Production Mode
The production mode of COSRX is quite unique when compared to that of other mainstream Korean skincare companies’. Many mainstream Korean skincare lines put various filler ingredients into their formulations, which raises the cost of production. Filler ingredients in skin care products are “any inert ingredient used to create bulk, texture, or lubrication. Typically, fillers are not essential to the active part of a formulation, nor do they make a product perform better. Although they don’t enhance the purpose of a product… they may contribute to the way it feels on your skin.” [9] Unlike those other companies, COSRX product development team minimizes the amount of unnecessary ingredients in product formulations. With that said, all COSRX products are similar in a way that they all have simple ingredient lists consisted of active ingredients that are skin-friendly only. [3]
The reason behind this is that many COSRX customers have acne-prone sensitive skin, which could be easily irritated by skincare products that contain too many filler ingredients. On top of that, if a COSRX product is not working well, it would be easier to locate the problem with the short ingredient list in comparison to a long one like many other competitors have. [7] Henceforth, every COSRX product has a rather short ingredient list.
Operation and Budgeting
Another aspect of COSRX that makes it different from the rest in its field is that it doesn’t have any physical store, and doesn’t make any promotion to boost sale. The company sells its products online only, often with collaboration with online beauty product websites like Wishtrend, Style Korean, and Soko Glam. Although it has caused some customers to complain about the inconvenience to purchase COSRX products, this is actually COSRX’s strategy to maximize the functionality of its products to give its customers more benefits. Since the company does not own any physical store and does not engage in ongoing promotional events, it is able to cut down a lot of spending to leave a larger budge for the ingredients it puts in its products. [7] This way, each COSRX product could contain more active ingredients to solve skin problems more effectively.
In effort to save budget for ingredients, the company also gives up on designing gorgeous containers (which many companies in the industry value a lot since pretty containers attract more customers) and turns to basic plastic containers.
The lack of physical locations and promotional events might have limited sales, but the company insists in using this marketing strategy to make sure that its customers are receiving the best results from its products. In fact, many people, especially the main audience of COSRX, who are mostly female in their 20s and early 30s, could still manage to get access to COSRX products online due to the hyper-development of e-commerce nowadays.
COSRX 