The K-beauty boom is redrawing the map of Europe's brick-and-mortar retail districts. Korean cosmetics stores are opening one after another in prime locations across major European cities, followed by K-food and restaurant brands, creating a cluster effect in which the stores draw customers to one another. Local property analysts say Korean brands are now serving as anchor tenants that determine a retail district's competitiveness.
LM, a British commercial real estate consultancy, said on the 28th that it had closed 18 K-beauty store leases from January through September this year. Including Korean restaurants and supermarkets, the new space LM brokered in major U.K. retail districts totals 55,000 square feet, or about 5,100 square meters. "It is not only K-beauty stores such as PURESEOUL and MOIDA but also food and dining operators like Oseyo and Bunsik that are drawing consumers across a range of age groups, beyond Generation Z," LM said. "Korean brands offer the latest consumer trends and a variety of shopping experiences, which lengthens dwell time and encourages repeat visits." PURESEOUL and MOIDA are leading K-beauty retailers that began online and rapidly expanded into physical stores in Britain.
According to global property consultancy Colliers, 25 retail, dining and leisure operators were looking for space in London as new entrants in January this year, up 108% from 12 a year earlier. Korean companies accounted for four of them, the third-largest number after the U.S. with six and the United Arab Emirates with five.
The types of businesses drawing interest in Europe's prime retail districts are also shifting from carmakers and electronics firms to K-beauty. An analysis of German retail openings by BNP Paribas Real Estate found that from 2020 to 2024, carmakers such as Polestar and BYD and electronics firms such as Xiaomi and Huawei led new leasing, but K-beauty companies have emerged as a new source of demand since last year. Citing MOIDA's entry into Germany in May this year, when it secured a store of about 1,200 square meters on a prime shopping street in Hamburg, BNP Paribas said Korean and other Asian retailers would generate additional leasing demand in German retail districts.
Analysts point in particular to a cluster effect, as Korean beauty and food stores gather in a single district and pull in customers. One prominent example is the area around Charing Cross Road in London, where K-beauty stores including MOIDA, PURESEOUL and Skin Cupid sit within about a five-minute walk of one another. Joining them are Bunsik, which sells Korean street food, and grocery stores such as Oseyo and Seoul Plaza. Bunsik is a Korean street food restaurant chain that launched in London in 2021 and sells Korean-style hot dogs, tteokbokki, gimbap, Korean fried chicken and cup rice.
Local shopping malls have also begun using Korean retail brands as content to draw shoppers. At Mall of Berlin, a large shopping center in the German capital that attracts about 22 million visitors a year, Finnish K-beauty retailer Yeppo&Soonsoo opened its first flagship store in Germany last month. The same mall has also brought in KPARC, a complex store selling K-food items such as ramen, dumplings and Korean-style fried chicken alongside K-pop merchandise.
"K-beauty is establishing itself as a long-term structural trend in the German retail market, beyond a passing fad," said Megan Hutchinson, a researcher at Cushman & Wakefield. "By clustering stores, it is forming new retail districts and drawing foot traffic, emerging as a new source of demand for the property leasing industry."
