Shopping at Style Korean: The Ultimate Guide

If you’re a fan of K-beauty or simply on the hunt for quality skincare and beauty products, Style Korean can be a great one-stop shop for everything you need.

As a new customer at this popular Korean beauty retailer, I am excited to share my honest opinion with those who are yet to take the plunge and dare to shop at this retailer.

For those who have yet to check out Style Korean, this blog post serves as a comprehensive guide to everything you need to know about the retailer, from their unbeatable variety of products to their fast shipping options.

Keep reading to discover whether Style Korean should be your go-to destination for all things K-beauty.

What is Style Korean?

Style Korean is a Korean beauty retailer that has a massive selection of brands and products, making it a go-to destination for anyone in search of quality K-beauty products.

The company has a rich brand history with over 8 years of experience in the beauty scene and has gained a reputation for being a reliable source of high-quality skincare and beauty products.

One of the best things about shopping with Style Korean is their enormous selection of products, which boasts over 150 top brands and more than 7,000 different products.

Whether you’re hunting for the latest K-beauty must-have or searching for a reliable skincare staple, you’re guaranteed to find what you’re looking for with Style Korean. Pretty much true!

The variety of products they offer and the quality of their merchandise, which is carefully picked to meet the diverse needs of their customers is definitely what caught my attention as well. However, as with any new retailer, especially one that I was unfamiliar with, I knew that I had to place an order and report back to all of you whether all this is too good to be true or whether the retailer is worth the risk.

My experience with Style Korean

Website/ app

First of all, I must mention that their website and mobile app are great. Very user-friendly with easy navigation. Their website was really easy to use and allowed me to easily browse through their massive selection of brands and products.

I cannot believe that I need to mention this, but I started seeing more and more retailers that seem to have regressed in terms of user experience, so it was really nice to find a retailer with such an intuitive website and app.

Product prices

I have to admit that one of the reasons why I was so eager to place an order with the retailer was not just the great product selection, but also their prices. The retailer has some pretty incredible prices for many of their products and they always have some sort of promotion going on.

To find out whether the prices were still as great after shipping and custom taxes keep on reading. *wink

Placing the order

Placing the order was straightforward and very simple. I chose my desired items, added them to my basket and proceeded with the payment.

The payment options were quite varied: Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, EximBay, etc., which allowed me to make a secure payment without any hassle.

Shipping and delivery

First of all, Style Korean ships are pretty much all over the world. Their choice of shipping partner seems to be DHL which is great and perhaps the best choice for many of us, but as such shipping can also be quite expensive.

Don’t get discouraged yet. (there are many ways to save money which I will talk about in the next sections)

As I am writing this, I realised that this is going to be tricky as it seems that shipping prices start at vastly different values depending on location. For London shipping seems to start at $9.99 for parcels under 1kg (this weight also includes the box and extra packaging) while for my address shipping started at $36.97.

The more products I added or the heavier items I added, the shipping costs went up.

Despite this, I decided to give the retailer a chance. I will explain why in the next sections, once I get the general info out of the way as well as show you a simplified calculation to see whether I ended up better off shopping at Style Korean than I would have shopping somewhere else closer to home.

I admit that seeing the shipping costs I wanted to backtrack and I have several times. I never paid so much for shipping in my life. Well, except for parcel forwarding but those costs were usually covered weeks after placing the initial order with a retailer and also meant heavier parcels (10kg+). The biggest difference was that the money would leave my account at a later date and that made it feel sort of different than this.

However, I went ahead and placed an order with Style Korean nonetheless. Do I regret it? Spoiler alert: absolutely not.

Okay, so shipping for me was expensive sure. But having the parcel delivered by DHL meant not incurring any issues at customs and also getting fast delivery.

I placed my order on a Saturday evening during a period with many promotions going on at Style Korean. The parcel was shipped on Monday evening from Incheon (Seoul outskirts – main international airport area). On Tuesday morning I received an email from DHL to fill in the paperwork for my parcel.

I am not sure whether all of you will have to do this or if it is a country-specific thing. I always have to fill a declaration with the value, and use of my products (personal use/commercial) as well as provide a list of the products in my parcel together with a short description if the parcel arrives from outside the EU. There are very few exceptions to this for me, but never when it comes to DHL. The instructions are very clear on the DHL page you will receive a link if you need to take any more steps.

I also had the choice to choose whether DHL could represent me and pay the customs fees on my behalf or whether I wanted to pay them directly. On this occasion, I chose for DHL to pay the fees for me and for me to pay them a commission in return. I never ordered cosmetics from Asia before, well not to my current address and wanted to see the parcel arrive. Next time, I will pay directly (something I have not done before) so that I can skip the commission imposed by DHL which for me was around 10 USD + 2.5% or so of the value of the customs taxes.

I know this whole thing sounds scary, but it is very intuitive and easy once you do it the first time. I am accustomed to it by now, but I do have to admit that I hate it as well as wish my parcels would arrive without having to do any paperwork as they did when I was living in the UK. In the UK I never had to fill in any paperwork and just had to pay the fees to the Royal Mail as that is who usually delivered even my foreign parcels. There is nothing I can do and in the end, is better this way than having to go to the customs mail office which is open like 4 hours twice or so a week and struggle to retrieve my items. DHL is easy to pay for the extra convenience and not taking time off from work makes sense for me. Again, not every country is the same so unfortunately I cannot provide advice on this matter.

