Where to buy Korean cosmetics?

You haven’t tried Korean skincare yet? There are amazing Korean skincare brands and cosmetics, but finding a reliable online store can be tricky. If you don’t know where to buy Korean cosmetics, this guide is what you’ve been looking for. I have compiled here my favorite (and trusted) K-beauty online shops, check them out!

Hello hello! How is your week going? Today I have a new post about online stores. All of them are well known shops, surely you yourself have bought some time (or have thought about it) in at least one of these . Today I want to focus on a more specific market: Korean beauty, cosmetics and skincare stores.

Korean skincare has had incredible growth. Secrets and beauty routines made in Korea have been introduced little by little into our lives and now you can find products from there in your usual store. In fact, their beauty routines and their secrets are already part of our day to day (I use some, as you can see in this post, and I’m delighted) However, there are still many brands that have not made that leap to the Spanish market and that can only be found in Asia or online. Surely many of you who read me have ever been curious about Korean cosmetics but you have not been sure where to get it, so I hope that this post serves as a little guide so that you know some of the available websites and my experience with them.

Specifically, in this post I will talk about my experience with Wishtrend, Stylekorean and YesStyle. The first is an international reference, they have an immense variety of products from major brands and others less known. The second is a lesser-known store, but it does not have less variety. Do you want to know a little more about them? Let’s go!

You can head straight to the shop you want to know better here:

• Wishtrend.
• Stylekorean.
• Yesstyle.

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1. WISHTREND.

As I said, this is one of the largest Korean skincare shops. They have practically all the best-known brands in the sector: Klairs, I’m From COSRX, etc. In addition, they have developed their own line of products, called ByWishtrend, with an inexpensive price and high quality ingredients, in order to be better known.

I had known this store for some time, and taking advantage of the Black Friday discounts (which were spectacularly good) I decided to try my luck and make a purchase. The first thing that is observed is that it is a very simple and intuitive web. Finding what you are looking for is very easy and both the search engine and navigation are very fast. One of the aspects that I liked most about Wishtrend is that they sell routines and packs already prepared according to your needs. I think it’s an excellent way to help you choose what you need and know products that if not maybe you would consider buying.

I’ve told you briefly about discounts, but I want to stop a bit at that point because they surprised me a lot. Just by registering you already get a very important discount (30%, if I remember correctly). The Black Friday, in addition, had prepared other discounts, so I ended up buying products worth about $250 (approximately) and spending half, in addition to having free express delivery and receiving several samples and gifts (they know what I like).

The products come in a cardboard box that goes unnoticed on the outside, but its interior is very cool, printed with the name of the brand everywhere. I really liked two particular aspects of the packaging. On the one hand, all the products were perfectly wrapped in bubble paper, so their integrity was more than assured. On the other hand, I was struck by the fact that they sent me a lot of samples, testers and gifts, it is the shop that has given me the most gifts by far (and you already know that with that they got me).

Purchases worth more than $69 allow you to have free shipping to Spain, with a delivery time of 15 to 20 days. If your purchase exceeds $159 you can have free express delivery and receive your products in 7-10 days. All this is theoretical, you know. Let me explain:

One of the aspects that I liked the least about buying at Wishtrend is the slowness. I’m used to the speed of European and Spanish online stores and the case of Wishtrend has been a bit exasperating. Taking advantage of the fact that I could use a promotion, I decided to request express delivery (after all I did not have to pay anything for it, so I preferred to receive my products earlier, of course). Well, the express delivery (which was rather a slow shipment and delays) consisted of waiting three weeks until my purchases arrived. I understand that the products come from Korea, but I do not think they should promise speed (theoretically the reception period was 7 to 10 days) and then have you waiting. By the way, despite having placed an order worth more than $200 I was not retained in the Customs here in Spain, although I can not assure you that the same thing happens to you, you know it’s a bit of a lottery.

UPDATE: Surprisingly, my latest Wishtrend order has only taken 5 days to arrive. Probably, the previous time was delayed excessively because of Christmas and Black Friday, so you should know that it is normal to send orders fairly quickly.

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2. STYLEKOREAN.

I had read posts and comments about this page several times, so after thinking about it a lot I decided and I gave it a try. He knew Stylekorean from his Try me, Review me. For those who do not know them, those are campaigns in which they allow you to request to try different products in exchange for giving your opinion about them. As you can imagine, there are always many candidates, who would not be interested in trying quality Korean cosmetics products without cost? Overall, I thought it would be interesting to try your online store to see how it works.

One of the things that you can first see about Stylekorean is that they have great deals quite frequently. It is not normal for an online store to offer discounts close to 70%, who would not want it? It was precisely taking advantage of one of his great offers when I decided to make my first purchase. The prices, in general, are very good and have a wide range of products from leading brands such as Hyggee, COSRX, Benton, Some by mi, Heimish, Laneige, Dr. Jart, Innisfree, etc.

