A cohort of Korea’s original “roadshop” cosmetics brands — the freestanding, street-level beauty stores including Missha, Tonymory, and Nature Republic that defined an earlier era of K-beauty retail before Olive Young’s multi-brand format came to dominate the domestic market — are increasingly finding renewed growth not at home, but abroad, where several are aggressively expanding export operations.
Tonymory has set a particularly ambitious target: growing its overseas revenue share from roughly 30% currently to 60% by 2026, a goal that reflects a broader strategic pivot among first-generation roadshop brands toward treating international markets as their primary growth engine rather than a secondary channel supplementing domestic roadshop retail, which has struggled against Olive Young’s dominance and shifting Korean consumer shopping habits.
The overseas push stands in notable contrast to the struggles of Innisfree, one of the roadshop era’s most iconic brands, which remains under Amorepacific ownership but has continued to see disappointing domestic performance despite rebranding and online-channel expansion efforts, illustrating that the “roadshop revival” playing out among some first-generation brands isn’t universal across the category.
Industry analysts attribute the divergence partly to how aggressively different brands pursued international distribution and localized marketing versus how much each remained focused on defending increasingly difficult domestic roadshop retail positions, with brands more willing to reinvent themselves for specific overseas markets generally showing stronger recent growth trajectories than those attempting to revive their original domestic retail model.
With domestic roadshop retail continuing to face structural pressure from both Olive Young’s dominant multi-brand format and ultra-low-price competitors like Daiso’s expanding beauty aisle, the overseas-growth strategy increasingly looks less like an opportunistic side bet and more like a necessary strategic pivot for first-generation Korean beauty brands seeking a sustainable path forward.
Source: Korean beauty industry trade press coverage of roadshop brand overseas expansion, Tonymory export target, 2026.
