Olive Young : All about K-Beauty
October 8th, 2022
Sometimes I feel Olive Young stores are as many as Starbucks stores in Korea. In my place there are four Olive Young stores and five Starbucks stores. It feels like that Olive Young is like Starbucks of beauty and health products. I think both brands are increasing in South Korea amazingly even in this Covid pandemic era.
Olive Young, whose mother company is CJ Group, the Korean representative conglomerate(CJ E&M, the mega distributer and producer of K-pop and K-media is a subsidiary of the conglomerate), is a retail shop all about beauty and health. Most Korean brands of cosmetics, supplements and healthy snacks are there. Some oversea brands like from Japan and Taiwan too.
It is officially classified as a drug store, But you can’t see drugs such as painkillers, nor any pharmacist there. So literally we Koreans don’t call it a drug store or a pharmacy.
Olive Young is 올리브영 in Korean, and we call it more its abbreviation, Ol-Young(올영) like “I’m going to Ol-Young(Na-ol-young-ga)”. When I say my friends like “Hey, let’s go Ol-Young” or “I need to go Ol-Young“, then mostly they are willing to go Ol-Young with me even though they don’t have any necessary thing to buy there. I am also willing to go Ol-Young for them. Even just browsing is so fun there. Olive Young is a heaven for all ages, from teens to the middle-aged and even to the elderly. And for all genders. I always buy my 15-year old son skincare products from Olive Young.
They don’t just sell cosmetic products for skincare, base and color makeup. You can see also makeup tools, shampoo and soaps, hair dyes, vitamins and other supplements, diet foods and so on. Today I bought contact lens solution, hair dyes and hand cream at Ol-Young.
There used be some retail cosmetic stores other than Olive Young. Intense competition ended up Olive Young’s win. Most of them disappeared. There is no more competitor to Olive Young.
The best thing about Olive Young is prices are very reasonable and you can compare prices of various goods at one place. They have a sale very often and offer membership advantages. You can try cosmetic products before purchasing.
If you need to buy presents for your family or friends when you travel back home, Olive Young is right by you. You need something cheap ones for gifts? How about sheet masks. Here is my advice. Buy good quality facial masks in bulk at a good price and distribute it to family and friends. Korean sheet masks are very popular around the world, so sometimes I send those to friends in other countries.
Olive Young stores are in local commercial blocks or shopping malls. Normally it opens all year around, but if the store is in a mall, it would be off on the mall’s off-day. Opening hour is 10:00 - 22:30.
