Byunghoon Kim, co-founder and CEO of APR, which stands for Advance People's Real Life.
Courtesy of APR
Shares of South Korean beauty equipment maker APR rose 27% in their trading debut on the Korea Exchange on Tuesday, valuing the company at about 2.4 trillion won ($1.8 billion).
APR raised 94.8 billion won (about $71 million) in an IPO of 379,000 shares at 250,000 won apiece, well above the expected selling range of 147,000 won to 200,000 won per share. Its shares closed at 317,500 won on Tuesday. APR will use the proceeds from the IPO to expand its manufacturing facilities and fund marketing efforts abroad (with a focus on social media influencers), particularly in the United States, Japan and China. and finance research and development.
Investors that backed APR ahead of its IPO include CJ Onstyle, part of Korean billionaire Lee Jay-hyun's CJ Group; SJ Investment Partners, a Korean VC firm whose portfolio includes AI chip startup DeepX and serialized fiction app Radish (which was acquired by Kakao Entertainment for $440 million in 2021); and the state-owned Industrial Bank of Korea. APR reached unicorn status when CJ Onstyle—the commercial division of CJ ENM, an entertainment unit of CJ Group –invested in the company in June last year.
APR is based in the 555-meter-tall Lotte World Tower (the country's tallest skyscraper) in Seoul and was co-founded in 2014 by Byunghoon Kim and Lee Ju-kwang. The duo was featured on Forbes' 30 Under 30 Asia list in 2017. Lee left the company in 2019. Kim, 35, whose English name is Victor, serves as the company's CEO and is its largest shareholder with a 35% stake.
APR devices.
Courtesy of APR
APR, which stands for Advance People's Real Life, is best known for its Medicube Age-R brand products, including Booster Healer devices. Called Medicube Age-R Booster-H, the devices use electrical stimulation to help the skin better absorb skin care products. It launched in 2022 and got a boost when Hailey Bieber, model, entrepreneur and wife of pop star Justin Bieber, said she was using the device in a TikTok video last year. APR said in its prospectus that it had sold 1.6 million Medicube Age-R products domestically and internationally as of November 2023.
Beauty devices accounted for 82% of APR's 372 billion won (about $280 million) in revenue in the first three quarters of last year, almost as much as the company made in all of 2022. His fashion division called Nerdy and the photo booth business made up the rest. Net profit for the period was 57 billion won, compared to 30 billion won in fiscal 2022, thanks to lower expenses.
About 40% of APR's products are sold outside South Korea. The fastest growing markets are mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and the USA. The company is preparing to enter markets in France, India, Qatar, Thailand and the United Kingdom
People around the world buy APR's devices because of their technological edge, says CEO Kim. “We believe our innovative technology has made a difference,” he said in emailed comments. “APR operates a proprietary research and development center, ADC (APR Device Center), and manages around 70 patents for beauty device electricity technology. APR is really serious about the technology that would enable better product efficiency.” In addition to ADC, which was founded in 2022, APR also operates the Global Dermatological Research Institute in Seoul, which opened in 2020, and its own factory, also in Seoul, which opened in April last year Founded.
APR's Booster Pro.
Courtesy of APR
Kim also praises APR's strong offering of new products. “APR is not a company that makes a one-hit item and then sells it again and again,” he says. “So far we have launched seven beauty devices, and for the seventh, called Booster Pro, we have pooled our know-how and experience from the previous six devices.” Kim adds that APR in the first half of this will bring another skin care device onto the market this year and three to four new devices by the end of the year.
In order to handle the growing product range of devices, APR is building a second factory, which is scheduled for completion in the second quarter. The second factory in Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul, will increase the company's capacity to eight million units per year.
“APR is not a company that makes a one-hit item and then sells it again and again.”
Byunghoon Kim, co-founder and CEO of APR
It helps that the market for home beauty devices is growing. According to data from Euromonitor and Globaldata cited in APR's offering prospectus, the global home beauty equipment market will grow from $5.5 billion in 2024 to $34.8 billion in 2030. “The home beauty equipment market has grown rapidly under Covid-19 conditions,” says Kim, as fewer people went out and beauty clinics were closed. “Now we are at the stage where customers are wondering whether to go to the beauty clinic or use a device at home, rather than at the stage where they decide which brand I would choose.”
The beauty industry is a major source of wealth worldwide. French billionaire Francoise Bettencourt Meyers, the granddaughter of the founder of L'Oréal, is the richest woman in the world; According to Forbes' real-time billionaires list, Bettencourt Meyers has a net worth of $98.6 billion. The Lauder family behind Estée Lauder was ranked No. 11 on Forbes' list of the richest families in America with a total fortune of $25.9 billion. In South Korea, two beauty billionaires were included in the list of the country's 50 richest people: Suh Kyung-bae (No. 15) of Amorepacific, South Korea's largest cosmetics and skin care manufacturer by market capitalization, and Kim Jung-woong (No. 34) of GP Club, which is best known for its JM Solution line of face masks.
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