Behind the Mask

Red-hot demand in China for GP Club’s skincare masks has turned gaming entrepreneur Kim Jung-woong into a cosmetics mogul.

- Grace Chung

Liu Jing, 32, is visiting Seoul from China’s eastern seaboard. Other tourists might spend their day taking in the capital’s sights. Not Liu. She’s lining up behind at least a dozen compatriots in a duty-free shop, waiting her turn to buy JM Solution facial sheet masks. Each box of ten will cost her about $30, but Liu won’t walk away with just one. For the equivalent of $18,000, she and the others buy three refrigerator-sized palettes of carts—so big they have to be wheeled away on dollies.

Liu isn’t buying them for herself. She’s a daigou—a Chinese term for surrogate buyers who venture abroad to stock up on popular products and resell them back home. To say JM Solution masks are popular is an understatement. Between its Honey Luminous Royal Propolis Mask, the Lacto Saccharomyces Golden Rice Mask, and the Active Pink Snail Brightening Mask, JM Solution’s owner, GP Club, has sold over a billion skincare masks, mostly in China, since launching them in mid-2017. “It’s the No. 1 seller in China,” says Liu, who says she can earn as much as 20% selling JM masks back home in Shandong province. “I’ve been coming here once a month for the past six months.”