CJ Olive Young's first US store draws 400-meter queue, energizing K-beauty industry

Lines stretched blocks on opening day; local media spotlight the 'open run' phenomenon

CJ Olive Young targets 5 West Coast stores by first half of next year

'K-beauty holds only 3–4% of US market — room to grow'

CJ Group Chairman Lee Jae-hyun calls store a 'bridgehead' for small K-brands

Local consumers lined up along a queue stretching roughly 400 meters to enter CJ Olive Young's first US store and purchase K-beauty products on opening day. The company capped simultaneous entry at around 200 people. [CJ Olive Young]

South Korea's beauty industry is watching CJ Olive Young's first US store closely, betting it will serve as a new catalyst for K-beauty in the world's largest beauty market.

According to CJ Olive Young, the store — which opened Thursday in Pasadena, Los Angeles, California — drew a queue stretching roughly 400 meters across several blocks throughout the day. To prevent overcrowding, the company capped simultaneous entry at around 200 people, and lines for entry and checkout continued until closing time.

US outlets including CNN and CBS News gave extensive coverage to the "open run" phenomenon. One shopper who joined the queue, Brianna Gonzalez, told CNN she had been waiting since 6 p.m. Sunday and was most excited about the store's skin care analysis service.

CJ Olive Young plans to open a second location this month at Westfield Century City, a major shopping mall in Los Angeles. The company aims to operate five stores across the US West Coast, centered on California, by the first half of next year. It has already built a distribution center in Bloomington, California to support the expansion, with plans to extend both distribution and retail operations to the East Coast and South Central regions in stages.

CJ Group Chairman Lee Jae-hyun (left) tours CJ Olive Young's first US store in Pasadena, Los Angeles, which opened Thursday. [CJ Olive Young]

South Korea's beauty industry expects to benefit indirectly from CJ Olive Young's US presence. Major players including Amorepacific and LG Household, which have US subsidiaries, have relied on large local retailers such as Amazon, Sephora and Walmart to reach American consumers, partly to manage local logistics costs. CJ Olive Young's US stores now give them an additional channel — one that puts K-beauty front and center.

"K-beauty still accounts for only about 3 to 4 percent of the US beauty market," an executive at a major Korean beauty company said. "Olive Young's entry into the US is an opportunity to grow the overall export pie."

Smaller indie brands stand to gain the most. The vast majority of the roughly 400 brands and 5,000 product lines carried at the Pasadena store are from Korean small and medium-sized enterprises. CJ Olive Young also asked key partner companies to comply with US Food and Drug Administration cosmetics manufacturing standards, which are stricter than those in South Korea.

CJ Group Chairman Lee Jae-hyun, who attended the opening, urged employees to "take pride in building a bridgehead that discovers capable small and medium-sized K-brands and grows them into global mega-brands, and in creating a sustainable K-beauty ecosystem."

Demand for K-beauty in the United States has been rising rapidly. According to Ministry of Food and Drug Safety statistics on 2025 cosmetics production, exports and imports, the US last year overtook China — which imported $2 billion worth of Korean cosmetics — to become South Korea's top cosmetics export destination for the first time. The result reflects the industry's push to reduce dependence on China and diversify its markets. NielsenIQ data show that US sales of K-beauty products rose about 37 percent year-on-year last year to $2.4 billion (about 3.6 trillion won).

soho0902@heraldcorp.com