The encyclopedia · Strategy & Leadership · Strategic decision · 2018–2025
Innisfree closed every one of its own stores in Japan
The Korean beauty brand that once ran a dozen directly operated Japan stores was down to two by 2025, and closed both to move fully to e-commerce and wholesale.
Innisfree · Amorepacific · 2025-08-17
What happened
Innisfree opened its first Japan store in Tokyo's Omotesando in March 2018, riding the Korean beauty boom that had already carried the brand into China and, in 2017, a flagship in New York. It expanded quickly across Tokyo, the Nagoya-Osaka corridor, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Kanagawa, betting that Japanese consumers wanted the same directly operated retail experience that had worked elsewhere in Asia.
The store count shrank through the early 2020s as pandemic-era shutdowns hit in-person retail and never fully recovered. By July 2025, Amorepacific Japan operated only two Innisfree stores left in the entire country: Lumine Est Shinjuku in Tokyo and Fukuoka Parco.
The Shinjuku store closed on July 31, 2025, and the Fukuoka store followed on August 17 — ending Innisfree's directly operated retail presence in Japan completely, seven years after it opened its first store there.
Amorepacific Japan described the move as adapting to 'changing times,' shifting marketing investment from physical stores to e-commerce and wholesale. The brand continued selling through its own online store, third-party platforms including Qoo10, Rakuten, Amazon and ZOZOTOWN, the multi-brand retailer @cosme, and wholesale placement in drugstores such as Matsumotokiyoshi.
Why it happened
- Innisfree expanded its directly operated Japan stores during the Korean beauty boom without a plan for what would sustain them once that wave of interest cooled.
- Pandemic-era closures cut the store count and the brand never reopened or replaced the lost locations, letting the network shrink to two stores by attrition rather than by choice.
- Running a thin national footprint of just two stores no longer justified the fixed retail costs once e-commerce and wholesale could reach the same customers more cheaply.
The lesson
A retail network built on a boom's momentum needs its own reason to exist once the boom fades — a store count that drifts down through attrition rather than a plan ends the same way regardless.
Aftermath
Innisfree kept selling in Japan through its own e-commerce site, major online marketplaces, @cosme pop-ups and drugstore wholesale, without any directly operated physical store. The brand's Japan strategy became indistinguishable from importing and distributing rather than retailing directly, matching how several other Korean beauty brands scaled back store investment in Japan around the same time.
Sources
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