Korean skincare won THG 64,000 customers
THG told the market on 10 September that Korean beauty had attracted more than 64,000 new customers to its beauty websites in the first half of the year, inside group revenue of £828.7m.
The company's customer base did not grow. THG reported 7.5 million active customers across the preceding twelve months, unchanged on a year earlier.
That makes the K-beauty figure the first number for the category in Britain with a regulatory filing behind it, and the first to describe what Korean brands do for a retailer rather than what they sell.
What they appear to do is bring people through the door at a business that is otherwise not adding any. THG's UK retail operation grew 6.7 per cent in the half on a customer base that stood still.
THG says Korean brands brought 64,000 new customers to Lookfantastic and Cult Beauty.
The number is also small. Sixty-four thousand is under one per cent of 7.5 million, and THG published no revenue figure for K-beauty in the announcement and gave no indication of the base those customers were added to.
British trade coverage has sized the category on forecasts rather than accounts. A projection putting the UK market at £439m in 2023 and £855m by 2032, at 7.81 per cent compound growth, has appeared this year attributed to nothing more specific than market forecasts.
Measured data exists alongside it. Circana put UK K-beauty value growth at 65 per cent in the year to March 2026, against 12 per cent for skincare overall.
THG Beauty, which houses Lookfantastic, Cult Beauty and Dermstore, turned over £500.2m in the half, up 5.9 per cent, with the UK now 56.8 per cent of group revenue after growing 20.7 per cent. Lookfantastic's skincare sales rose 17.4 per cent year to date.
The division added more than 50 beauty brands during the period, including Clarins on Lookfantastic. Its gross margin fell 90 basis points to 38.8 per cent, which the company attributed to order phasing in manufacturing.
Matthew Moulding, chief executive, said the beauty business was "underpinned by technology leadership, exciting new brand partnerships and strong brand health".
Lookfantastic held the top position among multi-brand beauty retailers on UK TikTok Shop throughout 2026, THG said, with revenue on the channel up 26 per cent year on year.
THG expects group revenue growth of about 2 per cent in the third quarter. It blamed a European heatwave and an EU duty applied to its beauty division from 1 July.
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