Riding on the popularity of K-pop and Korean content, K-beauty has established a strong presence in the global beauty market. The Korean cosmetics industry has built its reputation on unique ingredients and innovative product development, gaining trust from consumers worldwide. Additionally, there’s a keen interest in the beauty routines of K-pop stars, who are admired by fans globally.

Korean skincare products have cultivated a powerful fanbase, leading trends such as the “10-step skincare routine.” Last year, K-beauty exports reached approximately 9 trillion KRW, an increase of over 10% from the previous year.

K-beauty’s growth is driven by a diverse product lineup, tailored skincare solutions, and reliable ingredients. With a rising global interest in natural, vegan, and eco-friendly products, K-beauty has responded by launching new product lines and planned items. This shift has helped the vegan cosmetics market achieve an annual growth rate of 8% between 2022 and 2023, significantly contributing to K-beauty’s expansion.

As consumers around the world become more conscientious about their health and skin, there is a surge in demand for brands that prioritize fundamental skincare principles. Korean beauty brands are making waves by offering differentiated products that meet the stringent demands of both domestic consumers and the global market for vegan, healthy ingredients.

Your Choice, a brand that claims to redefine the inherent value of cosmetics, focuses on restoring the fundamental health of the skin rather than merely following existing K-beauty trends. It develops products that enhance the skin’s intrinsic regenerative abilities and maintain a healthy condition, allowing Your Choice to maintain a unique position in the K-beauty market.

Moving forward, Your Choice plans to continuously expand its product line to focus on long-term skin health, not just external aesthetics.

Park Jin-young, the founder of Your Choice and a former management consultant, started exploring cosmetics as a solution to his severe skin issues, which led to the launch of the skincare brand. After experiencing severe disruptions to his daily life due to his skin condition, Park was driven to create a brand focused on genuine healing. He is dedicated to developing products that offer fundamental skin recovery, something that existing cosmetics do not provide.

Park explains, “Previously indifferent to cosmetics, I endured severe skin peeling all over my body. Despite trying numerous medications and skincare products, my condition repeatedly worsened with each application. This experience piqued my interest in cosmetic ingredients, and I discovered my extreme sensitivity to chemical components. Most cosmetics on the market contain these chemicals, so I was compelled to create my own to reclaim my daily life. Thus, I formed a team at a raw material development company to create moisturizers, which provided significant relief and led to the founding of my business.”

The ‘skin self-recovery’ emphasized by Your Choice aligns with the ‘Skin Microbiome,’ a core issue in the beauty market. Products that maintain and protect the beneficial bacteria of the skin are garnering global attention. Your Choice is focusing on developing products based on microbiome technology, aiming to supply goods that support sustainable, long-term skin health rather than temporary effects.

Moreover, Your Choice actively utilizes consumer communication to convey the brand’s product philosophy and authenticity. As a result, consumers have formed a voluntary community, boasting a repurchase rate of over 90%, demonstrating their satisfaction and loyalty. They actively promote Your Choice products through word of mouth and community involvement, which surpasses conventional marketing and illustrates how the brand builds trust with its customers. As part of these marketing efforts, Park Jin-young, embodying the brand’s persona, appeared on the well-known broadcast program ‘I am SOLO’ to enhance his profile and actively engage as a brand ambassador.

“Last year, I participated as Soon-ja in the 14th season of ‘I am SOLO,’ a special feature for gold misses. Since Your Choice stems from my real-life story, I decided to appear on the show to lay the foundation for acting as both the company persona and ambassador.”

Park Jin-young’s aggressive marketing and promotional activities, along with products that focus on the natural health of the skin, are gradually expanding Your Choice’s footprint. With the ongoing growth of the global K-beauty market, Your Choice is also intensifying its efforts to penetrate international markets.

To enhance brand recognition, attract talent, and prepare for global expansion, Park Jin-young is seeking investment. “Restoring the natural health of the skin is our brand’s top priority, and based on this, we plan to continue our growth in the global market,” he confidently states. “I am confident in our value as a cosmetics brand that redefines the fundamental value of cosmetics.”

What problem are we solving? 

The market is saturated with numerous cosmetic brands, especially with the surge of K-beauty, leading to a plethora of product launches. However, most cosmetics focus on external beauty, such as color cosmetics, and even skincare products often emphasize superficial features like whitening or wrinkle reduction. As a result, many cosmetics highlight external effects, containing potent chemical ingredients that can irritate the skin or cause allergic reactions.

The fundamental and most important function of cosmetics is not to temporarily enhance external beauty but to maintain and protect the skin’s natural health. Healthy skin is the foundation for pursuing external beauty. Our brand, Your Choice, does not stop at superficial skin care; instead, it focuses on enhancing the skin’s inherent recovery capabilities and promoting its health. Our goal is to foster the skin’s self-recovery abilities through our products, maintaining long-term healthy skin.

How does Your Choice solve this problem? 

Your Choice develops high-efficiency skincare ingredients based on natural components, focusing on restoring the skin’s fundamental health and balance. Unlike conventional cosmetics that concentrated on external functionality, we redefine the inherent value of cosmetics and focus on solving fundamental skin issues.

Our products enable anyone to maintain a healthy skin condition with regular use and enhance the skin’s self-recovery abilities. Particularly, our high-efficiency ingredients developed in-house act quickly on skin conditions and troubles, demonstrating pharmaceutical-level effects even in basic products, earning them the nickname ‘household medicine.’

What are our competitive advantages and technological strengths? 

