Cheap Korean Cosmetics Sell Well in Japan

The title of the article from The Chosun Ilbo is titled "Korean Cosmetics Take Japan by Storm", but the author of the article used the word "cheap" three different times to explain the quality of Korean cosmetics.  This is just an interesting way to describe their nations' good and services.  In the west we use the more economically soft term "inexpensive" to avoid the negative associations of the word "cheap" with poor quality.

Not Koreans.  They love anything "cheap".  Seriously, though, the cosmetics here are fantastic and with their pop culture projecting so many beautiful Korean faces over the Pacific Rim, it makes sense that foreign nations would want to hord Korean beauty products.

Shinjuku Station in Tokyo was packed with people last Thursday even though it was long after the morning rush hour when Missha, the cheap Korean cosmetics brand, opened a store there.

People rushed in the moment the sales assistants gave the signal. Within half an hour the shop ran out of the 100 jars of Missha Super Aqua Cell Renew Snail Cream priced at 3,480 yen (approximately W48,000), which it had prepared as giveaways. About 1,200 customers visited the shop on its opening day.

The Shinjuku Station shopping mall alone is a battlefield for cosmetics brands. Global brands like L'Occitane, The Body Shop and DHC have stores there, and among Korean brands Missha joins Etude House and SkinFood.

The Missha and Etude shops are strategically located in an area all passengers at Shinjuku Station must pass, and the station is so central that some 3 million people pass through in a day, with 80,000 of them just visiting the shopping mall.

Korean cosmetics brands perform remarkably well in Japan. Missha Japan, which was established in 2005, saw sales increase from 296 million yen in 2006 to 1.98 billion last year, more than six times in six years. Missha Japan's vice president Kim Doo-kyum said, "Missha offers not just low-priced products for teenagers but also products that appeal to people of all age groups."

Etude, which opened its first brand shop in Japan last November, is also doing well. While Missha tries to attract customers of all age groups with its subdued, refined interior, Etude's shop is decorated like a doll house and uses images of its model boy band SHINee. It expects to achieve sales of about 400 million yen (W5.5 billion) this year. SkinFood has grown so rapidly that it now has 18 shops in Japan and earns 1.5 billion yen (W20.6 billion) annually.

The main advantage of Korean cosmetics is that they are cheap. A 39-year-old woman in Shinjuku Station said, "Some time ago, I started buying Korean cosmetics because they're cheaper than Japanese brands and their quality is just as good."

Their popularity also owes something to the appeal of beautiful Korean actresses and their use of natural ingredients like snails and ginseng. Last year, Missha earned 2 billion yen (W27.5 billion) from sales of Snail Cream, the largest revenue for a single product there.
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