APR CEO Kim Byung-hoon (right) speaks at the Business of Beauty (BoB) Global Forum 2026, held in California from Monday through Wednesday (local time). [APR]
APR CEO Kim Byung-hoon (right) speaks at the Business of Beauty (BoB) Global Forum 2026, held in California from Monday through Wednesday (local time). [APR]

APR CEO Kim Byung-hoon has declared his ambition to build the company into a 100 trillion won ($70.7 billion) enterprise.

In a Forbes interview published Tuesday, Kim said "it is important not to blindly follow the established rules of the industry," stressing that the company must "forge its own path."

APR claimed the top spot by market capitalization among domestic cosmetics stocks in August last year, cementing its status as a leading K-beauty company. Kim aims to go further, growing APR into a global company valued at 100 trillion won. The company's current market cap stands at 14.6 trillion won.

APR aggressively adopted a direct-to-consumer (D2C) model in its early days and has since expanded from cosmetics into beauty devices. "APR did not blindly follow the rules of the industry," Kim said. "By pioneering the D2C approach — something that had never been tried in the Korean beauty industry — we were able to drive a retail revolution."

Kim also recalled the skepticism he encountered when APR's beauty device brand AGE-R launched its first product, the Derma EMS Shot, in 2021. "The people around me had serious doubts about whether consumers would actually buy a high-priced beauty device," he said. "But I judged that the product could deliver real value to consumers, so we pressed ahead."

That judgment has proven correct. AGE-R now holds the top position in South Korea's home beauty device market and accounted for 27 percent of APR's total sales last year.

APR also posted record earnings in the second quarter of this year. Sales reached 767.5 billion won, up 134.2 percent from the same period a year earlier, while operating profit rose 134.5 percent to 190.6 billion won.


siuu@heraldcorp.com