This Year’s IPO Olive Young... Targeting Overseas Markets with Direct Investment in 'K-Color' Cosmetics

Snow Subsidiary Vegan Beauty Brand
'Amuse' Receives 4 Billion KRW Direct Investment
Promoting Overseas Success and Domestic Brand Growth
Strengthening Global K-Beauty Platform for Win-Win

Vegan beauty brand 'Amuse'.

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Yuri] CJ Olive Young, preparing for an initial public offering (IPO) this year, is accelerating its overseas market expansion by leveraging color cosmetics brands it has directly invested in.

According to the distribution industry on the 15th, Olive Young recently participated as a strategic investor in a Series A equity investment worth a total of 10 billion KRW in the vegan beauty brand 'Amuse.' Of this, Olive Young's investment amounts to 4 billion KRW. This is the second time Olive Young has directly invested in a brand, following its participation in the Series B round (totaling 10 billion KRW) of the color cosmetics brand 'Hince' last year.

Amuse is a 100% subsidiary of Snow, a Naver affiliate. Since its debut in March 2018, it has rapidly grown by promoting a vegan concept. It has received a positive response from the MZ generation (Millennials + Generation Z), who value conscientious consumption, with sales last year growing more than 270% compared to the previous year.

The commonality among the brands Olive Young has directly invested in is that they are color cosmetics brands with high growth potential in overseas markets. Olive Young focused on the fact that Amuse has built a strong fandom and received favorable reviews not only in Korea but also in overseas markets such as the United States, Japan, China, and Southeast Asia. Hince is also a K-beauty brand performing well in overseas markets like Japan and China. Olive Young emphasized, "Beyond our previous role of supporting distribution channels and incubating promising small and medium enterprises, we will enhance K-beauty competitiveness in overseas markets through direct investment." This aligns with CJ Group's mid-term vision announced last November to leap forward as a ‘Global K-beauty Specialized Platform.’

Earlier last month, Olive Young announced plans to increase the membership of its own direct overseas purchase platform, Global Mall, to 1 million by the end of this year. Considering the current membership is 300,000, this indicates an active customer acquisition effort, with a strategy to leverage the competitiveness of promising domestic beauty brands like Amuse and Hince, in which it has directly invested. Global Mall's sales in the second half of last year increased about 20 times compared to 2019.

Olive Young, which declared its leap to an ‘omnichannel lifestyle platform’ that creates value for partners and customers through marketing and branding at the end of last year, is preparing for an IPO in the second half of this year. As of November last year, its estimated corporate value is about 4 trillion KRW.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.