Amorepacific might not be as well known in North America as L’Oréal, Estée Lauder, or P&G, but K-beauty’s second wave is quickly carrying the 80-year-old Korean beauty giant’s brands overseas.

The company, founded in 1945 and home to South Korea’s first cosmetics lab, operates a slew K-beauty brands—including Laneige, COSRX, Innisfree, and Sulwhasoo—that’ve been FYP mainstays in the latest TikTok-driven rise in K-beauty popularity that pushed sales up 37% to $2 billion last year, per NielsenIQ.

With the size of its North American business nearly quadrupling in recent years, Amorepacific named Giovanni Valentini, a beauty veteran who spent more than 20 years at Unilever and L’Oréal on brands like Dove and Lancôme USA, as North American CEO in 2024. Its Americas business revenue jumped 20% YoY in 2025, and 11.2% in Q1 2026, the company reported last month.

While eye-catching ingredients like snail mucin and PDRN (which is derived from salmon sperm) have helped the company’s brands go viral, Amorepacific is working to convert the second wave into a movement through new brand launches, innovations, and retail partnerships with Amazon and Sephora.

Keep reading here.—EC

Give Grogu a meat jerky snack, and you get a meat-cute for the ages.

In a recent 30-second spot for Archer Jerky and The Mandalorian and Grogu, Disney’s latest feature film installment in the Star Wars franchise, Baby Yoda’s penchant for snacking powers the marketing message for the individually packaged jerky. It’s part of a larger campaign from the meat-stick brand that also includes special packaging, Fandango rewards to help pay for a ticket, and sweepstakes that offer participants a chance to win a trip to the film’s LA premiere.

For Archer, it’s the biggest partnership the brand has secured to date, and for meatheads everywhere, it’s part of a larger meat-stick growth spurt.

Keep reading here on Marketing Brew.—JN

Mother’s Day was yesterday, and hopefully you remembered to call and/or visit yours. If not, you may just want to buy her something nice to make up for it.

Apparently a number of people opened their wallets for the holiday. According to the National Retail Federation, shoppers were predicted to spend a record $38 billion, up from the previous record of $35.7 billion in 2023. The industry group said consumers made the holiday a priority, despite recent economic uncertainty.

Here’s what else is going on in retail this week:

In policy: US Customs and Border Protection last week said the first round of tariff refunds is expected to be sent out electronically on Tuesday. The announcement comes three months after the Supreme Court overturned the Trump administration's legal justification for drastically hiking tariff rates—a policy that continues to sow uncertainty across the global economy. In April, the agency opened a portal to process reimbursement requests from importers.

Keep reading here.—AV