[WHY] Nothing to smell here: Why demand for deodorant remains low in Korea

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[WHY] Nothing to smell here: Why demand for deodorant remains low in Korea

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI


 
A typical deodorant stick [GETTY IMAGES]

A typical deodorant stick [GETTY IMAGES]

 
When 36 year-old Astrid moved with her husband from Paris to Seoul last year, she knew that many of the usual comforts of her home country, such as its diverse range of cheeses and wines, would be harder to obtain in Korea.
 
What she didn’t expect was that she’d struggle to find suitable deodorants as well.
 
Arriving in Korea in the sweltering heat of July, Astrid discovered none of the local beauty and hygiene stores she visited stocked the deodorants she’d used in France.
 
“I now buy Rexona deodorants and Narta antiperspirants in bulk at home to bring back to Seoul,” she said, adding that she also asks friends to bring spray or gel versions of these brands when they come to visit her in Korea.
 
Astrid’s struggle is not limited to newcomers — 37-year-old American Wyatt Petty says he always made sure to carry an ample supply of deodorants in his luggage whenever he flew back to Seoul from Utah over the past decade.
 
“Even with the increased availability of products online, I prefer to buy my Dove Men stick deodorants when I’m back in the United States,” he said.
 
A glance inside any local beauty store shows that their concerns about the availability of deodorants are well-founded.
 
With the exception of deodorants from German skin care company Nivea, brands that are well-known in the West are barely present on shelves that are otherwise chock-full of face masks, serums, lotions and other cosmetics from a myriad number of companies.
 
The paucity of deodorant choice in Korea is bedeviling for those who want stronger stuff to suppress their bodily odors, especially if they’re overheating under multiple layers on stuffy wintertime public transport or sweating profusely outdoors in summer.
 
While online shopping helps to bridge the gap between sparsely stocked brick-and-mortar shops and consumers struggling to tame the smell of their armpits, the absence of deodorants begs the question: Why isn’t there much demand for these products in Korea?
 
A limited selection of deodorants available on one of the bottom shelves of a medium-sized cosmetics store in Gangnam District, southern Seoul, on Jan. 24. [MICHAEL LEE]

A limited selection of deodorants available on one of the bottom shelves of a medium-sized cosmetics store in Gangnam District, southern Seoul, on Jan. 24. [MICHAEL LEE]

Opening a market
 
When Nivea introduced its deodorants to Korea in 2000, it wasn’t just importing a new product — it was intent on creating a new market for millions of untapped armpits.
 
Deodorants were largely unknown in most of Korea, but the country had become more outward-facing since emerging from the 1997 Asian financial crisis and hosting the 2002 World Cup.
 
The release of Nivea’s first domestic television commercial for deodorants in 2003 coincided with a boom in overseas travel by Koreans. In the advertisement, a man rests his head on a woman’s shoulder on a long flight. The woman then smiles with the assurance that no unwanted smells will intrude on their time together.  
 
In case any viewers might miss the company’s message, the commercial ends with the slogan, “Confidence all day long: Nivea deodorant.”
 
Western personal care companies like Nivea that began selling deodorants in the country in the early 2000s were sanguine about the prospects for sales growth.
 
The prevailing assumption among industry insiders and reporters at the time was that Korean personal beauty and hygiene habits would soon “catch up” to practices in Western countries.
 
Shortly after global cosmetics company Unilever announced the launch of its best-selling line of Rexona deodorants in Korea in 2003, Nivea’s local marketing director Kim Sam-hee predicted that “the synergy tied to a competitor’s entry would result in a significant expansion” of the domestic market for deodorants, which in the previous year had reached 5 billion won, or $4.2 million at the time.
 
Unilever Korea similarly forecast that the size of the domestic deodorant market would increase to 34 billion won by 2004 and hit 80 billion won within two years.
 
Even when sales failed to meet expectations — as the domestic deodorant market hit just 25 billion won in 2005 — both Korean and foreign companies continued to push the public to embrace deodorant use.
 
A slew of commercials by different companies in the mid-2000s tied deodorant use to cleanliness and consideration for others. This tried-and-true strategy relied on inducing shame on those who failed to apply deodorant before setting out in public. In one commercial, people in a crowded Seoul subway carriage recoil hurriedly from a woman who forgets to apply deodorant and inadvertently exposes her armpit while reaching for a safety handle.
 
Just four brands of deodorants dominate the lower shelf of a large cosmetics store in Gangnam District, southern Seoul, on Jan. 24. [SARAH KIM]

Just four brands of deodorants dominate the lower shelf of a large cosmetics store in Gangnam District, southern Seoul, on Jan. 24. [SARAH KIM]

But deodorant adoption in Korea continued to lag behind predictions.
 
