Can India Give 'The Face Shop' Something to Glow About?

Festive preparation in India is an elaborate exercise. There are outfits to choose, makeup to plan, gifts to buy and invitations to accommodate. Skincare, despite being the foundation of the finished look, can easily become an afterthought. The Face Shop wants to change that order.

The Korean skincare brand’s new festive campaign, ‘Glow Before You Go’, puts skincare at the beginning of the celebration rather than at the end of the beauty routine. Its premise is straightforward: before heading to a puja, a Diwali dinner or a party, there is a moment to prepare the skin. By connecting Korean skincare rituals with familiar Indian occasions, the brand is attempting to make its products part of a routine consumers already recognise.

The idea is less about introducing another festive beauty look and more about claiming a place in the preparation that precedes it. For a brand operating in an increasingly crowded skincare market, that distinction matters.

India’s appetite for Korean beauty has created an opportunity for established players and newer entrants alike. A report by Sciative Solutions, published in August 2025, tracked more than 51,000 product listings across 38 K-beauty brands on e-commerce marketplaces. It found that the brands’ combined product portfolios expanded by 35 per cent between October 2024 and July 2025. The Face Shop’s own portfolio grew from 77 to 104 stock-keeping units during the period, while Laneige’s increased from 62 to 87. The numbers point to a category expanding its assortment as competition intensifies.

The Face Shop’s South Korean parent, LG Household & Health Care, reported a 62.8% decline in annual operating profit in 2025, while its Indian entity, Holistique Beauty Products Private Limited, reported revenue of ₹35.1 crore and net profit of ₹0.3 crore in FY21, as per regulatory filings accessed from business intelligence firm Tofler; more recent Indian financial filings could not be accessed to establish how the business has performed since.

The challenge is no longer simply to introduce Indian consumers to Korean skincare. It is to give them a reason to choose one brand over another.

From Korean routines to Indian occasions

The Face Shop, a subsidiary of South Korea’s LG Household & Health Care, has built its identity around natural ingredients combined with Korean skincare technology. In India, its products are distributed by Holistique through platforms including Nykaa, Amazon, Myntra and Purplle. The company says its range is available across more than 2,000 stores in the country.

Its latest campaign attempts to translate this product proposition into a cultural context. The repeated line, “Before I go to the puja, glow. Before I go to Diwali dinner, glow. Before I go to the party, glow,” gives creators and consumers a format they can adapt to their own festive plans.

The strength of the idea lies in its familiarity. Rather than asking consumers to adopt an unfamiliar beauty philosophy, the brand inserts skincare into activities that already structure the festive season. The repetition also gives the campaign a recognisable social-media device, potentially allowing it to travel beyond the hero film through creator content and user participation.

This is a form of localisation that goes beyond using Indian faces or festive imagery in an otherwise global campaign. It attempts to make the product relevant to a specific moment in the consumer’s day.

Aashriya Sharma, Head of Marketing at The Face Shop, says the campaign seeks to reverse the conventional order of festive beauty preparation. “Skincare is not the finishing touch, it is the foundation everything else sits on,” she says, describing the intention to turn last-minute preparation into a ritual consumers look forward to.

The distinction between the campaign’s intention and its eventual impact, however, is important. A repeatable slogan can generate recognition, but it does not automatically establish a skincare habit. That depends on whether consumers find the products effective, affordable enough to repurchase and relevant to their individual skin concerns.

The competition is selling more than a glow

The Face Shop is competing in a market where Korean beauty has moved well beyond niche discovery. Established names such as Laneige and Innisfree operate alongside ingredient-focused brands including COSRX, Beauty of Joseon and Anua, each competing for attention through different product associations, price points and digital communities.

The growth of the category is also changing the role of distribution. Nykaa reported 58 per cent year-on-year growth in Korean beauty gross merchandise value in FY26, according to data published by Datum Intelligence from the retailer’s investor presentation. Its platform carried more than 70 Korean brands. The figure indicates the strength of the broader category, though it does not establish the performance of any individual brand.

For competitors, the answer to this expanding market has been to build distinct associations. Laneige has used its hydration-led products, celebrity partnerships and collaborations with fashion brands to connect skincare with lifestyle and self-expression. In November 2025, its collaboration with fashion label ONLY combined skincare products with fashion-led content, influencer engagement and retail experiences.

The Face Shop’s ‘Glow Before You Go’ follows a related logic but takes a more occasion-led route. Instead of anchoring the communication to a particular product or celebrity, it gives skincare a recurring role across the festive calendar.

That may help the brand speak to a wider range of consumers. It also creates a challenge: the idea of glowing skin is hardly exclusive to The Face Shop. Unless the campaign connects the ritual to identifiable products, benefits and reasons to trust the brand, competitors can make much the same promise.

Why the airport matters

The campaign extends beyond digital content through a month-long pop-up at Terminal 2 of Mumbai Airport. The activation allows travellers to explore and buy the brand’s products while preparing for festive journeys.

The location is a logical extension of the campaign’s central idea. Airports are spaces of transition, and festive travel gives consumers another reason to think about packing, personal care and looking presentable on arrival. The pop-up also creates a physical discovery point for a brand whose Indian distribution has relied significantly on e-commerce.

The Face Shop has previously experimented with airport retail, opening a standalone store at Manohar International Airport in Goa in December 2024. The Mumbai activation therefore fits into a broader effort to bring Korean skincare into high-footfall physical environments rather than relying exclusively on digital discovery.

The more consequential question is what happens after the encounter. A traveller may purchase a product because it is convenient or because the pop-up attracts attention. Turning that purchase into repeat business requires the brand to deliver an experience worth returning to, whether through its product performance, range or customer engagement.

Beyond the festive season

The Face Shop is combining a social-media-friendly idea with expert-led content from influencers, dermatologists and makeup artists, alongside an offline retail activation. The mix gives the campaign several routes to reach consumers: cultural familiarity, beauty expertise, creator participation and product discovery.

Yet the real test lies beyond festive visibility. The Indian skincare market is becoming more fragmented, with consumers encountering a growing number of brands promising ingredient transparency, targeted solutions and visible results. In such an environment, the ability to create a memorable campaign is valuable, but it is not the same as building loyalty.

‘Glow Before You Go’ gives The Face Shop a simple way to enter an existing consumer ritual. Whether that moment becomes a regular purchase occasion will depend on the connection between the campaign and the products it promotes.

The brand is asking consumers to think about skincare before they think about the outfit. The larger marketing challenge is to ensure they think of The Face Shop when they do.