When Olive Young opened its first U.S. outpost in late May, shoppers were already camping out, and the line spanned multiple blocks.

On opening weekend, the leading South Korean beauty retailer’s new store in Pasadena, California, had 6,000 customers move through its doors, and it currently sees an average of more than 1,600 visitors per day, the company said. It has since opened another location, in Century City, California, and said it plans to open more stores in the U.S.

That popularity is a microcosm of a bigger trend playing out in the U.S.: Consumers can’t get enough of beauty products from a country thousands of miles away — positioning some companies to get ahead.

“The U.S. is not only the world’s largest beauty market, but also one of the most influential in shaping global beauty trends, content, and consumer behavior,” Olive Young global communications lead Rena Kim said. “It was a natural and strategic next step in our global expansion.”

Consumption of Korean cosmetics, otherwise referred to as K-beauty, has been on the rise in the U.S. for years, with the “first wave” taking place in the 2010s and continuing into the Covid-19 pandemic.

“People were home. They had time to kind of learn about a 10-step skin care routine. They learned about what specific ingredients did, how to layer products together,” said Anna Mayo, a NielsenIQ beauty thought leader. “We saw the rise of this ‘glass skin’ look, and this real emphasis on healthy and glowing skin that looks great every day versus the need to kind of cover it up with cosmetics.”

“Consumers have already been primed in this skin care-first philosophy that they’re kind of living in,” she added.

Now, the “second wave” has taken hold, Mayo said, as K-beauty brands successfully take advantage of this appetite among U.S. consumers for skin care. According to NielsenIQ, U.S. K-beauty sales reached $2.8 billion in early 2026, representing a roughly 48% increase from a year ago. That’s faster than the nearly 45% growth rate seen in the prior-year period — an unusual acceleration, Mayo said.

K-beauty is also penetrating more U.S. households, climbing to 28.7% over the latest yearly period — a sign that it’s becoming stickier in the country.

Morgan Stanley analyst Simeon Gutman said he expects K-beauty’s growth trajectory to continue. In a note dated March 11, the analyst forecast that K-beauty sales in the U.S. can reach approximately $4 billion in 2026, citing “the rising popularity of K-culture and U.S. consumer demand for functional skincare products” as catalysts.

Gutman later confirmed to CNBC that those views are current.

Even if those projections…

Italian regulators are looking to clamp down on the tween skincare obsession and are investigating the LVMH-owned cosmetic brands Sephora and Benefit over an “insidious” marketing campaign to children.

The Italian Competition Authority (AGCM) said Friday that it has launched investigations into the two cosmetic brands centred on “unfair commercial practices,” which saw children and young people, even those under the age of 10, being encouraged to purchase serums, masks, and anti-ageing creams.

The regulator said the marketing is fuelling behavior known as “cosmeticorexia,” which refers to an unhealthy fixation on skincare amongst minors.

It emphasized that both Sephora and Benefit had failed to appropriately label products or omitted at times important precautions on products not intended for use by minors, both in-store and online on social media, which could cause serious harm to their health.

Additionally, AGCM said the popular cosmetic brands employed an “insidious marketing strategy” which involved young micro-influencers promoting other young people to buy their products.

AGCM officials and the Italian financial police carried out inspections of the premises of Sephora Italia, LVMH Profumi e Cosmetici Italia, and LVMH Italia on Thursday.

LVMH said Sephora, Benefit, and LVMH P&C Italy had been notified of the investigation.

“As the investigation is ongoing, Sephora, Benefit and LVMH P&C Italy cannot share further comments at this stage, they express their willingness to fully cooperate with the authorities,” LVMH said in a statement to CNBC. “All the companies reaffirm their strict compliance with applicable Italian regulations.”

Sephora boasts nearly 23 million followers on Instagram and over 2 million followers on TikTok, with the beauty brand at the center of tween beauty trends.

The “Sephora kids” social media trend has gained traction over the past few years, with viral videos on TikTok and Instagram showing stores flooded with teenage girls loading up their baskets with brightly-coloured and fun-looking skincare products.

In some videos, young girls show off their skincare routines with products containing anti-ageing ingredients like retinol.

A CBS News analysis of 240 skincare posts from teen influencers on TikTok found that many of the videos hadn’t been properly tagged as promotional content, with only 15 videos, or just 6% of posts, doing so. This means many content creators may unintentionally be advertising products to unsuspecting children.

One teen skincare influencer, Embreigh Courtlyn, told CBS that some brands would ask her not to label videos with “#ad,” which could be off-putting to viewers, but instead be referred to as partners, which would enable the content to perform better.

A peer-reviewed study published by

It often starts small.

A dab of concealer. A tinted moisturizer. Maybe a brow gel that goes from borrowed to bought. For many men, like Daniel Rankin, makeup has transformed from something taboo into a tool to make them look less tired and more put together.

