Amazon: K-beauty’s entrance to the U.S. Market
How Amazon has fueled K-beauty in the U.S.
Korean beauty — known as K-beauty — has become one of the most influential categories in the U.S. cosmetics market, and Amazon has played a central role in that ascent. In 2025, U.S. sales of K-beauty reached approximately $2 billion, up 37% from the prior year, according to research firm NielsenIQ (CNBC, 2025). That growth rate far outpaced the broader U.S. beauty market, which expanded at a single-digit pace.
Amazon’s accessibility has been a critical enabler. Korean brands — many without established U.S. retail relationships — were early adopters of the platform, using it to reach American consumers without the slotting fees, buyer networks, or physical distribution infrastructure that traditional retailers require. In 2023, Amazon launched “Project K-Beauty Go Big,” an initiative designed to help Korean sellers enter and scale in the U.S. market; K-beauty revenue on the platform jumped 78% year-over-year that year (Cosmetics Design, 2024). In October 2025, Amazon formalized its commitment with a dedicated K-Beauty storefront at amazon.com/kbeauty, consolidating brands including Laneige, COSRX, Medicube, and Dr. Jart+ — a category Amazon said was growing roughly three times faster than its overall beauty business (Cosmetics Business, 2025).
The platform’s impact shows up in category rankings. Medicube, owned by Korean beauty company APR, topped Amazon’s 2025 Prime Day beauty bestseller list, capturing 9.3% of sales among the top 100 products during the four-day event (KED Global, 2025). NielsenIQ estimates that roughly 70% of K-beauty sales in the U.S. now occur online, with Amazon among the primary drivers of both discovery and conversion.
Amazon’s share of the broader U.S. beauty market is also climbing. TD Cowen projects the company’s beauty market share will rise from 10% in 2024 to 15% by 2030, second only to Walmart (Retail Dive, 2025). Writing for Bloomberg, columnist Julianna Liu recently noted that the United States has surpassed China as the largest overseas buyer of Korean skincare and cosmetics, while K-beauty’s U.S. sales still represent a fraction of the $110 billion overall beauty market — suggesting meaningful runway remains (Business of Fashion, 2026).
For K-beauty brands, Amazon has functioned as both launchpad and proving ground — turning viral products into household staples and, increasingly, into the anchors of broader multi-channel U.S. strategies. That opportunity has surfaced the category’s operational realities: cross-border logistics, FDA and MoCRA compliance, and marketplace-specific inventory integration increasingly shape whether early traction converts into durable U.S. presence.