According to the Korea Herald, the customs office will start marking products with ‘a special QR code label’ that will identify the relevant products as authentic, in a bid to “help protect both brands and consumers”.
The new system will reportedly come into force in June, and is set to particularly benefit cross-border retail for Chiese consumers increasingly using ecommerce platforms to purchase Korean beauty products.
Cross-border buying
Korea’s overseas online cosmetics sales have grown on-year by a whopping 261.9% according to the KCS, reaching 161 million won last year. At 45.8%, cross-border sales in China made up a considerable majority of this.
According to the KCS, unauthorised copycat Korean brands and products are on the rise, increasingly listed on Chinese e-commerce retailers.
China’s State Administration for Industry and Commerce has stated that around 40% of all cosmetics products sold via e-commerce in China is fake, and with Korean beauty seeing soaring popularity in the country, the number of copycat Korean products is on the up too.
Online beauty fix
A recent report, ‘Haitao Retailing’, released by Euromonitor International looked at e-commerce trends in China, and note that increasing numbers are getting international beauty products online.
The research reveals that three in five (58%) Chinese consumers bought foreign products online from domestic shopping website in the six month period ending November 2015, with South Korea (47%), Japan (29%) and France (27%) the top three countries attracting beauty product purchases.
According to the report, cross-border ecommerce grew at a higher CAGR than digital retail more generally (63.3% and 48.8% respectively) in 2015, and Mintel expects this trend to continue.