K-hair is next: Fresha Sets its Sights on Korea as Foreign Visitors Surge

The K-beauty boom is spreading from cosmetics into the service industry, and a global platform is moving first to tap into the trend.

Fresha, a UK-based wellness and beauty company, plans to enter the South Korean beauty services market. The industry reads the move as a sign that overseas players see an opening in Korea's hair, nail, and spa sector before local firms have built a dominant platform.

According to beauty industry sources on the 12th, Fresha is actively building sales and customer management teams for a launch within the year. The company is also searching for a general manager to lead its South Korea business. Korea's beauty services market is largely made up of small and mid-sized shops, and Fresha would be the first global platform to bundle customer acquisition, booking, payments, and store management into a single service.

Founded in the United Kingdom in 2015, Fresha is a unicorn with about $15 billion in annual transaction volume, or roughly 21 trillion won. It runs a booking platform and business management software for hair salons, nail shops, skincare clinics, and spas. About 130,000 businesses worldwide use Fresha, which processes 35 million beauty appointments each month.

The launch draws attention because South Korea still lacks a dominant specialist platform for beauty services. Right now, consumers typically book through Naver Place while shops handle operations through separate tools such as Gongbiseo or Hairjjang.

"South Korea is a core beauty and wellness market with strong pop culture influence and trend leadership," said Kevin Sanchez, Fresha's Asia-Pacific head. "We can connect salons with customers and also guide overseas visitors into their stores."

Industry watchers believe Fresha's early focus will not be everyday domestic consumers but foreign visitors looking to book beauty services during trips to South Korea. Several major Korean salons are already listed on the platform on their own, including Juno Hair's Myeong-dong branch, Chahong Room's Gangnam-daero branch, and Lee Kyung Min Foret's Haeundae branch. All are in areas popular with foreign tourists. For local salons, Fresha offers a channel to reach international customers directly.

Analysts say the move signals that K-beauty competition is expanding from products into services. Cosmetics can travel to global consumers through retailers such as Olive Young or Amazon. Services like a stylist's scalp treatment, however, can only be sold at a fixed place and time, which has made them harder to connect to overseas buyers. Fresha turns a stylist's open slots into bookable products with prices and reviews attached. In effect, it builds a global storefront where foreign consumers can search and book South Korean salons.