Beauty / news
Target widens K-beauty push with Beauty Studio rollout
Target has deepened its Korean beauty offering, quadrupling its K-beauty assortment earlier this year and folding six K-beauty cosmetics labels into its new Beauty Studio, which replaces the Ulta Beauty shops previously housed inside its stores.
The Minneapolis-based retailer has added more than 150 new products and more than 10 new brands spanning skin care, makeup and hair care, according to the company, lifting its K-beauty count well above where it stood a year ago.
The Beauty Studio format, introduced this month, brings six K-beauty cosmetics names into the assortment, five of which are new to Target. The featured labels include Amuse, Kaja, Rom&nd, Dr. Melaxin, Purito Seoul and Sungboon Editor. K-beauty items also remain available across Target's wider beauty department.
Beauty Studio takes the place of the Ulta Beauty shops that had operated inside Target locations. The replacement section is set to carry more than 1,600 products from 90 brands, most of them new to the retailer.
The move points to a broader shift in how Korean beauty labels approach the U.S. market. Rather than concentrating on specialty chains such as Sephora and Ulta, which have long served as the primary channel for the category, brands are increasingly testing mass retail shelves.
Specialty retailers remain active in the segment. Ulta added 13 K-beauty brands last year across makeup and skin care, indicating that competition for the category now stretches across both specialty and big-box formats.