The web works, in general very well. It is comfortable and simple, it is easy to locate the products you are looking for and it does not cause problems. By using it I realized that it works better using Google Chrome than Safari, so if you can choose, do not hesitate. The search engine works great, it’s fast and the results are easily found, without any problem.

Purchases can be made simply, although I have not enjoyed my experience with shipping costs. First of all, Stylekorean charges the shipping costs based on the weight of the products (unlike any other online store I have tried). Taking into account that you are not buying products by weight, it is striking that they charge you for the same (I found it strange and suspicious, do I have to assume that the price they indicate is correct?). In addition, at the time of processing the order, includes an additional expense in concept of packaging, for the supposed weight of it (let’s face it, do you really need to include the cost of some bubble paper?). Shipping costs, generally speaking, are very expensive compared to other online stores, although good deals can make them compensate. To give you an idea, for a shipment of 1kg they charge 10.37 dollars, for a shipment of 2kg they charge 18.64 dollars and for a shipment of 2.50kg they charge 51.60 dollars. Excessive, don’t you think?

At the time of sending the order they were relatively fast, despite having received it by mail (not by courier). In a matter of a month I already had the package at home. I did not have any Customs problem with the shipment, although in the case of orders without much value and sent by regular mail it is normal.

The packaging of the order was quite good, the products came in a cardboard box and well wrapped in bubble paper. When opened it was clear that all the products were well protected. In addition, the order brought a couple of samples. Yes it is true that the samples were very small, and taking into account the massive shipping charges they could have sent better samples (as happened with Wishtrend).

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3. YESSTYLE.

I discovered this online store after seeing it mentioned in several skincare websites. It is shown as a very economic Korean website with an immense variety of products (this is very true, its stores should be the size of cities). It is not an exclusive store of cosmetics, since they also sell clothes, accessories, home decor, etc. I have not seen many posts with Yesstyle opinions from people in Spain, so I think it may be interesting to tell you my experience.

In the skincare section we can see that they have several specialized sections: Korean cosmetics, Japanese cosmetics, Taiwanese cosmetics, etc. My biggest interest in this purchase was trying out new Korean cosmetics products, and I was surprised to see that they had many of the best known brands: COSRX, Laneige, Klairs, Innisfree, Purito, Missha, Skinfood, Pyunkang Yul and many others.

The first thing I did not like was the exasperating navigation on this page. It is slow, it bugs a lot and it is very difficult to apply the filters. In addition, having such a huge variety of products is very difficult to find what you really want without despair. It saturated me to use this page, it was like an immense catalogue of products in which I was not able to easily find products that really caught my attention. I think that in YesStyle they try to offer everything but they end up making it difficult for you to find something. One thing that caught my attention were the prices of the products, in YesStyle there is no middle ground, you either find expensive things (I mean hundreds of euros) or very cheap ones (less than 5€), but finding products at regular prices proved to me more difficult than I expected.

In general, I do not know why, but the YesStyle page gave me the feeling of being in a kind of crappy Aliexpress, worse designed and infinitely slower. And by the way, use the web with Chrome, if you enter Safari the page does not let you finish the purchase process and stays there in a strange limbo. In general, buying with them has been an exasperating experience.

On this website, shipping costs are free for purchases over 32€. I think it is a bit too much, although being an order that comes from Asia I can understand it.

Special mention deserves its speed with shipments. When I bought I had not seen it, but it turns out that one of the products I ordered wasn’t available (and they had to buy it from a third party). So far I think it is understandable, it is not surprising that an online store does not have stock of each and every one of its products. When I contacted them, surprised by the slowness, they told me that they could take up to 21 days to receive that particular product from the third vendor. Well, what a coincidence that just 22 days later they finally sent the order, so I’ve been waiting for about two months to receive my products. Also, I do not know if it happened to others, but they provided me with a tracking number of the shipment that was only valid once the order arrived in Europe (and at that point what do I care, after so much waiting).

I did not have any problem for the order to pass through the Customs, although in the case of a shipment by mail (not by courier) and without much value, it is not surprising either.

When picking up the order at the post office, I was struck by how shabby the packaging was. I expected at least a cardboard box, but instead I found a plastic envelope (not especially resistant) and products wrapped in bubble wrap. After all, I hoped they would have taken a little more care of the packaging, but that was not the case. Unlike the other Korean cosmetics stores that I have tried so far, YesStyle did not send a single sample with the order.

You already see that in this post I have tried to explain in depth my experience with Wishtrend, Stylekorean and YesStyle so that you can have an objective opinion about them. When I go shopping in other Korean cosmetics stores I will update the post so that you can have at all times the best information available about it. Of course, if you have any questions about my experience do not hesitate to leave me a comment and I will respond as soon as possible.

And you, have you bought at any of these Korean cosmetics stores? Is there any that you did not mention and that you would like to recommend me?

Did you like this post? Do you want to continue learning about beauty, cosmetics and skin care? Then you will be interested to read these others:

• Beauty routine: what is it and why you need it.
• 3 things you should know about your skin.

Do you want to learn to take better care of your skin? You can see an index of all my informative posts here. 

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