Where all global brands who wish to become a dominant player compete fiercely against each other – this is New York. The AMOREPACIFIC US has been bolstering its position as a global beauty company in this city where a plethora of brands and products with differing concepts are in abundance. As part of such efforts, the brand AMOREPACIFIC has validated the power of K-beauty through the recent opening of its store in the popular shopping mecca of Bloomingdale's, renowned for being a must-see destination on the itinerary of so many tourists who flock to the allure of Manhattan.
AMOREPACIFIC US has been proving that its brands of not only AMOREPACIFIC and Sulwhasoo but also its premium brands such as ARITAUM and LANEIGE do resonate with Western consumers. While AMOREPACIFIC US has been particularly active with opening stores this year, we were able to have an opportunity to hear their story from the American arm's President Bradley Howoritz and Strategy & Planning team director Jason Park.

Sulwhasoo, another of our luxury brands, plans to extend its point of customer contact by opening up two more upscale stores during the remainder of this year. One of the locations will open at Nordstrom in Vancouver, Canada, which will allow us to engage the Sulwhasoo brand with the Canadian market through the popular retailer.

The Amore chain, which sells premium brands including IOPE and Mamonde throughout North America, has been transformed to the ARITAUM store since last year. All 65 Amore stores in the market will be reborn as ARITAUM within the next two to three years. Furthermore, this October will see the biggest ARITAUM store in North America open up in Vancouver, Canada. Howoritz claims, "Opening up the big ARITAUM location in Vancouver is very significant as the Chinese account for 40 percent of the city's population. The opening will certainly accelerate the growth of ARITAUM." The ARITAUM stores of the US, which adopted the same store identity as the one in Korea, enable us to not only change the interior of the stores but to also expand the targeted age groups of customers while creating a fun shopping environment, thus further enhancing overall customer satisfaction. AMOREPACIFIC US is paving a way to evolve ARITAUM, which is a key retail space for all major K-beauty brands, to become a new distribution channel in North America and to attract both Asian as well as North American customers.

The successful entry of LANEIGE into Target gives AMOREPACIFIC Group another green light for its US market penetration. Park adds, "LANEIGE remains at the top among all premium brands in Target. This means that LANEIGE, one of AMOREPACIFIC Group's global champion brands, works for Westerners as well." Indeed, the craze over LANEIGE has rapidly increased and has resulted in repeat customer visits throughout the year, prompting Target to request AMOREPACIFIC US for additional product lines. LANEIGE currently sells about twenty products at the store. But this is not all. From September, LANEIGE will be available at Sephora in Canada. Sephora suggested this offer to LANEIGE after witnessing the success at Target. Without the successful entry into the US market, LANEIGE's subsequent engagement of the Canadian market might not have done this early.

ANNICK GOUTAL made its first entry into the American market last year. In June, the brand opened its second boutique store in the affluent uptown, Manhattan. This opening has drawn a great deal of fanfare from local niche fragrance enthusiasts. The ANNICK GOUTAL boutique in the US is operated through the direct involvement of ANNICK GOUTAL in Paris, France.

Amid the growing importance of online channels, AMOREPACIFIC US has also placed more effort to reinforce its digital channels as well as offline stores. Park further states, "We are trying to set up an environment where customers experience brands at our offline stores and that experience can transcend to online purchases. We plan to develop more brand stories through social media while continuing the offline promotion efforts that we've been undertaking thus far."

AMOREPACIFIC US has gone through a lot of changes last several years, and everyone at AMOREPACIFIC US is a big part of all the changes that happen in near future. We wish to continue to see the growth of AMOREPACIFIC US to become a leader of K-beauty by furthering the K-beauty trend and by firming its position through this.