The Retail War Sephora Didn't See Coming

How specialist Asian beauty chains are turning cultural demand into a competitive threat

For years, Sephora and Ulta Beauty have operated with near-total control over the American beauty landscape. Their advantage was scale: national footprints, exclusive brand deals, and the ability to dictate which products became mainstream.

But a new competitor is emerging - and it isn’t another conglomerate.

It’s a pastel pink specialty retailer from Canada.

When Sukoshi opened its first Pacific Northwest store this January, the line wrapped around the mall for hours. There was no celebrity, no launch event, no free gifts. Shoppers were simply waiting to buy Korean, Japanese and Chinese beauty brands they couldn’t easily find elsewhere.

In a market long dominated by generalists, the rise of retailers like Sukoshi signals something bigger: Asian beauty is no longer a trend within beauty retail. It’s becoming a retail strategy powerful enough to carve out its own ecosystem.

By Ridhi Sofat

February 2026

From Niche to Mass

A decade ago, a store dedicated to Asian beauty might have felt niche, even risky. Today, it looks like inevitability.

Korean skincare in particular has moved from cult favourite to household staple. Ingredients like snail mucin, toner pads and high-SPF sunscreens have gone from specialist curiosities to TikTok fixtures. Brands such as Laneige, CosRx and Medicube are now stocked at mainstream retailers, while terms like “glass skin” have entered everyday vocabulary.

Culturally, the shift mirrors the broader rise of Korean exports - from K-pop to film to fashion. Beauty has ridden that same wave.

The result is a customer base that is younger, more ingredient-literate and more experimental than traditional prestige shoppers. For them, Asian beauty isn’t exotic, but simply expected.

Why Sukoshi Feels Different

Sephora and Ulta have responded by adding more Korean brands to their assortments. But simply stocking K-beauty is not the same as building an experience around it.

This is where Sukoshi’s model diverges. Its stores are organised by routine, with walls of toner pads, sheet masks, sunscreens, rather than by brand hierarchy. Staff guide shoppers through product education. Skin-analysis machines and densely merchandised gondolas create a sense of discovery that feels closer to a Seoul beauty street than an American mall.

It positions itself as both a specialist and a generalist: not just Korean brands, but Chinese, Japanese and emerging Southeast Asian labels too. That breadth matters. While Sephora treats Asian beauty as a category within a store, Sukoshi treats it as the store itself. In retail terms, that difference is strategic.

Specialists vs Scale

For decades, beauty retail has rewarded scale. Bigger stores meant better buying power, exclusive launches and marketing muscle.

But the rise of cultural micro-communities online has changed how discovery happens. Shoppers increasingly arrive knowing exactly what they want, often from TikTok, rather than browsing whatever is placed at eye level. This weakens the advantage of the traditional big-box model.

Smaller, more focused retailers can move faster, test newer brands,

and feel more authentic. They don’t need to carry everything - only what feels current. It’s the same playbook that made Glossier powerful in the 2010s: curation over abundance.

The Geography of Growth

There’s also a structural opportunity. While Sephora and Ulta dominate major urban centres, many parts of the US remain underserved when it comes to international or specialty beauty. Sukoshi’s rapid expansion, opening multiple stores across New York, Atlanta, Miami and soon California and Texas, suggests demand extends well beyond coastal enclaves. Importantly, these stores are reportedly profitable within a year. That’s a strong signal that this isn’t hype-driven retail, but repeatable demand.

Even Tariffs Can’t Slow It

Ironically, this expansion comes at a complicated moment. New US tariffs on Korean imports

threaten to raise costs across the category. Brands are stockpiling inventory and absorbing margins to avoid passing on price hikes. Yet investment hasn’t slowed. Amorepacific’s Americas revenue surged nearly 80 percent last year. Sephora continues doubling down on Korean partnerships. Olive Young, Korea’s biggest beauty chain, is preparing its own US entry. In other words, despite higher costs, the category’s growth is too strong to ignore.

A Second Wave of Beauty Retail

What’s happening now feels less like a trend and more like infrastructure. The first wave of K-beauty in the 2010s introduced Americans to multi-step routines and novelty formats. The second wave is different. It’s about hero products, education, and retail environments designed around expertise rather than scale. That shift changes who holds power. If Sephora built its empire on being the universal beauty destination, retailers like Sukoshi are betting on something else: that customers increasingly prefer specialists who understand one category deeply rather than everything broadly. It’s a smaller footprint, but a sharper proposition.

Ultimately, Sukoshi isn’t challenging Sephora by trying to be bigger. It’s challenging it by being more focused. In today’s beauty market, cultural fluency may matter more than square footage. And if lines outside a pastel storefront are any indication, the next generation of beauty retail might not be defined by the giants at all - but by the specialists who move faster than them.