Masks off, lipstick on, sales up, department stores argue

A shopper tries on makeup at a department store in central Seoul on Sunday, a day ahead of the government's planned lifting of a mandatory mask mandate. [YONHAP]

With the mask mandate finally ended — on Monday, after 840 days — the beauty business is hopeful that cosmetics sales will boom.

Already, signs indicate the fewer the restrictions, the more makeup is being worn.

At Lotte Department Store, sales of color cosmetic products increased 25 percent from Jan. 2 to 20 compared to the same period last year.

Revenues from Jan. 23 to 26, right after the Lunar New Year holiday, surged more than 40 percent on year. During this period, sales of lipstick rose 50 percent, lip gloss and tint 80 percent and blush, contour shades and highlighter 70 percent.

“Color cosmetic products for lips and cheeks are exploding in popularity,” a spokesperson of Lotte Department Store said.

At Shinsegae Department Store and Hyundai Department Store, cosmetics sales increased by 20 to 24 percent from early- to mid-January compared to the same period last year. Likewise, the increase was noticeable in color cosmetic products.

Sales at road shops, or large cosmetics retailers catering to tourists and other more transient clientele, online shopping channels and television-based home shopping are also booming.

At Olive Young, color cosmetic products sale jumped 55 percent year-on-year from May to December last year, when Korea gradually lifted its outdoor mask mandate.

“As the indoor mask mandate has been fully lifted, customers can freely test all color cosmetic products inside the stores, like lipsticks,” a spokesperson for Olive Young said Monday.

At Lotte On’s On and the Beauty, an online shop for premium beauty products, cosmetic product revenue jumped 50 percent when the Jan. 2-to-15 is compared to the same period a year earlier. During the Lunar New Year holidays, Lotte Homeshopping orders of beauty-related products hit about 4 billion won ($3.25 million). Of that, orders for cosmetic products increased by 20 percent compared to Chuseok, or the fall harvest festival, which is Korea’s biggest holiday along with Lunar New Year.

Department stores and beauty retailers are scrambling to host promotional campaigns to capitalize on the newest government guidelines on indoor masking rule ahead of Valentine’s Day.

Lotte Department Store is preparing “Blooming Beauty Week” scheduled for Feb. 3 to 12, where 37 cosmetics brands, including Amore Pacific, Shiseido, Mac and Bobby Brown, are participating.

Shisegae Department Store will hold “Shinsegae Cosmetics Fair” from Feb. 10 to Feb. 19, in which some 70 cosmetics brands, including Estee Lauder, Sulhwasoo and Yves Saint Laurent, will participate and organize events like discount coupons giveaways.

Not everyone is happy about the lifting of the mask mandate. Some saw mask-wearing as a comfortable shield from revealing their faces — even creating the buzzword “magikkun” — a portmanteau that combines the English word “mask” and “sagikkun,” the Korean word for fraud.

And some skeptics question whether a cosmetics boom will result.

"As the mask mandate was lifted in phases since May last year, it is believed that the public demand recovery has already passed,” Park Eun-kyeong, an analyst at Samsung Securities, said. “There will be a limit to recovering the performance of the cosmetics industry as people spend long enough hours without masks even now.”

“It is difficult for the domestic cosmetics industry to recover quickly only with the local demand,” a cosmetics brand executive similarly pointed out. “Rather it will revive only when the travel industry normalizes and foreign tourists return, or overseas demand, such as from China, recovers.”

Euromonitor projects Korea’s beauty and personal care market to reach 16.74 trillion won in 2023, a rise of around 2.8 percent from last year. This is still less than last year’s 3.3 percent growth.

BY YOO JI-YOEN, SEO JI-EUN [seo.jieun1@joongang.co.kr[