Firstly, we develop various high-efficiency signature ingredients based on natural components. We minimize synthetic chemicals and actively use natural ingredients that do not burden the skin, creating high-efficiency skincare ingredients focused on specific functions like ultra-moisturizing, anti-inflammatory, and anti-dust. Our signature ingredients, which cannot be replicated by others, provide safe and reliable products to consumers with various skin types, including sensitive skin, thereby enhancing our brand value.

Secondly, we adhere to a minimal prescription principle. We include only necessary ingredients focused on specific effects, overcoming the limitations of cosmetics that could adversely affect the skin due to the extensive use of unnecessary ingredients. Our products, developed based on a ‘gentle and honest recipe’ consisting of only essential ingredients, minimize skin irritation and maximize effectiveness.

Thirdly, we pursue comfortable skincare that can be easily used in daily life. We help customers naturally manage their skin through products that can be used conveniently by anyone without complicated procedures, fostering a sustainable skincare culture in everyday life.

What are Your Choice’s products and services? What is the current status? 

We are currently commercializing two high-efficiency skincare ingredients based on natural components. The first ingredient, ‘Carabine-Ceramium,’ uses active components extracted from rice, sunflower seeds, and olives, boasting strong ultra-moisturizing functions. This natural ingredient, which has twelve times the moisturizing power of petroleum jelly (a by-product of petroleum), serves as the main component of our ‘Ultra-Moisturizing Skincare Line,’ currently featuring seven products. 

Additionally, we have launched two product lines focusing on skin soothing, along with base makeup, baby, and men’s lines that have been developed. The second ingredient, ‘Antifect-Antifection,’ extracted from large camphor tree roots and camellia leaves, provides strong anti-inflammatory and antiviral functions, with excellent effects in suppressing skin troubles. This ingredient is applied to our ‘Anti-Inflammatory Cleansing Line,’ featuring two products.

We are also developing various skincare ingredients with functions such as removing fine dust, adsorbing heavy metals, and exfoliating.

What is the size of the target market and who are our core customers? 

The global skincare market size was estimated at approximately $109.71 billion in 2023 and is expected to grow to about $115.65 billion in 2024. By 2032, it is projected to reach about $194.05 billion, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.68%. The Korean skincare market, in particular, is leading the K-beauty trend and is expected to grow from approximately 9.7 trillion KRW in 2023 to about 10.2 trillion KRW in 2024. 

Interest in natural and organic products is increasing, and a trend is expanding, particularly among people in their mid-twenties to early forties, who are pursuing natural beauty rather than color cosmetics. As our direction aligns with this trend, we expect to seize significant opportunities in the target market.

What is our business model? 

We operate our business centered around four main business models. First, we provide products that enhance the skin’s natural health through our product line emphasizing high-efficiency and natural-derived ingredients. Second, we strengthen emotional connections with consumers through brand storytelling and a fandom-based strategy. We are building the brand around the authentic story that began with the founder’s treatment of his skin disease, and the founder himself is expanding the fandom as a brand ambassador. Additionally, we are planning a chatbot ‘JYP Unnie’ to enhance communication with consumers. Third, we reduce distribution costs and quickly reflect consumer needs and trends through a D2C (Direct-to-Consumer) and online sales strategy. We establish customized marketing strategies by analyzing customer data, for example, ‘Capsule Mist’ and ‘Large Body Cream’ were developed in response to customer demands. Fourth, we are creating a culture of Your Choiceness as a strategy to make the brand an important part of daily life, collaborating with various fields and expanding marketing activities.

What are our team’s achievements? 

We attracted seed investment valued at 5 billion KRW within three years of establishment, recognizing our originality and technological prowess, and successfully secured additional seed investment valued at 8 billion KRW two years later. 

We were also selected for the TIPS program and have completed patent registrations for two unique high-efficiency skincare ingredients. We are building relationships with domestic and international distribution channels and pushing to expand exports to China, Vietnam, the USA, and Europe.

What is Your Choice’s competitiveness? 

Although we are a small startup, we have built internal capabilities since our founding. A marketer with over ten years of experience and a former model-actor are planning and producing content to deliver value to consumers, and our CSO, a practicing lawyer, manages legal risks promptly. Our products, tested and developed by the founder himself, are based on authenticity, gaining consumer trust.

Three reasons why we need investment!! 

First, we are at a point where we can aggressively expand our export channels through infrastructure development for production and distribution. The export scale confirmed and under discussion for various countries alone suggests that we can achieve outstanding sales performance among indie brands.

Second, for about three years, we have focused on ingredient and product R&D without launching a single new product. However, the existing products have generated sales and have been recognized for their product power to the extent that we have earned the nickname, ‘No one has tried it just once.’ With about twenty new products developed using our unique high-efficiency skincare ingredients and ongoing development based on unique high-efficiency ingredients, we are confident that we can achieve a stronger market positioning than any other skincare brand.

Third, we have all the branding and marketing resources and capabilities to form a strong fandom. From a powerful and unique brand story that cannot be imitated by other brands to me, the protagonist who can most authentically unfold this story as a brand ambassador, we are a small but solid startup with internal capabilities to turn this into the most effective content.

Finally, there are many cosmetic brands and products on the market. However, most products focus on external beauty, and very few genuinely consider the natural health of the skin. I was once a successful management consultant, but when a severe skin disease that caused my skin to peel off came upon me, I had to quit my job, and the everyday life I had never thought specially about became a goal I had to pursue again. Having experienced the pain caused by skin more than anyone else, I have truly and sincerely run with the single-minded goal of helping more people with cosmetics, a category that everyone, regardless of age or gender, will encounter throughout their lives.

However, no matter how good the products are, if people do not know about them, they will not help anyone and will disappear. Our Your Choice is still an unknown brand. I am confident that what we have prepared so far can have a significant positive impact on many people. To do so, we need the power to spread this influence now.