range on performance
Your fastest-growing category has almost no shelf. Your slowest-growing brands have all of it.
The clearest proof comes from the one market that publishes pharmacy sell-out data — France. In its pharmacies in 2025 the gap looked like this:
| Pharmacy beauty, 2025 — France, the only market publishing this data | Growth |
|---|---|
| The category overall | +7.5% |
| K-Beauty | +71% |
| Erborian — Korean, already in pharmacy | +54% |
| Avène — the #1 brand on most shelves | +7% |
| La Roche-Posay — the #2 brand on most shelves | +4% |
Every linear metre given to a 4%-growth brand is a metre withheld from a 71%-growth one. And this is not a French story — France is simply the one place the numbers are public. The export figures above show the same gap opening in Mexico, Brazil, the UAE, the UK, Canada and beyond.
Why it belongs in pharmacy specifically
Korean skincare needs explaining. Demand is created on social media, arrives undirected, and converts in physical retail — 78% of dermocosmetics buyers rank professional recommendation highest, against just 6% who value influencer input. Roughly a third of customers who walk in with a product in mind are redirected by staff to something else.
It's a category built for a counter with trained advisors behind it. And it sells as a routine rather than a single item — K-beauty baskets run about 35% above the skincare average.
Two metres, and the category is handled. We select the range, build the fixture, train your team and report the numbers every month. You buy proven product at wholesale and rotate out whatever isn't moving — no buying office, no eight-hundred-brand evaluation, no dead stock you're stuck with.
Nobody builds this in-house
| Retailer | Curation partner |
|---|---|
| John Lewis | Skin Cupid — 20 brands, shop-in-shops |
| Superdrug | PURESEOUL — 30 → 400 stores |
| Space NK | Soko Glam — 30 of 83 doors |
| Sephora | Olive Young |
Four sophisticated beauty retailers in four countries. Not one ranged the category on its own buying capability. And no pharmacy group anywhere in the world has done it properly. The only proven case is Korean: one brand entering roughly 300 Korean pharmacies saw channel sales rise 893% in three months. Nobody has replicated it outside Korea — while Boots has publicly named "K-Pharmacy" as a 2026 focus.
And it isn't only pharmacy. Primark runs a live "Korean Skincare" category in the UK with 37 items. A mall fast-fashion chain has already made K-beauty a navigable category on its own shelves. The question is no longer whether the format works — it's who curates it.
What we're looking for
- Networks of 5 doors or more, anywherePharmacy groupements and chains, parapharmacies, drugstore groups, beauty specialty, and accessories or lifestyle chains with a young female customer. Europe, the Gulf, Latin America, Africa, Asia, North America — the model travels because the channel does. Single doors considered where it's a flagship.
- 2–3 linear metres at eye levelIn the beauty or dermocosmetics fixture.
- An existing beauty customerYou already sell dermocosmetics and your team already advises on skin.
- Willingness to share sell-out dataBy SKU, monthly. In return you get the pooled dataset across every host network — there is no published K-beauty sell-through data for pharmacy retail in most markets, so the first wave will own it.
Fama Ndiaye
Franco-Senegalese, based in Seoul since 2017. Founder of AGASKIN LABS, selecting Korean brands for European, Gulf and African retail.
The relevant credential is a narrow one, and it's the whole point. A twelve-day K-beauty pop-up at Galeries Lafayette Champs-Élysées that converted into permanent space at the Boulevard Haussmann flagship — and a K-beauty activation with Tryano, part of Chalhoub Group, in Dubai. Selecting Korean brands for a European prestige buyer isn't a claim here. A European prestige buyer already decided the selection was worth keeping before building their own.
K-Beauty activation with Tryano — Chalhoub Group, Dubai
Featured in Korea Times, Dazed Beauty, Allure and Yonhap News.
Before you get in touch
We already stock a few Korean products. Does that change anything?
Only for the better — the category is proven in your doors and we have real sell-out data to build on. Most pharmacy K-beauty was bought as individual products from a generalist wholesaler rather than built as a range, which is why it tends to underperform rather than fail.
What does the Corner cost a retailer?
You buy the curated range at standard wholesale terms, like any supplier. The fixture, planogram, staff training, content and monthly reporting are included at no extra cost, and there is no fee to host the corner.
Who handles delivery and invoicing?
Consolidated through a single fulfilment partner. One delivery, one invoice — you never deal with individual Korean suppliers.
How long until a retailer knows if it's working?
Twelve weeks of trading data, with a range review at week eight. You reorder what sells and rotate out what does not, deciding on real numbers rather than a forecast.
Twenty minutes.
Whichever side you're on, the first conversation is the same length and costs nothing.
Or email info@theagaskinlabs.com