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M&A
October 29, 2026 · Jimmy Cho
A Loss-Making Biotech Buys a K-Beauty Distributor
Genome & Company says it bought 64.46% of K-beauty exporter AllBloom. No price, no DART filing. What the record confirms and what it leaves open.
October 26, 2026 · Jimmy Cho
"Not Your Mother's" — The Brand That Sold for an Estimated $900M
Henkel agreed to buy Not Your Mother's in March 2026 for an estimated $900M. How an aerosol maker built a Gen-Z haircare brand sold in 40,000+ stores.
October 11, 2026 · Jimmy Cho
Rejuvenation or Illusion? What Amorepacific's Blank Check Is Really Buying
Amorepacific paid 755.1 billion won (~$563 Million USD) for the remaining shares of COSRX in October 2023, taking its holding to 93.2%. Its venture arm’s own materials put its cheques at $2 million to $5 million per company per round. On 29 September 2026 that arm invested in Junevity, a San Francisco biotech founded in 2023, and signed a separate licence covering cosmetic applications of a platform that has not yet named a skin target. The amount is undisclosed. The distance between those two numbers is the deal.
October 9, 2026 · Jimmy Cho
G-Dragon Bets His Label on K-Beauty’s Fastest-Growing Roll-Up: Inside Goodai Global.
Goodai Global—the K-beauty roll-up operator behind Beauty of Joseon and TIRTIR—is launching PEACEMINUSONE BEAUTY with G-Dragon’s label in H1 2027. Moving beyond acquisitions, this first joint origination offers evidence of brand creation ahead of Goodai's high-stakes IPO. Goodai provides its global regulatory and distribution engine, offsetting second-year celebrity brand mortality risks.
October 8, 2026 · Jimmy Cho
Silicon2 Sold to the Shelves. Now It’s Building Them with Moida.
Silicon2, the distributor behind StyleKorean.com supplying 600+ K-beauty brands globally, is launching its own retail chain, Moida, aiming for 100+ stores by 2027. New Bay Area locations signal a shift downstream to capture retail margins and direct customer data. This move turns Silicon2 into a competitor to its own brand partners, while physical retail overhead creates potential margin risks.
October 7, 2026 · Jimmy Cho
Costco Didn’t Save Medicube—It Was the Emergency Exit
Medicube’s September 2026 U.S. Costco launch and global pop-up tour were not an sudden expansion into physical retail, but the peak of a 13-month offline progression starting at Ulta (Aug 2025), Target (Apr 2026), and Walmart (Jun 2026). As online growth stabilized, APR shifted its revenue mix from 75.8% online in 2024 to 38.6% offline in H1 2026, leveraging physical distribution to scale.
October 2, 2026 · Jimmy Cho
Why US Investors Are Buying the Wrong K-Beauty Stocks
Despite South Korea's record $1.51B cosmetics exports in September 2026, stock prices diverged sharply based on revenue exposure and currency risk rather than total export volume. Overseas-heavy brand owners (e.g., APR, d'Alba) fell over 15–21% due to foreign exchange translation risks, whereas ODM manufacturers (e.g., Cosmax) fell less than half as much by billing domestic clients in won.
September 29, 2026 · Jimmy Cho
Earnings vs. Hype: MBK’s Split-Brain Strategy for K-Beauty
MBK Partners spent 470B won on two contrasting K-beauty deals in one week. First, it bought control of Skin Idea and Life&Bio for 300B won (~8x EBITDA)—a safe, domestic cash flow play. Days later, it took a 40% minority stake in AXIS-Y at a 430B won valuation—a pure bet on global reach (>90% overseas revenue). The contrast exposes MBK's open question: is K-beauty a steady earnings stream or a high-hype asset class?
September 26, 2026 · Jimmy Cho
Behind Goodai Global’s $7 Billion IPO: Platform Ambitions vs. Structural Risks
This blog post analyzes Goodai Global’s preliminary KOSPI IPO filing at a target valuation of 10 trillion won ($7.2 billion). It highlights key risks for prospective investors: 46% of consolidated revenue comes from subsidiary Craver, which plans a separate Tokyo listing by 2027—triggering dual-listing discount concerns—and recent growth stems heavily from rapid brand acquisitions financed by debt.
September 21, 2026 · Jimmy Cho
Macquarie Just Bought the Factory, Not the Brand
Macquarie Asset Management's Korean buyout fund signed a definitive agreement on 18 September 2026 to acquire 70 percent of Hwasung Cosmetics and 100 percent of Nowcos for more than 300 billion won. Its previous Korean purchase, closed in April 2024, was a pharmaceutical contract manufacturer. Neither deal came with a brand, a shelf or a consumer. The K-beauty asset global capital keeps paying for is capacity, and capacity is priced on utilization rather than on desire.
September 20, 2026 · Jimmy Cho
Why Die-Hard Fans Felt Betrayed by a $1.6 Billion Brand Acquisition
Founded on a grandmother’s shea butter recipe, SheaMoisture built a loyal Black customer base by making natural hair care products. A controversial 2017 ad and $1.6B Unilever sale sparked backlash, but the brand preserved its roots by reinvesting millions into Black women entrepreneurs.
