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Like or unlike Sephora? What we know about Olive Young’s U.S. launch ahead of its full May rollout.

Published: 30 Apr. 2026, 05:00

KIM MIN-YOUNG
[email protected]

The spot for Olive Young's upcoming store, which used to be a Foot Locker, in the United States in Pasadena, California, in May [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Olive Young, Korea's dominant beauty and health retailer, will open its first U.S. store in late May. The Pasadena debut marks the start of a broader expansion into the world's largest beauty market, with plans for a network of physical stores across California and a collaboration with its U.S. counterpart, Sephora.

What we know so far suggests an unusually ambitious entry strategy that combines brick-and-mortar stores, an omnichannel deal with the world’s largest beauty retailer and the construction of a U.S. logistics network.

The Pasadena debut

The first U.S. store is scheduled to open at 58 West Colorado Boulevard in Old Pasadena in May, replacing the one-story former Foot Locker next to the Apple Store.

The store is in one of Pasadena’s most popular retail avenues, which attracts a mix of tourist and local foot traffic. CJ Olive Young, the parent company of Olive Young, partly chose Pasadena for its high concentration of high-income residents and its proximity to research institutions such as the California Institute of Technology, according to a November 2025 statement from the company’s newsroom.

A source with knowledge of the U.S. opening told the Korea JoongAng Daily that the retailer plans for the store to have “zones” centered on experiences.

“Olive Young is positioning this first location as a platform for K-beauty,” the source said. “It plans to introduce service zones where consumers will be able to test [products] and identify their personal color.”

The Pasadena and the upcoming Westfield Century City locations will feature AI-powered skin and scalp diagnostic devices for personalized product recommendations, modeled on the services already available at some Olive Young stores in Korea. Staff will reportedly follow a “half-response” customer service approach, in which employees greet customers but then give them space to browse independently.

“We plan to expand our U.S. business to introduce a wide range of brands, led by K-beauty, into the world’s largest beauty market in [our] own way and to engage consumers as a discovery-based platform where they can explore and experience K-beauty in depth,” said an Olive Young spokesperson. “In particular, through close collaboration with our brand partners, we will maintain the quality [...] of the [company’s Korean branch’s] formula, meaning the products’ inherent effectiveness, while enhancing customer satisfaction through [competitive] prices, services and localized marketing.”

A homepage screenshot of Old Pasadena, a business district in California, announcing that an Olive Young store is coming soon [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Headline brands at the flagship

At its launch, the Pasadena store will carry roughly 400 Korean and non-Korean brands. Olive Young’s own brands, such as Wakemake, Bring Green and Bio Heal Boh, are expected to be part of the lineup, which will be anchored by two of the hottest emerging K-beauty names in the U.S. market: APR’s Medicube and Dalba Global’s Dalba.

Medicube and Dalba have reportedly finalized supply agreements with Olive Young and will be featured prominently on the store’s main display shelves.

Medicube’s Zero Pore Pad has held the No. 1 spot in the toner and astringent category on Amazon U.S. since February 2025. APR’s line of facial pads surpassed 20 million units in cumulative global sales by the end of 2025, double the threshold of what typically constitutes a “big hit” in the Korean beauty industry.

Dalba’s First Spray Serum has sold more than 50 million bottles globally, including in the United States, as of the second half of 2025, and its Waterfull Sunscreen line has crossed 10 million bottles.

Olive Young's first North American distribution center in Bloomington, California [OLIVE YOUNG]

The growth has triggered what some analysts describe as a “Korean gold rush” among U.S. beauty retailers. For example, Sephora and Ulta Beauty have raced to obtain exclusive deals with marquee Korean brands, with Sephora securing such agreements with Aestura, Hanyul and Beauty of Joseon.

Those arrangements complicate Olive Young’s playbook for some assortments, and industry observers say that the company’s competitive edge will lie in predicting the next generation of popular Korean brands not yet locked into U.S. deals, positioning itself as a discovery hub rather than a direct competitor selling identical assortments.

Four stores by year-end

The Pasadena opening is the first of at least four California locations planned for 2026. Olive Young has confirmed that a second store will open at Westfield Century City in Los Angeles in the first half of this year, with construction already underway. A third store is scheduled to open for the second half of this year at Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance, a major Southern California shopping hub with a substantial Korean and Asian American consumer base. A fourth California location is also in the works.

The company is building U.S.-based logistics infrastructure and developing a dedicated U.S. e-commerce platform to connect online and offline shopping in an omnichannel model. The goal, according to Olive Young, is to encourage customers to discover brands in stores and continue purchasing online.

Olive Young signed a partnership with Sephora to introduce the “K-beauty Zone” in Sephora’s online and offline stores on Jan. 21. [EACH COMPANY]

Inside Sephora

Olive Young’s ambitions extend well beyond its own storefronts. The retailer announced a global partnership with Sephora on Jan. 20 that will introduce dedicated Olive Young-curated “K-beauty zones” in Sephora’s physical and online stores worldwide, with the rollout to begin this fall.

The first wave of K-beauty zones will cover the United States, Canada, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, including Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, with expansion into Britain, the Middle East and Australia planned for 2027.

The partnership marks an unusual structure in the beauty retail industry, with one mass-market chain effectively curating a section inside its largest global rival’s stores. Industry analysts have framed it as a recognition of Olive Young’s authority on Korean beauty trends rather than a typical sourcing arrangement.

Olive Young store in Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang [OLIVE YOUNG]

K-beauty’s record year

The expansion comes at a peak moment for K-beauty in the United States. Korean cosmetics exports hit a record $11.43 billion in 2025, up 12.3 percent on year, according to the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety. The United States overtook China as the top destination for Korean cosmetics for the first time, with exports rising to roughly $2.2 billion.

CJ Olive Young’s own performance reflects the boom. The company posted consolidated revenue of 5.85 trillion won ($3.96 billion) in 2025, up 21.8 percent from 4.79 trillion won the previous year, while operating profit climbed 22.5 percent to 744.7 billion won. Revenue has grown by roughly 1 trillion won every year since 2020, and industry projections suggest that the company could surpass 7 trillion won for the first time in 2026 on the back of its offline U.S. rollout and broader global expansion.

BY KIM MIN-YOUNG [[email protected]]