After Korean beauty company The Face Shop sold 1 million units of its domestically developed deodorant within the first three months of its release in 2005, one Korean market research firm predicted that domestic sales would grow to 30 billion won by the end of 2006.
 
In the end, deodorant sales increased by only 1 billion won from the previous year.
 
A regional puzzle
 
While Korean sales of deodorants have picked up, they’ve grown at a much slower pace than manufacturers hoped for.
 
According to Statista, the Korean deodorant market is projected to reach $39.55 million in 2024, or around half of Unilever’s forecast for the domestic market size 18 years prior.
 
That’s also only a 7 percent increase from the pre-Covid peak of 2018 and a 0.4 percent increase from the previous year.
 
Just how little Koreans spend on deodorants is evident from the domestic deodorant market’s annual revenue per capita of $0.76 — a paltry amount compared to the United States, where the average person spent approximately $16.92 on deodorants in the same year.
 
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A manager at a large domestic cosmetics distributor who spoke on condition of anonymity says his company doesn’t deal with deodorants at all because of low consumption.
 
“It’s not worth it from our perspective because there is so little demand,” he said.
 
Low deodorant consumption is not limited to Korea. In other East Asian countries, spending on deodorants lags far behind Western countries.
 
In China — a country with more than four times the number of people as the United States — per capita spending on deodorants amounted to only $0.15 in 2024.
 
While deodorant usage has a longer history in Japan, which adopted many Western customs earlier than its neighbors, per capita spending on deodorants there was still less than $5 the same year.
 
It’s simply genetics
 
One reason few Koreans seek out deodorants is that they naturally give off less of a smell.
 
That might seem like a controversial statement, but scientists have found in recent years that the majority of East Asians have a mutation in the ABCC11 gene that reduces their odds of emitting “human axillary odor,” also more commonly known as body odor.
 
Body odor is the result of bacteria on the skin feeding off fatty molecules present in sweat. If you have a normal ABCC11 gene, proteins in your apocrine glands, also known as sweat glands, transport lipids from cells into your sweat.  
 
Though these initial secretions are relatively odorless, bacteria soon break down the fatty chemicals present in sweat, leaving behind a stickier residue that can pack a punch.
 
But if you have the ABCC11 gene mutation common among East Asians, the proteins that are supposed to transport lipids to your sweat are dysfunctional, and the bacteria on your skin end up with little to feast on — and also less likely to burp up noxious leftovers.
 
The prevalence of this mutation varies vastly by region. It’s present in only 3 percent of European and African populations, according to a 2010 study published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology.
 
However, the mutation is highly dominant in East Asia, where the study surmised that individuals with less body odor were favored in reproductive mating. Some 80 to 95 percent of people in the region have the mutated gene, according to the paper.  
 
Multiple studies have shown that the mutation’s prevalence is particularly high in Korea, where some 98 percent of people have a dysfunctional ABCC11 gene.
 
According to researchers at the University of Bristol and Brunel University in Britain, who surveyed almost 6,500 women from diverse backgrounds in 2013, people with this genetic mutation are less likely to use deodorant at all.
 
“It is likely that deodorant usage is not widely adopted because there is, for much of the East Asia population, no need for it,” they wrote.
 
The effects of the genetic mutation are not limited to reduced body odor.
 
The dysfunctional proteins also fail to transport lipids into earwax, resulting in drier secretions along the ear canals of many East Asians. It’s why ear scoops are more popular in East and Southeast Asia, where local populations often have solid earwax that can be removed more efficiently with little spoons instead of cotton swabs.
 
A spray-on type of deodorant [GETTY IMAGES]

A spray-on type of deodorant [GETTY IMAGES]

Overcoming odors
 
With beauty and hygiene shops in Korea offering little in terms of deodorant selection, those who regularly use such products have had to go abroad or shop online to purchase their preferred brands.
 
“After realizing I can’t find any deodorants that work for me in shops, I turned to Coupang,” said one 25-year-old Russian expatriate student, who says the popular e-commerce platform stocks his preferred brand, Byphasse.
 
The use of such products is also not limited to Korea's foreign residents.
 
“I got used to wearing antiperspirants when I was living abroad, and I find that they help me not to sweat during Pilates or my commute,” says one 31-year-old Korean woman who returned to the country last year after working in the United States.
 
With temperatures rising ever higher during Korea’s famously humid summers, it may only be a matter of time before more Koreans seek out antiperspirants, which can help reduce sweat rather than masking its smell.
 
Although all who were interviewed said they perceive Koreans as giving off less in terms of body odor, some said more widespread deodorant use couldn’t hurt.
 
“I personally prefer smelling someone’s deodorant to their natural scent, however faint their body odor may be,” said one 32-year-old Israeli expatriate man.
 
“But that’s just my own preference,” he added.
 

BY MICHAEL LEE [[email protected]]
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