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The Blue Ingredient Inside the 10th-Anniversary Release
Toun28, a Korean beauty brand, celebrated its 10th anniversary by unveiling a blue-tinted peptide. On September 17, they officially launched their new anti-aging lineup, ‘The First Blue Peptide’. This collection features a skin booster, serum, and cream, all centered around Copper Tripeptide-1, a complex of copper ions and peptides. The ingredient itself has a natural blue hue, giving the line its name.
This launch is more than just a brand’s milestone celebration. It shows how the industry, fresh off the massive success of Polydeoxyribonucleotide (PDRN) as a staple high-performance ingredient in K-beauty, is already hunting for the next big thing to captivate global consumers. Brands are no longer just competing on product type or texture; they are differentiating themselves by spotlighting specific ingredient names, concentrations, delivery methods, and clinical results. The ability to translate unfamiliar raw materials into easy-to-understand benefits has become a core part of a product’s competitive edge.
The Accelerated Search for the Next Big Ingredient After PDRN
PDRN proved that ingredients traditionally reserved for dermatology clinics could successfully transition into everyday skincare like creams and ampoules. According to Kolmar Korea, sales of PDRN-focused products in 2025 surged about 32 times compared to the previous year. This confirmed that bringing professional-grade ingredients into the home consumer market can create a powerfully lucrative trend.
However, when demand hyper-focuses on a single trendy ingredient, the market quickly floods with similar products, blurring the lines between brands. This is exactly why K-beauty companies are branching out into alternatives like blue peptides, azelaic acid, and tranexamic acid (TXA). While these three target different skin concerns and work in unique ways, they all share a common thread: repurposing proven functional ingredients for cosmetics and marketing the products squarely around them. Rather than signaling the end of the PDRN craze, it looks more like the high-performance skincare market splitting into smaller niches as it matures.
Ingredient Strategies Branching Out: From Elasticity to Skin Tone
Toun28’s Blue Peptide line zeros in on improving skin elasticity and overall condition. The company highlighted its use of low-molecular Copper Tripeptide-1, measuring around 400 Daltons. Daltons are used to measure molecular weight and frequently pop up in the beauty industry to explain how well an ingredient can penetrate the skin. Toun28 formulated the skin booster, serum, and cream with blue peptide concentrations of 0.3%, 0.5%, and 1.0%, respectively, designing them for step-by-step layered use.
Human clinical trials shared by the company showed improvements across five metrics after product use: elastic resilience, skin density, cheek volume, and both surface and deep skin elasticity. Naturally, these figures come from the brand’s own tests under specific conditions and don’t guarantee identical results for every user. Still, it highlights a recent shift in product development where brands are moving away from simply name-dropping ingredients, choosing instead to present concrete molecular sizes, exact concentrations, and clinical data.
Azelaic acid and TXA cater to a different crowd, focusing less on elasticity and more on managing sebum, blemish scars, hyperpigmentation, and uneven skin tones. Azelaic acid is widely used for sebum control, breakout management, and brightening. TXA, short for tranexamic acid, has pharmaceutical roots but is gaining serious traction as a cosmetic ingredient for fading dark spots and hyperpigmentation. Korean brands like Anua, Skin1004, and Medicube have actively expanded their lineups, rolling out dedicated serums, ampoules, creams, and toner pads.
Ingredient-Driven Consumption Starting at the Search Bar
This race for the next-generation ingredient isn’t just a top-down trend manufactured by corporations. According to Amorepacific’s analysis of Amazon US search data in November 2025, searches for azelaic acid skyrocketed by 228% compared to the same period the previous year, while TXA searches jumped 121.7%. Even more telling, search terms pairing “azelaic acid” with specific concentrations like 10% or 20% surged by 108.59% and 61.84% from the previous quarter.
These search patterns reveal a shift in how global consumers are navigating K-beauty. Shoppers are looking beyond brand names or the “Made in Korea” label; they are actively seeking out exact ingredients and potencies tailored to their personal skin concerns. This also explains why ingredient names are increasingly front and center on product labels, and why we are seeing more formulas combining multiple active ingredients. A prime example is Anua’s Azelaic Acid Serum topping the essence category during Japan’s Amazon Prime Day in July 2026, proving that this ingredient curiosity translates directly into real sales.
From Ingredient Discovery to Skin Delivery Tech
The competition extends far beyond consumer-facing brands. Original Design Manufacturers (ODMs), who develop and produce products for various brands, are not only sourcing new raw materials but also innovating the technology needed to stabilize these ingredients and effectively deliver them into the skin. After all, even if two products use the exact same ingredient, their actual performance can vary wildly depending on how stable the formula is and how deeply it penetrates.
Kolmar Korea, for instance, is researching nobiletin, a flavonoid found in tangerine peels, as an alternative to retinol. Using AI, the company screened hundreds of thousands of candidates to find a compound that improves skin condition while keeping irritation relatively low. While retinol remains the gold standard for wrinkles and elasticity, its potential for irritation can be a hurdle for many users. The nobiletin research is an effort to move beyond simply recycling well-known ingredients, aiming instead to find new materials that maintain efficacy while minimizing drawbacks.
Kolmar Korea is also partnering with Sungkyunkwan University’s Biofoundry Center to develop a 100% human-like collagen using microorganisms. By inserting human collagen genetic codes into microbes and culturing them, they can produce collagen with an identical structure. This is a sharp departure from traditional collagen, which is typically extracted from the bones and skin of pigs, cows, or fish. The company plans to establish mass production capabilities in Korea, aiming for commercialization by the first half of 2027.
Rising Market Expectations for Manufacturing Firms
The intense competition over ingredients and formulation technology is also reflected in how the stock market views Korean cosmetics manufacturers. According to a September 27 report by Maeil Business Newspaper citing financial data provider FnGuide, the average target stock price for Cosmax from brokerages climbed 22.89% over the past three months. Cosmecca Korea saw a similar bump, with its target price rising 15.45% during the same window. On September 21, Korea Investment & Securities even bumped Cosmax’s target price from 300,000 won to 340,000 won.
An increase in target prices isn’t a guarantee of actual corporate performance, but rather an optimistic forecast of future earnings. Still, it highlights that the market recognizes the dual potential of rising indie beauty brands abroad and the subsequent growth in orders for Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and ODMs backing them up. As Korean brands expand their global footprint, those relying on specialized manufacturing firms rather than in-house factories will inevitably drive up production orders.
The October US Shopping Season is the Real Test
The next major test will be the upcoming US shopping season kicking off in October. Korea Investment & Securities analyzed that despite unfavorable export conditions like a strong Korean won and rising shipping and fuel costs, Korean cosmetics sales have maintained record-high levels entering the second half of the year. If this export momentum holds steady during the peak US consumer spending period, it is expected to translate directly into a surge of orders for manufacturing firms like Cosmax.
It is worth noting, however, that an ingredient going viral online is entirely different from it cementing its place in a long-term product lineup. To truly stick around, an ingredient needs clinical data to back up its functional claims, clear guidelines on potential skin irritation, proven formula stability, and, ultimately, repeat purchases. International markets also bring their own cosmetic regulations and consumer habits to navigate. As companies keep putting ingredient names front and center, describing the benefits and trial conditions honestly, without overselling them, matters more than ever.
Source: Seoul Economic Daily, August 29, 2026; Korea Economic Daily, September 17, 2026; Sisa Journal e, September 22, 2026; Maeil Business Newspaper, September 27, 2026.
