Since the Olive Young edit, K-beauty moved up Sephora's skincare chart

On Aug 20 Sephora launched an Olive Young K-Beauty Edit in more than 500 US stores and on Sephora.com: 19 brands chosen by Olive Young, among them REJURAN, Torriden, BIOHEAL BOH, Arencia, beplain and Abib. We read Sephora's skincare best-seller list every week, so we can see where those brands landed.

Higher on the chart

Fact. In our W34 read (taken Aug 17, before the launch), two Korean-brand listings were in Sephora's skincare top 30 — Sulwhasoo at #3 and BIODANCE at #11 — and none of the edit's brands were in the 90 listings we read. This week there are seven Korean listings in the top 30.

The edit's two climbers

Fact. REJURAN appeared at #13 in the first read after launch (W35), was #27 in W43, #5 in W44 and is #6 this week. Torriden entered the top 30 at #30 in W43, rose to #7 in W44 and is #15 this week. Dr.Jart+ (#5) and HANYUL (#14) are the other Korean names this high. Inference. A retailer-curated edit appears to have put a few Korean brands in front of Sephora's best-seller traffic.

How to read this — and one caveat

Weekly chart position on Sephora's skincare best-sellers, brand level; not sales. Our capture of this list changed during the period: W40 to W42 were read with different screen-capture tools, and from W43 we read it the same way each week. Under that one method, Korean listings in the top 30 were 6, 7 and 7 in W43–W45, so the W34-to-W45 change spans a change in how we read the list as well as the launch. W36 to W39 repeated the W35 list and are left out. Our W34 read had a brand name lost in screen reading; we restored it (BIODANCE at #11) from the product title.