Written by
Haein Kang, Junho Lee, Sumin Jung, Hyejin Cho NEXT SPACE Team
How do you communicate a brand through space in global markets?
This involves not only displaying products but also engaging customers across cultures and behavioral patterns—it is a strategic challenge that requires understanding customer culture and consumption patterns, then designing experiences that align with them. The NEXT SPACE team has carried out projects that bring brand value to life through space across diverse countries and channels: Boots in the UK, AEON Mall in Japan, a 20th anniversary pop-up in Malaysia, and a Brand Showcase in Dubai. Each project was a process of finding balance—reflecting local customer needs while maintaining Amorepacific’s identity—and through it, we found ourselves reconsidering the essence of global spatial strategy. In this article, we examine how spatial strategies evolved according to the context of each country, channel, and customer across these four projects, and share the insights we discovered along the way.
A New Wave of K-Beauty Begins in the UK
When the K-Beauty zone first launched at Boots stores in the UK in October 2025, we sensed this project would mean more than just ‘opening a counter.’ Watching products we’d grown familiar with in Korea find their place naturally in a new culture and environment, we realized that K-Beauty had already become a genuine trend in the UK market. At Boots, Korean skincare products were selling* at a rate of one every 30 seconds, and K-Beauty had firmly established itself as a trend—a shift we felt even more vividly on the ground.
Early in the project, we considered organizing the three brands as a unified zone built around Amorepacific Company’s global brand image. However, after examining UK beauty trends, we found that local customers placed greater emphasis on product appeal rather than brand names. Boots’ expansion revealed that UK customers prioritized product appeal over brand names, making a product-centric approach an essential strategy.
This led to another consideration: the zone’s title. Initially, we had ‘K-Beauty by Amorepacific’ in mind, but we determined that a partnership with Boots would resonate more intuitively with UK customers and offer greater credibility than using the Amorepacific name alone. Convincing and coordinating with Boots to apply wording that foregrounded the collaboration—such as ‘by Boots’ or ‘Boots x Amorepacific’—required effort, but given Boots’ influence in the UK beauty market, this choice became a defining element that sharpened K-Beauty’s localization strategy.
Based on this analysis, the Boots K-Beauty zone was redesigned to move away from an integrated strategy toward a space where experience begins with the products. Like a small K-Beauty select shop curated for UK customers, we configured the space so that Mamonde, primera, and ILLIYOON each maintained their distinct character while connecting naturally within a single environment.
The most dramatic change in this K-Beauty zone was the approach to the first shelf’s display. In typical multi-brand installations, different brands share a single wall fixture, evenly distributing space and showcasing key products grouped at the top. This time, however, we eliminated that display zoning and placed brand products directly on the first shelf. This approach allowed customers to instantly compare and choose based on brand character and product appeal—even in brief moments—aligning well with the speed and preferences of UK customers consuming K-Beauty.
Moreover, MBS wall fixtures are inherently compact spaces where even slightly excessive VMD makes it difficult for customers to reach products for purchase, and when product descriptions and images are densely packed, the products themselves become difficult to see. To solve this, we transformed the VMD elements at both ends of each shelf into triangular prism shapes with diagonal cuts, lowering visual clutter that can distract from products while clearly conveying each brand’s identity and, most importantly, not interfering with product-centered display—making it both practical and efficient.
Through this project, we took our first meaningful steps toward meeting UK customers across 47 Boots stores.
The AEON Mall MBS Store in Japan: Six Brands, One Amorepacific
We launched an Amorepacific MBS store at AEON Mall Dainichi in Japan. The core challenge was implementing an integrated brand experience suited to a new retail environment.
AEON Mall Dainichi
Glam Boutique
AEON Mall resembles Korea’s Starfield as a suburban mega-mall, but differs in that it functions as a lifestyle-oriented channel with a high proportion of customers making repeat visits for everyday purchases. The space allocated to Glam Boutique was more akin to a supermarket-style fixture environment, where customers recognized and evaluated products quickly as they moved through the space rather than lingering in the store.
As our first entry into the AEON retail channel, the project’s core challenge was to differentiate from Japanese brands while effectively expressing the identities of six brands within an integrated ‘Amorepacific’ experience—one that makes a strong first impression on Japanese shoppers within a limited space of roughly 2 pyeong (approximately 6.6 square meters). Given AEON Mall’s fast-paced shopping environment, we prioritized creating a store experience where fixtures were immediately recognizable at a glance and brand recognition came first.
FLOOR PLAN
3D RENDERING
VMD POG
To achieve this, we first established a ‘common design language that runs through the fixtures.’ Our starting point was the facade of Amorepacific’s global headquarters—we implemented the impression of vertical louvers in gray tones using fixtures with aluminum louver panels. This captured Amorepacific’s symbolism while functioning as an integrating device that makes customers perceive six brands of varying profiles and characters as a single ‘Amorepacific.’ We also applied visual hierarchy so that Japanese customers’ eyes would naturally move to each brand: brand names were placed prominently at the very top of fixtures, with the ‘AMOREPACIFIC’ logo positioned above them, allowing individual brand recognition to expand into integrated brand perception.
Considering AEON Mall’s environment without permanent staff, we designed all VMD elements using paper materials that could be easily swapped in and out locally, and simplified structures for operational ease. We also negotiated with AEON Mall to actively utilize the open space in front of the gondola and installed an additional triangular island fixture. This space was configured as a curated zone showcasing the best products from all six brands at a glance, allowing Japanese customers unfamiliar with Amorepacific to easily experience the products on display.
