Korean skin care companies come to Hawaii

Kim Hyun Joong, the posterboy for The Faceshop

I've been a fan of The Faceshop for a few years now. I love their skin care products because it always leaves a fresh and clean feeling on my skin, I like their clean green and white branding and the face of Kim Hyun Joong (and occasionally Won Bin) as their poster boy isn't so hard on the eyes either.

Won Bin for the The Smim products at Faceshop

So the good news is that The Faceshop just opened a brand new second shop in Ward Warehouse. The first one opened in Mc Cully Shopping Center and they're also hoping to open a few more
locations on the islands before branching out further. The opening was choke with customers lined up and out the door. I'm not sure how the word spread and if the draw was for the free Kim Hyun Joon posters or just just that the word about The Faceshop and Korean skincare has already hit the islands.

I was speaking to the Hawaii distributor and what I didn't know was the company is owned by LG , one of the big 5 conglomerates of Korea. What does that mean? Much money going into the machine to create quality products with the best ingredients.

My second discovery was Nature Republic in Waikiki. Just a little over a month old, the store is huge and stocked full with their products. Unfortunately, I had great snaps of the store but they got wiped out when I accidentally killed my laptop with a cup of tea. So, all I have are instagram photos shot from my iPod Touch (a crap camera, I've been finding).

I'm not as large a fan as I am of The Faceshop, nor a large fan of Love Rain's Jang Geum Suk, but the good news is that Korea's skin care lines are now invading the islands.

For us local folk, that means we get to indulge in the Korean secret to beautiful skin and we don't have to wait.