All 39 Companies of The Face Shop in China Deregistered

For the reasons for the closure of the store, The Face Shop once said in an interview that The Face Shop lacks long-term operational planning.

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As shown in Qichacha, The Face Shop (Shanghai) Cosmetic Selling Limited Company had been deregistered on December 22nd for reduction of company capital, merger with another company or separation. Besides, all of the associated thirty-eight sales companies had also been deregistered.

The company was established in August 2010 with a registered capital of $5 million. The legal representative is HONG SUNG HA. Its business scope included the wholesale and retail of cosmetics, chemical products (except dangerous goods), seasonings for cosmetics, fragrances, daily necessities, food, etc. It was wholly owned by LG Household & Health Care CO., LTD. However, the company has recently been canceled due to a "merger or separation of companies".

According to public reports, in 2006, The Face Shop began to try the Chinese market. In 2008, the brand officially landed in China and set up its first Chinese store in JOY CITY in Beijing. As one of the first Korean cosmetic brands to enter the Chinese market, The Face Shop had a wide consumer group in China. The brand advocating natural skincare has even influenced the skincare philosophy of young people.

In retrospect, after entering the Chinese market, The Face Shop had two agents in the south and in the north. But the competitive relationship between the two agents caused various problems that hindered the brand's development process in China. Therefore, in order to reverse the unfavorable situation in China, in 2013, LG Household & Health Care CO.,LTD. ended the dual agency system of The Face Shop and established a joint venture company called The Face Shop Trading (Guangdong) Co. Ltd.

In 2014, The Face Shop restarted its single-brand store expansion plan and reached the peak of its development. It opened more than 100 stores in a year. Later on, due to the rise of e-commerce channels, cross-border shopping, counterfeiting and other factors interfered with the market. The Face Shop again encountered a bottleneck in development. In the second half of 2015, the company again adjusted its development strategy in China, slowing down the pace of store openings and gradually liquidating stores with low profitability. Publicly available information shows that as of early 2017, there were more than 350 stores in mainland China.

In March 2017, THAAD erupted causing sales of Korean popular brands such as The Face Shop, Innisfree and MISSHA all experienced varying degrees of decline. In June 2017, the Korean headquarters of The Face Shop decided to stop the expansion of single-brand stores. Its company in Guangdong was closed and integrated into The Face Shop (Shanghai) Cosmetic Selling Limited Company. In December of the same year, it started to liquidate the unprofitable stores and set a gradual exit plan. 2018 saw the complete shutdown of The Face Shop single-brand stores.

For the reasons for the closure, the former head of The Face Shop in Central China had publicly stated in a media interview that "The Face Shop lacked long-term operational planning. It simply met expected sales targets with no specific brand operation plan."