Cosmax's production peak has moved from the year-end quarter to July

The 116% is an industry-source figure carried by the Seoul Economic Daily ^[1]. Taken at face value it still needs a second step, because a ratio of one quarter to the one before it rises on growth alone. Korean cosmetics exports came to 91.1% of the preceding fourth quarter in the first quarter of last year and 105.9% this year ^[5][1], and the distance between those two ratios is 16.2% ^[2], which about 8% of growth a quarter would cover with the seasonal shape untouched.

Export growth is fast, though not quite that fast. July exports rose from $539.74 million in 2023 to $1.10 billion this year ^[10][9], slightly more than doubling in three years, or roughly 27% a year and 6.2% a quarter ^[3]. Run last year's 91.1% forward at that rate and the first quarter lands at 102.8% of the fourth ^[4]. About three points of the reported 5.9% increase are left over.

What survives the growth adjustment is the ranking. July placed fifth among the months by Cosmax output in 2021 and eighth in 2022, then first in 2023, second last year and first again this year ^[7]. A rank inside a single year cannot be produced by trend growth, since every month in the comparison grew together. July used to be the textbook off-season month, with moisturizing demand falling away and few launches scheduled ^[16].

The year did not flatten out, though. Cosmax averaged 57.49 million units a month in the first quarter and made 86.22 million in July, 50% more ^[5]. The peak sits in summer now; the industry's traditional pair was the fourth quarter, on November and December gift and moisturizer demand, and the second, on the ramp for first-half launches ^[3].

At company level the record is uneven. APR booked 272.3 billion won of cosmetics and beauty revenue in the third quarter of last year against 227.1 billion in the second, a gap of 45.2 billion won, where in 2023 the second quarter had been ahead by 1.3 billion ^[11][12][8]. Amorepacific's version is thinner. Its 1.017 trillion won third quarter beat the second by 12 billion won, or 1.2%, and in 2023 the second quarter led by 56.6 billion, or 6.4% ^[13][7].

The Seoul Economic Daily attributes the change to K-beauty's spread into overseas markets, which it says has diversified consumption regions and product categories ^[15]. Its clearest example is sun care, once bought mainly in the strongest ultraviolet months and now a year-round basic, with narrower month-to-month swings in output as a result ^[14].