Maycoders connects international buyers with Korean cosmetic manufacturers to create K-beauty.

Surge in customers from Thailand, Australia, and beyond

Expanding into affordable, high-quality lifestyle goods beyond cosmetics

On TikTok, a Filipino influencer with over 400,000 followers enthusiastically highlights the benefits of a wrinkle-improving serum while emphasizing that it is “Made in Korea.” In another video, boxes full of Korean cosmetics are proudly displayed. This influencer is a power seller in the Philippines, selling her own branded Korean cosmetics online.

She built her brand through the K-Beauty manufacturing and distribution platform startup Maycoders. Along with her, more than 2,300 K-Beauty “evangelists” across six countries — including Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Australia, the U.S., and Canada — are creating and importing “Made in Korea” cosmetics through the Maycoders platform and selling them locally. These are foreign “co-deoks” (cosmetic enthusiasts) who are passionate about Korean beauty.

At the center of this is Choi Sae-mi (38), CEO of Maycoders. Ironically, before founding the company in 2020, she had no background in cosmetics. She was a “coding geek” who, since middle school, had built fan pages for her favorite singers. Even when starting her company, she relied solely on data to analyze the market.

“When I decided to start a business in consumer goods, I searched for the category of products made in Korea with the best value-for-money,” she said.

Choi concluded that Korean cosmetics offered far better quality and price compared to Japanese or French competitors, but the industry remained relatively weak in IT, making it a sector ripe for disruption.

Using IT, Maycoders built SEOUL4PM (a cross-border wholesale platform) and MAYK (a manufacturing matchmaking platform) to connect more than 9 million online sellers worldwide with Korea’s small and mid-sized cosmetics manufacturers.

Foreign sellers no longer need to visit Korea — they simply enter their desired product type, container, and brand name into the platform. Maycoders then matches them with a suitable Korean manufacturer.

Choi explained: “Major Korean ODM companies usually only accept orders of 20,000 units or more per product, but online sellers typically order only 1,000–2,000 units. This mismatch often prevents deals. By connecting them with vetted small manufacturers who can handle smaller runs, we solve this problem and focus on a small-quantity order platform for online sellers.”

As a developer-driven company, Maycoders digitized labor-intensive tasks such as sample production, contracts, and import/export procedures. This has reduced the time needed to launch a branded cosmetic product from 3–6 months to as little as 2 weeks.

Foreign sellers also surprise the company with their creativity in “Korean-style” branding.

• A Thai seller launched a brand called “The Seoulution” (a play on Solution and Seoul), which is now popular locally.

• A Singaporean seller released a product literally named “Hayan Nun Serum” (White Snow Serum) in Korean.

• In Malaysia, a brand called “Ippuni” (Pretty) has been launched.

Choi now plans to extend Maycoders’ business beyond cosmetics to other Korean consumer goods with strong value-for-money appeal.

“From our data, we see that many Korean lifestyle items — like socks — also have strong competitiveness in both price and quality. We’ll expand product categories while continuing to connect with diverse global buyers,” she said.

*This article was translated to English for International buyers. The original Korean article can be viewed here.