Last week I published a post on Korea’s rise as the second largest global beauty exporter, surpassing the USA for the first time in 2025 at €10bn.
Overall, Korea remains well behind France, the global leader at €23.3bn in total beauty exports. But in skincare and makeup specifically, the gap narrows to €12.5bn for France versus €9.4bn for Korea. Moreover, Korean exports in that category have grown at nearly twice the rate of French ones between 2016 and 2025, at 11.9% versus 6.2% annually. This means that if both countries continue at the same pace, Korea will overtake France by 2030.
But for me the trade data between the two countries is even more telling. In 2019, France ran a €257m trade surplus with Korea in skincare and makeup. By 2025, this surplus became a €37m deficit for the first time ever. French imports from Korea in skincare and makeup grew 28% per year between 2019 and 2025, while French exports to Korea fell 6% annually over the same period. The proportion of French imports from Korea for makeup and skincare nearly tripled between 2019 and 2025 now representing 9.1% of exports.
France remains the dominant beauty powerhouse. But for French brands in skincare and makeup this should be a wakeup call for brands in skincare and makeup categories to accelerate innovation and copy the social media playbook of Korean brands if they do not want to lose their global relevance as category leaders.