3 minute read
Beauty Maven
K-pop music is not the only South Korean import to take the U.S. by storm. South Korean skincare products have become tremendously popular in recent years, thanks in large part to Charlotte Cho ’06 and her Soko Glam online marketplace.
A Southern California native, Cho discovered South Korea’s “skin-first” philosophy while working in public relations for Samsung in Seoul – her first job out of college. “The culture I saw in South Korea was about skincare being a holistic practice about prevention, rather than turning back the hands of time,” she explains. “That felt really refreshing and different.” She trained as an aesthetician to learn more about the field.
Cho and her husband, David Cho, faced a lot of naysayers when, in 2012, they launched Soko Glam, which sells a curated selection of South Korean skincare products. “People weren’t shopping online then for new skincare brands they’d never heard of, touched or felt,” she says. But Cho was undaunted, determined to see her passion project succeed. She’d worked since the age of 16 and paid her way through UC Irvine; she was used to hard work and long hours. And Cho has an independent streak. “I’ve always been willing to try things no one has done before,” she says.
Drawing on her UC Irvine film and media studies degree, she launched The Klog, a blog to educate consumers about South Korean beauty practices. Before long, well-known South Korean beauty brands such as Skinfood and Missha approached Cho directly to be featured on Soko Glam – a major milestone. Media coverage, including in The New York Times, drove even more traffic to the website. As revenues grew, Cho noticed that the majority of Soko Glam’s customers were not Asian. “That was exciting,” she says. “We were appealing to a diverse group of customers.”
In 2018, Cho launched her own Korean sensorial skincare line under the name “Then I Met You.” “It’s a phrase to describe a positive turning point in your life,” she says. The brand already sells online and in Sephora stores overseas. It will make its U.S. debut this spring, when it will be featured on the “Next Big Thing” shelf in 400 Sephora stores across the United States – including the outlet at South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa. “That’s where I used to go all the time when I was a UCI student. It was the place to be,” Cho says. “The fact that Then I Met You will be sold there is so exciting.”
