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Nails went past cosmetics on the Daiso shelf this summer for the first time. A 2,000-won bottle of gel and a 5,000-won ceiling put the home kit within reach. Searches for salons, though, did not fall. It looks like recession spending, and it is not only that.
Coverage abroad started calling Korean Daiso's cosmetics remarkable. Two years of Korean search data put the high at February 2025, with today at a quarter of that. It does not mean people got bored.
Matte is next, velvet is coming — the line has been repeated for years. Measured over two years, velvet returned a figure on 4 days out of 730. What actually halved was pores, tone-up and skin texture: the words for fixing skin.
Where Koreans buy cosmetics is changing places. Five retailers were followed for two years on one measuring stick: the only one that rose was Daiso, and the only one that clearly fell was Olive Young. It is not the ranking that moved. It is the direction.