Picky, a global beauty seeding platform, realizes data-driven marketing with 700,000 users and 10,000 creators joining the platform each month.
TikTok Shop offers a performance-based revenue model through affiliate partner campaigns, and AI-powered content quality management.
After achieving BEP in 2023, Han River Partners secured Series A investment, and global expansion into Spanish-speaking countries is in full swing.
"Which influencers should I work with?" "Will my product really sell locally?"
While K-beauty's global presence is growing by the day, brands seeking to enter overseas markets face significant challenges. Finding clear answers to questions like which creators to collaborate with and whether their products will truly resonate with local consumers is challenging.
Picky CEO Lee Ji-hong, who experienced the forefront of "data-driven marketing" at Google and Finnish game company Supercell, saw an opportunity right here. Starting in 2018, he jumped into the startup world with the goal of launching a global company and launched Picky in 2020. "Picky," a global beauty community service, uses data, not intuition, to launch a micro-influencer community-based marketing service that helps K-beauty brands expand globally.
K- beauty has great potential, but marketing still relies on intuition.
Leaving behind a dazzling career, why "beauty" and "startups"? CEO Lee Ji-hong explained the background of his startup, saying, "While K-beauty holds tremendous potential in the global market, its marketing methods often still rely on intuition."
This CEO said, "While working at Google and Supercell, I firsthand experienced the power of data as a weapon. However, in the beauty industry, especially in global marketing, intuitive judgments like 'this influencer is famous' or 'this market seems poised for success' still dominate. I felt a need for a verifiable, data-driven solution."
Since 2019, K-beauty brands have been able to sell their products overseas through various B2C/B2B distribution platforms. However, we have consistently observed that essential overseas marketing activities still have to be carried out by the brands themselves.
Picky is a data-driven seeding platform that builds a marketing infrastructure for the K-beauty industry through social platforms and connects brands and creators. It has achieved significant success in the K-beauty social commerce market, attracting over 700,000 highly engaged beauty users worldwide and 10,000 new users per month. Through Picky, brands can use sophisticated data to determine which content resonates with users and which unique selling points (USPs) are effective.
Picky targets TikTok Shops… "Payment only when results are achieved."
Picky's biggest focus is its "TikTok Shop" marketing. Recently, Picky launched the "TikTok Affiliate Partner (TAP)" campaign, which it runs on behalf of brands. The campaign offers an efficient model where brands only share revenue when they generate actual sales.
The representative said, "Brands don't need to take the risk of pouring money into advertising and waiting for results. This is because proven creators promote products, and costs are only incurred when actual sales occur. This minimizes risk and maximizes efficiency."
Here, Picky has actively adopted AI technology. By building a system that uses AI to manage the quality of tens of thousands of pieces of content in real time, brands can secure a large volume of high-quality user-generated content (UGC) at a low cost. This represents a significant leap forward in scalability, moving away from the traditional method of manual review.
Full-scale expansion into the Spanish-speaking world
Picky's growth is evidenced by the numbers. Following its break-even point (BEP) in 2023, the company recently secured Series A funding from global venture capital firm Han River Partners, marking the beginning of a full-scale fundraising drive for further growth. This strategy involves first establishing a self-sustaining business structure and then aggressively expanding.
The CEO stated, "We first verified our revenue model and then secured investment. We plan to use the investment funds to focus on organizational expansion and entering new markets."
The CEO's gaze is now shifting beyond the English-speaking world to broader global markets, including Spanish-speaking ones. He said, "I want to create an ecosystem where K-beauty brands anywhere in the world can say, 'We're experimenting with the global market with Picky.'"
There are no right answers in the global market, but wrong answers can be quickly filtered out.
The keyword CEO Lee emphasized throughout the interview was "experimentation." He expressed confidence, saying, "There's no right answer in the global market, but Picky can help us filter out incorrect answers faster and more cost-effectively, getting us closer to the right answer."
The CEO said, "For K-beauty brands to succeed overseas, a cycle of 'trial and error' is essential. Picky aims to be a data-driven laboratory that supports this process and an engine that drives actual sales."
Picky is evolving beyond a simple community into a core infrastructure accelerating K-beauty's global expansion. It remains to be seen whether their combined data and sincerity will usher in a new era for K-beauty.
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