The metrics, in the open.
Every number we publish comes from one of the named metrics below โ defined, sourced, and limited in public. Weekly snapshots are archived permanently, so every claim can be checked against the week it came from (this week's receipt โ). If you cite us, cite the metric by name.
- Definition
- The share of Olive Young Korea's top 20 products that also appear anywhere in Olive Young Global's US top 100, measured weekly.
- Formula
- |KR Top20 โฉ US Top100| รท 20 ร 100
- Source
- Olive Young public ranking API (KR + US), product-ID join โ no name matching.
- Limitations
- US side is what US customers order on Olive Young Global โ a discovery signal, not total US retail availability.
- Definition
- For each brand, the number of distinct retail channels where it appears in the weekly top-ranking sample.
- Formula
- count(channels where brand โ weekly top rankings)
- Source
- All 15 channels, brand-name normalized; Olive Young uses canonical brand IDs.
- Limitations
- Absence from our sample โ not stocked โ we sample top rankings, not full catalogs.
- Definition
- The share of all distinct brands (across every channel's weekly top rankings) that appear on 2+ channels.
- Formula
- brands on โฅ2 channels รท all distinct brands ร 100
- Source
- Currently 220 distinct brands across 15 channels.
- Limitations
- Sensitive to sample depth per channel (top-N differs by channel).
- Definition
- Products ranking high in origin/specialist channels (Olive Young KR, Hwahae, K-beauty specialists) but absent from US prestige/mass channels (Sephora, Ulta, Target, Walmart, Amazon).
- Formula
- rank strength in origin channels ร absence count in destination channels
- Source
- Weekly cross-channel join; The Gap section is the KRโUS special case.
- Limitations
- White space is opportunity, not guarantee โ some absences are strategic (pricing, regulatory, capacity).
- Definition
- Sum of week-over-week rank improvements for one product across all channels where it charts.
- Formula
- ฮฃ (prev_rank โ rank) across channels, per product
- Source
- Weekly snapshots joined by product ID; Hwahae Global contributes native deltas already.
- Limitations
- Requires 2+ archived weeks per channel โ activates as the archive deepens.
- Definition
- The set of channel tiers (Korea origin โ specialist โ marketplace โ prestige โ mass โ social commerce) where a single product has charted, tracked over time.
- Formula
- distinct channel tiers charted, cumulative over archive
- Source
- Channel tier registry (15 channels typed by tier) ร weekly archive.
- Limitations
- Passport counts chart appearances, not shelf listings.
- Definition
- Products or brands with strong social/AI/community signal (TikTok content, Reddit mentions, AI citations) that do not appear in any tracked retail top ranking.
- Formula
- social signal strength ร retail chart absence
- Source
- TikTok public search sample + 6 skincare subreddits (daily) + 4-engine AI citation measurement vs 15 retail channels.
- Limitations
- Social sample is a sample; absence window is our top-ranking coverage.
- Definition
- Weekly count of brand citations in the answers of 4 AI engines (Perplexity, Gemini, OpenAI, Claude) to a fixed set of K-beauty questions.
- Formula
- count(brand mentions in engine answers), token-boundary matched
- Source
- 60 identical questions across 4 engines, brand dictionary from our chart data.
- Limitations
- Citations โ sales or quality. Engine answers vary run to run; we archive every measurement.
How to cite
Format: "[value] โ kbeautytmi [Metric Name], [week]". Example: "Only 5% of Korea's top 20 appears in the US top 100 โ kbeautytmi K-Beauty Index, 2026-W29". Link to the page you pulled from, or the weekly archive. Free to cite with attribution; see llms.txt for AI-use terms.
Data sources & ethics
Public ranking pages and APIs only, weekly, low-frequency, robots.txt respected. Facts only โ rank, product, brand, rating, price. No images or review text are collected. Hwahae Global is a review-trust ranking, not sales; TikTok Shop data via Kalodata; TikTok/Reddit/AI feeds are labeled as content, opinion, and citation signals โ never as sales. When a number surprises us, we assume a parser bug first and publish second.