U.S. K-Beauty Subscription Platform 'Seoul Beauty Club' Secures $2 Million in Pre-Seed Funding

Targeting Local Women in Their 30s to 60s
Premium Curation Focused on Ingredients and Efficacy
...Partnered with Over 300 K-Beauty Brands

On December 10, Faiston Corporation, the operator of the U.S. market K-beauty personalized subscription platform 'Seoul Beauty Club,' announced that it had secured $2 million (approximately 2.9 billion KRW) in pre-seed funding. Major investors from both Korea and the United States participated in this round, including Sazze VC, Hustle Fund, Collaborative Fund Asia, Mashup Ventures, and TheVentures.

Seoul Beauty Club is a beauty platform targeting women in their 30s to 60s in the United States, offering a curation-based K-beauty subscription box and a personalized product recommendation experience. Only premium products focused on ingredients and efficacy are carefully selected, and a customized routine experience is provided based on the user's skin type, age group, and preferred ingredients.

During its beta phase, Seoul Beauty Club already achieved an annual recurring revenue (ARR) of several million dollars. The company has partnered with more than 300 K-beauty brands and maintains a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of over 50, a key indicator of customer satisfaction.

Recently, Seoul Beauty Club was selected for the TIPS Global Track, overseen by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, further recognizing the excellence of its artificial intelligence (AI) beauty personalization recommendation technology. This selection was made upon the recommendation of Mashup Ventures. Through this program, the company is expected to receive up to 1.2 billion KRW in research and development (R&D) funding. Leveraging this, the company aims to strengthen its local logistics and operational systems, expand annual revenue by more than tenfold next year, and achieve monthly break-even.

Demand for K-beauty in the United States is also on the rise. Last year, U.S. imports of Korean cosmetics reached about $1.7 billion, a record high and a 54.3% increase from the previous year. Korea surpassed France to become the top cosmetics import country for the United States. However, despite women in their 30s to 60s accounting for more than half of total skincare spending, distribution channels for K-beauty targeting this age group remain relatively scarce.

Donghee Park, CEO of Faiston Corporation, leveraged his experience as an attorney at Kim & Chang advising on cross-border transactions between Korea and the U.S. to take on global business challenges, leading product development as a co-founder of a U.S. beauty tech startup. Later, together with Allan Grinshtein, who previously worked in product development at Apple, Meta, and Netflix, he founded the company to address the structural challenges K-beauty brands face when entering the U.S. market.

CEO Park explained, "Seoul Beauty Club addresses customer inconvenience in a confusing beauty market dominated by exaggerated marketing, through efficacy-focused curation," adding, "Our strength lies in our ability to grow rapidly while maintaining stability through lean operations that minimize unnecessary costs." He continued, "With this investment, we will expand our logistics and engineering capabilities in the U.S. and transform into a global beauty infrastructure that revolutionizes American consumers' K-beauty experience."

Park Eunwoo, Partner at Mashup Ventures, who participated in this investment, commented, "Despite the global interest in K-beauty, consumers still struggle with product selection, and brands face significant barriers to overseas expansion. Seoul Beauty Club is uniquely positioned to solve both sides of this challenge through its deep understanding of the U.S. market and customers, and is poised to evolve into a personalized beauty commerce platform in the future."