LG Household & Health Care (LG H&H) is a South Korean personal care conglomerate that owns a host of international beauty brands including History of Whoo, The Face Shop and Su:m37.
Belif x VDL is the company’s first vegan make-up brand that made its debut in August this year.
The brand was billed as a special collaboration between the firm’s skin care brand Belif, and make-up brand VDL that focuses on sustainable beauty with ‘clean’ ingredients.
The two brands had previously collaborated on a range of skin care products.
The company first introduced the make-up brand with three products: a vegan foundation, primer, and liquid blusher.
According to the company, the brand’s products are certified vegan by the Korea Agency of Vegan Certification and Services. Aside from excluding animal ingredients and animal testing, the products also undergo a skin irritation test.
The products combine the respective skin care and make-up expertise of Belif and VDL to offer consumers colour cosmetics with skin-friendly ingredients.
For instance, the Boosting Bomb Water Primer claims to help enhance the skin’s natural skin tone while nourishing the skin with moisturising ingredients.
One of its new products, Cool Balm Cleansing Liquid contains the core ingredients of Belif’s best-selling Aqua Bomb moisturiser, which recently commemorated the sale of 10 million units in November.
Cosmetics with conscience
According to LG H&H, it launched a vegan brand to meet “the value-conscious and eco-friendly consumption trend” that resonates with the millennial and Gen Z consumers.
The growth of vegan cosmetics is part of a bigger ethical skin care trend that has been steadily rising in South Korea and the competition in the segment is heating up.
Amorepacific, LG H&H’s main competitor in the K-beauty space, launched a vegan-friendly beauty brand last year, Enuf Project, an online exclusive brand targeted at the same young demographic.
This brand recently launched the 24H Youth Ampoule which like Belif x VDL products, are certified vegan by Korea Agency of Vegan Certification and Services.
In LG H&H’s third-quarter presentation, the company highlighted that Belif x VDL was one of the key launches that helped the company to increase brand loyalty during a difficult business environment by “giving freshness to consumers” in the form of new products and concepts.
This helped the company to improve its profitability by 9% to KRW215.4bn (U$184m), despite the sales suffering from a decline of 10.2% to KRW1.26tn (U$1.07bn).
Following the strong launch of Belif x VDL, the company announced the introduction of seven more products in November to offer its customers a “complete and solid line-up”.
The new line-up consists of eyeshadow palettes, eyeliners, eyebrow pencils, lip tints and mascara.
Additionally, the brand launched a make-up cleansing oil and a cleansing bar. All products are available on Belif online and offline store.
