You don’t have to be a beauty obsessive to know that Korean products have been taking over the industry lately. It’s been a long time coming, but retailers including Sephora and Urban Outfitters are starting to stock big K-beauty brands like TonyMoly, Too Cool for School, and The Face Shop — expanding the reach of Korean products and making them easily accessible to the U.S. consumer (so we don’t have to go through sketchy, sometimes unreliable e-commerce sites).
Korean cosmetics manufacturers, like Talent Cosmetic, have been seeking out halal certifications — despite the fact that the Muslim population within Korea is extremely small. The main reason? Muslim consumers are spending an increasing amount of money on cosmetics. “While global Muslim spending on cosmetics was $46 billion in 2013 — 6.78% of global expenditure — it is expected to increase to $73 billion by 2019, and will make up over 8.2% of global expenditure,” Sayd Farook, PhD, former global head of Islamic capital markets at Thomson Reuters, told BoF. Comparatively, the halal market is expected to increase in value from today’s $23.4 billion to $45 billion by 2020.
What constitutes a halal-certified product? The formula doesn’t contain parts or substances of animals like pigs and dogs, products must be handled with clean utensils, and are made with “materials that are not harmful to humans.” But halal goes beyond ingredients and product-handling to include “manufacturing, packaging, distribution, and logics,” Oru Mohiuddin, senior analyst, beauty and personal care at Euromonitor International, told BoF.