September 18, 2026 · Jimmy Cho
ODMs Are Buying Concrete While the Market Sells Beauty
Cosmecca Korea filed a new-facility investment disclosure with the Korea Exchange on 9 September 2026 committing 136 billion won, equal to 40.45% of its shareholder equity, to a plant that is not complete until 2030. Over the following week Korean cosmetics shares gave back 22% of a 45% August gain. In the same ten days cosmetics export value rose 46.1% and tonnage rose 26.5%. Concrete and equity are reading one industry in opposite directions.
September 15, 2026 · Jimmy Cho
MoCRA Cosmetics Compliance: Why Korean Beauty Products Face US FDA Refusals
Nothing in an American refusal notice for a Korean cosmetic is about chemistry. In FY2025, 69% of Korea's US FDA cosmetics import refusals came down to labelling, and the same month that Korea's own regulator published its August enforcement record, five of its nine actions were for advertising liable to be mistaken for medicine. The compliance failure that actually stops Korean cosmetics, in both jurisdictions, is the sentence on the label — not the formula in the jar.
August 27, 2026 · Jimmy Cho
APS Innovation Buys Irae: Why K-Beauty's Real Bottleneck Is Line Changeover, Not Formulation
A KOSDAQ-listed maker of secondary-battery and display equipment has bought a cosmetics filling-and-packaging automation company for USD 17.7 million, in a deal brokered by a Korean state credit-guarantee fund. It is a small transaction, and it describes where the K-beauty industry's constraint actually sits far better than the export figures do. The thing that stops an indie brand scaling into a new market is almost never the formulation. It is the filling line.
August 26, 2026 · Jimmy Cho
LG H&H Sells Avon North America to Regent for $6 Million: What the Price Actually Measures
LG Household & Health Care agreed on 24 August 2026 to sell The Avon Company, its entire North American Avon business, to Stratford Worldwide, an affiliate of the investment firm Regent, for a reported USD 6 million. LG H&H paid USD 125 million for the business in April 2019 and subsequently lent it a further USD 205.5 million, which it is now converting to equity. The price is not evidence that direct selling has failed — Mary Kay announced an expansion of the same model three days earlier — but evidence that the Avon brand was never a single asset, and that what each buyer actually paid for was the selling operation underneath the name.
August 24, 2026 · Jimmy Cho
Estée Lauder's Dr.Jart+ Writedown: What a Strategic Exit Actually Buys a Korean Founder
Estée Lauder wrote USD 375 million off Dr.Jart+ in fiscal 2025, then ran a sale process for the brand, took bids, and decided in July 2026 to keep it and shrink the team instead. The company's fiscal 2026 results, published on 19 August 2026, name Dr.Jart+ in exactly two places. This is the clearest public record of what happens to a Korean brand after the exit everyone treats as the finish line.
August 21, 2026 · Jimmy Cho
CVC Capital's $212m Silicon2 Deal: Why Global PE Bought K-Beauty's Distribution Layer
On 18 August, CVC Capital Partners subscribed KRW 300bn of new Silicon2 shares — about USD 212m — at a premium, taking 9.23% of a company that owns no beauty brand at all. Six months earlier, Goodai Global had bought the distributor Hansung USA to take its North American supply chain in-house. This piece reads the two deals as the same structural problem solved from opposite ends, and sets out what the aggregator model actually leaves a Korean brand holding.
August 17, 2026 · Jimmy Cho
Brenntag's Woojin Trading Deal: Why Global Capital Is Buying the K-Beauty Supply Chain, Not K-Beauty Brands
On 3 August 2026, Germany's Brenntag agreed to acquire Woojin Trading, a Korean beauty ingredients distributor, at an enterprise value KED Global reported at about $35 million. It is the latest in a run of foreign acquisitions targeting the K-beauty supply chain rather than K-beauty brands. The track record of returns over the past three years suggests the buyers have this the right way round: Korean brands bought by global strategics have seen earnings fall, while the packaging and ingredients companies that supply every brand in the category have delivered some of the strongest private equity exits in Korea.
August 16, 2026 · Jimmy Cho
ANVISA Registration Is the Real K-Beauty Bottleneck in Brazil, Not Demand
Korean cosmetics exports to Brazil rose 86.4% in the first half of 2026 to $43.36 million, and President Lee Jae Myung named K-beauty one of three pillars of the Korea–Brazil partnership. But demand was never the constraint. Every cosmetic sold in Brazil must be registered with ANVISA first, and, by the industry's own account, a sunscreen dossier takes six to twelve months — which is the number that actually determines whether Korean brands reach Brazilian shelves.
August 8, 2026 · Jimmy Cho
Kolmar Korea's ReefTox Verification: Why Korean ODMs Now Sell Certification, Not Formulas
Kolmar Korea announced on 6 August 2026 that it is the first Korean company to establish a scientific verification system for coral reef sunscreen safety, through French testing organisation ReefTox. The commercially significant part is not the environmental result but the business model: Korean contract manufacturers are increasingly selling clients the ability to make a defensible claim, rather than selling a formulation. This is the same logic behind Kolmar's thirteen-year investment in US FDA over-the-counter certification ahead of the June 2026 bemotrizinol decision.