Historically not a major market for perfume, South Korea’s domestic fragrance market has developed rapidly since the pandemic mainly driven by Millenial and Gen Z consumers adopting niche fragrance as accessible luxuries. Euromonitor estimates that the Korean fragrance market nearly doubled between 2020 and 2025 reaching 1.18 trillion won in 2025 (around $880m).
If Western brands still dominate the market, we are seeing an increasing number of homegrown brands emerging as well as skincare brands like A’Pieu and Etude entering the category. According to data from Shinsegae, the proportion of Korean perfume brands offered on its ecommerce platform has grown from 16% in 2024 to 27% today and the sales of Korean perfume during the first part of the year grew 153% YoY vs. 40% for the overall perfume category.
If there is a real emerging “K-Perfume” category which would represent the next evolution of K-beauty it is still small on the global stage with €56m in export in 2025 according to data from ITC Trademap. And abroad K-Perfume is for now clearly dominated by one brand, Borntostandout founded in 2020 and backed by L’Oréal.
According to data from Perfumist, an app that tracks the preferences of more than 3 million perfume users worldwide, Borntostandout was the most popular Korean brand globally among its users, three times as popular as the number two and nearly ten times as the number three. In number two it is also worth mentioning Tamburins which is owned by IICOMBINED, the parent company of Gentle Monster, and capitalizes on avant-garde retail design, artistic sculptures, and high-profile campaigns featuring global K-pop stars like BLACKPINK’s Jennie.
K-Perfume is still a burgeoning category globally and it will be interesting to see if Korean brand can become as successful in perfume as they have been in skincare.
