One in five to one in fifty: K-beauty across America's shelves, read in one week

Most weeks we can only read part of the American shelf at once. This week we read all five — Ulta, Sephora, Amazon, Target and Walmart, same seven days — which makes this the cleanest cross-retailer comparison we have had since August.

A gradient from specialist to mass

Fact. K-beauty makes up 20% of Ulta's best-seller chart and 18% of Sephora's, 15% of Amazon's, about 9% of Target's and 2% of Walmart's. Observation. The beauty specialists sit together near one in five; the marketplace a step below; the two mass retailers far below that. Inference. The shelves where shoppers go looking for skincare carry the most Korean product. The shelves where skincare is one aisle among many carry the least.

One brand leads K-beauty on both mass-leaning lists

The highest-placed Korean brand on Amazon is medicube, at #2 — and on Target it is medicube again, at #14. On the two broadest American shelves, the brand carrying K-beauty's weight is the same one. We keep this at the brand level: these lists do not let us follow individual products week to week.

Three shelves read with care

Amazon's list is its whole Beauty & Personal Care best-seller chart — hair, body, oral care and fragrance as well as skincare — while the other four are skincare lists. Part of Amazon's lower share is that wider denominator, so read its step below the specialists with that in mind. Target's list was read from a new source this week — a skincare search sorted by sales, 92 items deep — so we treat its 9% as this week's level and do not compare it with earlier weeks. Walmart's list has been sorted by best-sellers since late September; its 2% is comparable from then on, but not with Walmart figures from before that change.