AmorePacific's store at Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York / Courtesy of AmorePacific

By Kim Jae-heun

AmorePacific has achieved notable business growth in the U.S. cosmetics market this year as it is stepping up efforts to reduce dependence on the Chinese market, according to company officials Wednesday.

"North America is the global mecca of beauty products and it is the most important cosmetics market in the world. We have been expanding our business in the United States so as to lower our dependency on overseas sales in China, which accounts for 70 percent in total," an AmorePacific official said.
Korea's largest cosmetics market saw its North America sales grow by 60 percent in the first quarter of 2022 from the same period last year. While most AmorePacific-affiliated brands achieved decent performance, it was Sulwhasoo and Laneige that carried the high growth of overall sales in the United States.

"With our luxury beauty label Sulwhasoo and a mid-to-low-priced cosmetic brand Innisfree, the company expanded its business mainly on e-commerce platforms and multi brand shops like Sephora. AmorePacific also increased Laneige's sales by launching a new product Lip Mask," the official said.

In the case of Sulwhasoo, it entered 23 new Retro-fit stores operated by Sephora in March to sell its products there. On Mother's Day, May 14, AmorePacific aggressively promoted its serum item, which helped the brand's overall sales in the first half of this year to grow to over 300 percent in the United States. In addition, Sulwhasoo also entered The Hut Group's three major e-commerce platforms Dumb Store, Look Fantastic and Skin Store and launched its official online store on Amazon's beauty channel in April.

"We targeted both on-and-offline channels to boost our sales for Sulwhasoo products in North America while conducting promotional events to give discounts on special days," the official added.

AmorePacific's Lanegie brand also entered Sephora at Kohl's store at the time of the country's reopening from COVID-19 in the second half of 2021. Its Lip Mask and Water Bank Cream showed 70 percent and 300 percent sales growth respectively, year-on-year, in the first quarter of this year.

Specific, Lanegie's Lip Mask product has been showing an average of 25 percent of sales growth in the past three years to become the best-selling product in the lip-related item category.