The Dainichi store, which opened in October 2025, received positive responses, and we’re currently discussing additional store rollouts with AEON Mall and our Japanese subsidiary.
A 20th Anniversary Birthday Party with Malaysian Customers
We held a small celebration at Sunway Pyramid Mall in Kuala Lumpur to commemorate 20 years of steadily building K-Beauty’s presence in Malaysia. This pop-up served as both a place to experience three brands—innisfree, LANEIGE, and Sulwhasoo—and a space to re-imprint the company ‘Amorepacific’ on Malaysian customers.
The planning began with a single question: “How do we let customers experience the theme of ‘20th anniversary’?” The local subsidiary suggested that, since the event targeted people in their twenties and thirties, including university students, a light, enjoyable pop-up centered on games and gift giveaways would be appropriate. After discussing and sharing concepts and images from various headquarters-run cases, we converged on a festival-themed birthday celebration concept—naturally inspired by BTS and SEVENTEEN pop-ups previously operated by the headquarters—that was designed to engage local customers. At the pop-up’s center, we placed a large cake object that would serve as the birthday party photo zone. This object functioned as both a focal device that naturally drew customers’ eyes and a symbol that explained the entire space’s concept at once.
The next consideration was ‘how to naturally incorporate the somewhat serious message of corporate heritage within a bright, casual pop-up.’ Given the event’s focus on ‘Amorepacific’s 20th Anniversary in Malaysia,’ we wanted to convey at least some of the corporate story beyond the brand spaces, but after configuring the brand booths, securing a separate space for heritage proved difficult. So we utilized each upper surface of the central cake object to present ‘corporate heritage and first-and-finest stories’ like toppings. The cake became both a photo spot and a message-delivery device. We also used a large screen that anchored the space’s center to broadcast the 80th anniversary brand film alongside individual brand videos, bringing energy to the venue while allowing the messages to flow naturally.
We also grappled with effectively filling the expansive 115 pyeong (approximately 380 square meters) space. For this, we adopted ‘graphic application’ as a strategy to effectively realize the festival mood. We unified the entire space with cohesive-mood graphics, and watching these same graphics extend across various channels—the event mobile page, promotional videos, stickers—reaffirmed the power of consistent mood.
Each brand’s space was completed through collaboration between headquarters and the Malaysian subsidiary, and the subsidiary’s solid design details and game content naturally elevated the overall quality of the pop-up. We also learned that Malaysia, with its developed mega-mall culture, is a market with excellent interior production capabilities and execution strength. Most meaningfully, we participated on-site ourselves and witnessed Malaysian customers joyfully experiencing the pop-up.
Dubai Brand Showcase: First Greetings to the Middle Eastern Market
The six GCC countries (United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman), which account for approximately 60-70% of the Middle East’s total GDP, represent a strategically important region in the global beauty market. To select the optimal distributors to partner with in this region, Amorepacific held the Brand Showcase in Dubai last September.
At this event, the NEXT SPACE team took on the role of conveying not only brand introductions but also Amorepacific’s corporate philosophy and its vision for the Middle Eastern market through space.
As the first official event in the Middle East, this showcase carried several challenges. With limited experience in the region, we were addressing a specialized audience of distributor representatives rather than end consumers and faced the challenge of effectively presenting eight brands under a single corporate image. We needed to weave all of this into a brief event with a fixed program while building trust in Amorepacific.
We designed the space by simulating traffic flow according to the event schedule—from distributors’ entrance to exit, including presentation, dining, and break times.
Brand Manual
Floor Plan
Scene Direction
The event venue, Mandarin Oriental Hotel, is a luxury hotel located in central Dubai. To create a harmonious presentation of Amorepacific’s image, we decided to construct a complete store within the event space. We created a dynamic moment within the space—curtains at the rear opened at the end of the presentation to unveil the brand zone, transforming the venue like a shifting scene. We erected three-sided partitions and a gateway to create an independent space unaffected by the hotel’s interior, then configured modules of “wall fixture + visual + consultation console” so all eight brands appeared harmonious while each maintained its own territory. This allowed distributors to fully experience each brand while conversing with dedicated console staff.
Since participants were distributor representatives, we determined that building trust was crucial. We erected a temporary wall next to the bar where finger foods were served to create an Amorepacific Heritage Wall, positioning it for natural engagement and networking. We curated content featuring forward-looking, innovative imagery that resonates particularly well in Middle Eastern markets. We featured the R&I Center, global headquarters, and Create New Beauty vision on large screens, introducing innovative technologies and international capabilities to communicate Amorepacific’s corporate philosophy as a K-Beauty pioneer and our vision for the Middle Eastern market.
These four projects began in different environments, but shared a common goal: ‘maximize brand experience through space.’ At Boots in the UK, we found it through product-centric curation; at AEON Mall in Japan, through integrated brand identity; at the Malaysian 20th anniversary pop-up, through connecting corporate heritage with brand stories; and at the Dubai Brand Showcase, through spatial design that built trust with distributors. These experiences go beyond simple store design—they demonstrate the strategy through which Amorepacific communicates its brands in global markets. Moving forward, the NEXT SPACE team will experiment with and expand new spatial strategies in more markets based on these insights. We hope that through our small choices, brands will leave lasting impressions on customers’ memories.
Creators
Yuseok Heo NEXT SPACE Team 
Haein Kang NEXT SPACE Team 
Jiyoung Baek NEXT SPACE Team 
Junho Lee NEXT SPACE Team 
Bora Im NEXT SPACE Team 
Sumin Jung NEXT SPACE Team 
Hyejin Cho NEXT SPACE Team 
Younghoon Hyun NEXT SPACE Team 
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