Read as article
Target's Beauty Studio Bets Big on K-Beauty Brands
By @sharedot · · 6 pages
Modern Retail reports Target's new Beauty Studio brings six K-beauty brands to mass retail as Korean labels look past Sephora and Ulta.
K-Beauty Moves Into the Big-Box Aisle
Modern Retail reports that Target has made K-beauty a centerpiece of its new Beauty Studio, the in-store concept that replaces the former Ulta Beauty shops inside Target stores. Earlier this year the retailer quadrupled its K-beauty assortment with more than 150 new products and over 10 new brands across skin care, makeup and hair care, according to the retailer. With the Beauty Studio launch earlier this month, Target says it added six "K-beauty cosmetics favorites," five of which are new to the chain. Named brands include Amuse, Kaja, Rom&nd, Dr. Melaxin, Purito Seoul and Sungboon Editor, and Modern Retail says it found roughly a dozen more launch brands tied to Korean owners or founders.
Why a Big-Box Debut Is a Reversal
The surprising part, as Modern Retail frames it, is the channel shift: Korean brands have long treated Sephora and Ulta as their U.S. havens, with Ulta adding 13 K-beauty brands last year (per Glossy, cited by Modern Retail) and Sephora partnering with Olive Young on 19 brands. Jinwoo (James) Kim of Dr. Melaxin told Modern Retail that Korean cosmetics now lead the global beauty market rather than riding a temporary trend. Daniella Jung of distributor Muskat Beauty said Purito Seoul and Aromatica landed at Target partly because they had no exclusivity with Sephora or Ulta, and predicted many beauty brands will enter new U.S. retail spaces within two years.
The Brands Explain Their Play
Modern Retail gathered the operational detail behind the launch. Voesh CEO Vera Oh, who met Target buyers at Cosmoprof in Las Vegas, says the brand built its Beauty Studio collection as a simple K-beauty body-care routine — cleanse, treat, moisturize, finish — and argues K-beauty is now a source of innovation rather than a trend. Kaja, operated by Seoul-based Memebox, curated 40 SKUs for Target including its Beauty Bento eyeshadow trios and Wink Stamp eyeliner, per founder Dino Ha in the same report. Dr. Melaxin is selling a Target-exclusive mini of its Peel Shot black rice exfoliating ampoule, Kim said, after the retailer approached the brand about its online sales figures.
Gaps, Stakes and What Comes Next
Modern Retail also flags the limits of the assortment: it identified only two brands with Black owners or founders among the 90 brands in the launch lineup — Briogeo and Glamazon Beauty — a gap the outlet had previously reported on. Target says the assortment is not static and will keep adding brands in response to guest interest, with the company pointing to skyrocketing K-beauty demand over the past two years. Jung cautioned Korean brands that U.S. expansion requires inventory control, price control and market-specific marketing, not just social virality. The ingredient-led mindset is global, too: ANI News reports Indian skincare consumers in 2026 increasingly demand actives like Kojic Acid and Niacinamide matched to specific concerns such as pigmentation and acne.