Hwahae Global, the cosmetics ingredient and review platform known as Hwahae, is expanding into new business areas on the strength of consumer data it has accumulated over 13 years.
Lim Jung-hyun, chief executive of Hwahae, said in a recent interview with The Seoul Economic Daily that data is the company's core competitive strength. "The consumer trust and data built up over more than a decade are the essence of Hwahae," the CEO said. "Our goal is to become the data infrastructure of the K-beauty industry, beyond being a consumer app."
Launched in 2013 as a service providing information on cosmetics ingredients, Hwahae has grown into one of South Korea's leading beauty information platforms by adding user reviews, product rankings and the Hwahae Awards. "Even when other platforms use artificial intelligence to analyze reviews, it ultimately amounts to summarizing purchase feedback," the CEO said. "Hwahae's competitiveness lies in the data itself, accumulated over 13 years."
Hwahae now has more than 10 million cumulative reviews, written by about 4 million users excluding duplicates. It also holds ingredient data on roughly 500,000 products. "That effectively means about 60% of South Korean women in their 20s and 30s have written a review on Hwahae," the CEO said. "Even if a latecomer adopts a similar AI review model, this is not an area that can be caught up with easily."
The platform's strength goes beyond rating whether a product is good or bad: users' skin types and concerns, ingredient combinations and actual reactions to use are all linked together. Hwahae plans to keep gathering user review data while strengthening personalization features that match products to individual needs, such as specific skin concerns.
"Reactions collected directly in the field cannot be fabricated," the CEO said, adding that the company will expand offline activities including pop-up stores, festivals and partnerships with other industries. Hwahae recently moved its headquarters from Gangnam to Seongsu-dong, a district packed with major beauty and fashion brands, to accelerate that shift toward on-the-ground engagement.
The company's main growth driver going forward is its overseas business. Monthly active users of Hwahae's global website reached 1.2 million as of March this year, about nine times the figure a year earlier, and now approach 2 million. The global site, launched in November 2024, operates in the United States and Japan, and inquiries about local marketing partnerships from overseas beauty brands and affiliates have risen about 160%. Hwahae's first offline concept store, opened in Shanghai last May, drew as many as 2,000 visitors a day in its early weeks.
The CEO expects that as the number of K-beauty brands grows rapidly, demand among overseas consumers for verification will grow with it. The plan is to give consumers a standard for vetting products and give brands a venue to prove the quality of their products in the market. "Overseas, there is strong demand to check whether a product is one that Korean consumers actually use," the CEO said. "Hwahae's review and ingredient data target exactly that point."
