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“APR,” a K-beauty company, emerged as the top player in the domestic cosmetics industry by market capitalization in August 2025, surpassing the long-established K-beauty giants “Amorepacific Corporation” and “LG Household & Health Care” roughly ten years after its founding. From the beginning, APR established a direct-to-consumer model centered on its own online mall and grew rapidly through social media-based video commerce. After experiencing a surge of copycats imitating its products, the company sought a space that competitors could not easily follow and expanded its category by launching its home beauty device “AGE-R”. This marked a decisive turning point, placing APR on a path of disruptive innovation that attracted non-consumption with good enough performance and high accessibility in a dermatology procedure market traditionally defined by high-cost and high-quality. Since then, APR has strengthened its technological and intellectual property competitiveness by internalizing the entire value chain from product planning, research and development, and clinical efficacy verification to manufacturing, including the establishment of its own factory and research center ADC.

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In August 2025, news that shook the beauty industry spread across the Korean stock market. APR, founded in 2014 with only about a decade of history, surpassed the market capitalization of Amorepacific Corporation, the long-standing K-beauty giant. APR’s share price rose more than 250 percent in roughly a year and a half after being listed on the KOSPI in February 2024, reaching a market capitalization of 7.9322 trillion KRW at the closing price on August 6, overtaking Amorepacific Corporation’s 7.5339 trillion KRW, which had been the number one company in the domestic cosmetics sector by market capitalization. The stock price continued to rise, and as of December 1, 2025, the company’s market capitalization reached 9.3 trillion KRW. News that APR, a K-beauty startup, had overtaken the traditional powerhouse that symbolized Korea’s cosmetics industry for decades instantly drew the market’s attention.

In terms of revenue scale alone, Amorepacific Corporation still maintains a firm lead. Amorepacific Corporation recorded 4.2599 trillion KRW in revenue and 249.3 billion KRW in operating profit in 2024, while APR recorded 722.8 billion KRW in revenue and 122.7 billion KRW in operating profit during the same period. The fact that APR has a higher corporate valuation despite comparatively lower revenue indicates that the market has strong expectations for APR’s growth potential and the scalability of its business model. Expectations for its evolution beyond a simple cosmetics brand into a beauty tech company spanning beauty devices and medical devices have already been reflected in its market capitalization.

In practice, APR launched its first cosmetics 1 1A portmanteau of dermatology and cosmetics, referring to skincare products focused on efficacy by adding dermatological expertise to cosmetics. 닫기  brand, Aprilskin, in 2014, and in 2016 introduced its derma cosmetics brand Medicube, making its name by hitting the market with its signature product “Zero Pore Pad” and securing a firm position in the functional skincare market. Later, as the company attempted another round of category expansion under the single brand Medicube, it launched its home beauty device brand AGE-R in 2021, opening a new market that replaces or supplements dermatology procedures. APR’s cosmetics and beauty device AGE-R continued to grow with support from both domestic and overseas consumers, and as of December 31, 2024, its overseas sales ratio reached 55 percent, surpassing domestic sales.

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