“I remember thinking, ‘Am I really doing this?'” Rankin, a 24-year-old advertising agent from New York who likes to shop at Sephora, told CNBC. “But once I tried it, it just became normal.”

In front of bathroom mirrors and in gym locker rooms, more men are now adding cosmetics to their routines, industry experts told CNBC. The men’s makeup market is now one of the most lucrative — and largely untapped — growth opportunities left in beauty, and specialty retailers like Ulta Beauty and Sephora along with big-box companies like Target and Walmart all see opportunity.

“Men’s beauty is one of the last categories left where brands can likely still see easy double-digit growth potential simply by showing up,” said Delphine Horvath, professor of cosmetics and fragrance marketing at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

Men’s grooming sales in the United States topped $7.1 billion in 2025, up 6.9% year over year, according to market research firm NielsenIQ. The global market was valued at $61.6 billion in 2024 and projected to surpass $85 billion by 2032, with the biggest growth driven by the skin-care sector, according to Fortune Business Insights.

Much of the momentum is coming from Gen Z.

In the U.S., 68% of Gen Z men ages 18 to 27 used facial skin-care products in 2024, a sharp jump from 42% just two years earlier, according to data from market intelligence firm Mintel.

“This is no longer niche,” said Linda Dang, CEO of Canada-based Asian beauty retailer Sukoshi. “Men are forming routines, that usually starts at skin care and then expands further, they are no longer just buying random products. That’s what makes this market so valuable.”

Unlike one-off grooming purchases, makeup encourages repeat use and experimentation. A man who starts with concealer often adds primer, setting powder or tinted SPF over time, said Farah Jemai, global marketing associate lead at beauty brand Unleashia.

“When men discover makeup that works, they don’t use once and never again,” Jemai told CNBC. “They restock.”

Market researchers estimate that in 2022, about 15% of U.S. heterosexual men ages 18 to 65 were already using cosmetics and makeup, while another 17% said they would consider it, according to Ipsos. Industry experts say those figures are likely higher in 2026.

Openness to cosmetics has grown, as the share of U.S. men who say they never wear makeup has fallen from more than 90% in 2019 to about 75% in 2024, Statista survey data show.

Beauty conglomerates and startups alike are responding to the growth in men’s beauty.

Ulta Beauty and and Sephora have begun integrating men’s complexion products into gender-neutral, skin…

On a recent Saturday at an Ulta Beauty store in midtown Manhattan, Denise McCarthy, a mother in her 40s, stood in front of a wall of tiny pastel bottles, tubes and compacts. Her phone buzzed — another TikTok from her 15-year-old daughter.

“My kids text me the TikToks,” she told CNBC, scooping Korean lip tints and sunscreens into her basket, destined for Christmas stockings. “I don’t even know what half of this does. I just buy the ones they send me.”

Two aisles over, a group of college students compared swatches of Korean cushion foundations. A dad asked a store associate whether a viral Korean sunscreen was the one “from the girl who does the ‘get ready with me’ videos.” Near the checkout, a display of Korean sheet mask mini-packs was nearly empty.

Scenes like this are playing out across the country.

Once a niche reserved for beauty obsessives, Korean cosmetics — known as K-beauty — are breaking fully into the American mainstream, fueled by TikTok virality, younger and more diverse shoppers, and aggressive expansion from retailers such as Ulta, Sephora, Walmart and Costco.

K-beauty sales in the United States are expected to top $2 billion in 2025, up more than 37% from last year, according to market research firm NielsenIQ, far outpacing the broader beauty market’s single-digit growth.

And even as trade tensions complicate supply chains, brands and retailers told CNBC the momentum is strong.

“We have no plans of slowing down and see more opportunities to penetrate the market,” said Janet Kim, vice president at K-beauty brand Neogen.

In the first half of 2025, South Korea shipped a record $5.5 billion worth of cosmetics, up nearly 15% year over year, and has become the leading exporter of cosmetics to the U.S., surpassing France, according to data from the South Korean government.

“The growth has been remarkable,” said Therese-Ann D’Ambrosia, vice president of beauty and personal care at NielsenIQ. “When you compare that to the broader beauty market, which is growing at single digits, K-beauty is clearly operating in a different gear right now.”

Facial skin care remains the biggest K-beauty revenue driver in the U.S., NielsenIQ reported. Hair care is growing fastest, and hybrid items such as tinted serums and skin care-infused cushion compacts — sponge cushions soaked with an SPF foundation — continue to surge, the firm said.

Retailers are racing to take advantage of the cosmetics boom, and a turf war is underway.

Ulta, which has over 1,400 U.S. stores, launched “K-beauty World” in July, to spotlight Korean brands and tech devices. It’s the only major U.S. retailer carrying products from Medicube, a beauty-tech company touted by celebrities such as Hailey Bieber.

Ulta’s first quarter 2025 report cited a 38% increase in Korean skin…