Okay, so after filling in the paperwork as customs clearance can start while the parcel is still in transit, I was informed that my parcel would arrive by Friday evening of the same week. I did not hold my breath as parcels from DHL stopped arriving by the estimated date ever since 2020.

The parcel arrived in my country on Thursday morning. It went through customs and then was taken to a DHL facility in the same city. Said city is the closest DHL hub to my location which is like 100km away from me. As expected, on Thursday evening the parcel was put on hold so that they could have an excuse not to deliver it on Friday. I came to expect this. While disappointing that I could not play with my new items and see them arrive safely at their destination, I was okay with it. The parcel was delivered on Monday.

Custom Taxes

As mentioned above, I did have to pay customs taxes of 19% of the value of the items in my parcel. The value is calculated as the price after discount + shipping costs though.

So no, orders from Style Korean are not DDP or delivery duties paid and the prices on the website do not include any VAT. They will be charged upon arrival in your country/ during the customs clearance event.

The Parcel

The parcel from Style Korean arrived in a small cardboard box. It was a classic brown box, nothing too exciting. The box had not been opened as far as I could tell during the customs clearance event.

The items inside were protected by more paper and no plastic was used unlike with orders from other retailers, more notably YesStyle.

No signature Style Korean wrapping paper was used or anything of the sort, but I was okay with it. The items arrived in one piece with absolutely no marking or issues. The items did have a bit of fine paper dust on them, but I was able to remove it with a damp tissue.

The items

The items from Style Korean that I ordered arrived in one piece with their packaging intact. Each product box was of great quality and with no markings. It did not make me wonder where the heck were the products held, you know what I mean? There was no “icky: factor or anything.

Most importantly though, all the items that I ordered are authentic Korean beauty products. All of them have a clear expiration date on them as well as they should and as is expected from all K-Beauty brands. However, what impressed me most was the fact that many of the items I ordered were just manufactured. Many have manufacturing dates from February and even March of this year so some products were less than 1 month old when they were shipped out to me.

What did I order?

Below you can find a list of all the items that I ordered.

As seen above, besides the 8 items that I ordered, I also received two gifts with the purchase. I was not expecting the two gifts with purchase to be honest as I did not pay attention to the offers as the many other deals distracted me. I was pleasantly surprised once I saw the two extra items being added to my basket at the final checkout step/ order review. The items were not added to my basket until after I choose my shipping adress and method as well as payment method.

Once I saw the items, as shown above, I was even more excited. Part of me was more excited about the Round Lab cream than I was about the items I actually picked.

This is on me. It turns out that the while the CosRX cream is indeed a 20ml cream, the Round Lab one is just a 2ml sample and not the 80ml jar. It was too good to be true however I had no way of knowing or did not want to know I guess. After placing my order I did check the gifts with purchase deals but the deal that it was showing me was the CosRX cream plus a Pyunkang Yul sample, not the Round Lab one. I only found out when I opened my parcel. I do not blame Style Korean, but I was a bit disappointed.

So how much did I pay for the products?

As I said, I did take advantage of several deals and signed up as a new member on the website.

New members of Style Korean can pick 1 product from a limited selection of 2-4 items which changes occasionally and get it for $1 with their first purchase. In addition, another benefit consisted of receiving a 5% discount code as well as $10 worth of reward points.

I did not end up using the 5% discount code as the items I picked were part of other offers and those discounts were higher. Luckily, my new member discount code is still valid until later this summer so I still have time.

The items I chose were already discounted but the discount code I was able to use reduced their prices further. I also used the $10 worth of points. As such, I ended up paying:

Above, you can see the price I paid for the products as well as the shipping directly to Style Korean. On top of this price, I also paid the custom taxes and the DHL commission (not mandatory) of $33.97. Thus the total amount spent on this order is $141.68.

Considering all the costs, was my order worth it?

In order to determine whether my order was worth it, I am going to do a simplified calculation below but firs I will convert the amoutn spent from USD to GBP. Not only most of you are reading this from the UK, but also want to compare the prices to those at a retailer I have used before, where possible.

As such, I spent a total of £112.67 on all “10” items. What I am doing below is a simplified calculation and not the most correct one at that, it would be more correct if I were to allocate the costs to each product in particular, but I do not think any of you really want to read all that so I will just take the total and divide it by 9 as one product is an actual sample and does not count. I will then compare that “price” to what it would have cost me to get the product from somewhere else.

Product	Price “Paid”	What it would cost?	Retailer	Difference
Pyunkang Yul Eye Cream (1ml X 50ea)	12.52	26	Pure Seoul	-13.48
ROUND LAB Moisutrizing Sun Cushion SPF 50+ PA++++	12.52	29.19	Little Wondrland EU	-16.67
Acropass Trouble Cure (skin cleanser 6ea+trouble cure 6 patches)	12.52	15	Pure Seoul	-2.48
Tiam Surprise B Patch (7mm x10ea + 10mm x 5ea + 12mm × 9ea)	12.52	3.4	YesStyle	9.12
TOCOBO Cotton Soft Sun Stick SPF50+ PA++++	12.52	17.9	Pure Seoul	-5.38
Be The Skin BHA+ Pore Zero Serum 30ml	12.52	20	The Beauty Corp	-7.48
KAHI Aqua Balm	12.52	38.99	Skin2Seoul	-26.47
JM Solution Water Luminous S.O.S Ringer Multi Balm	12.52	16.7	Style Korean (hard to get elsewhere – used current discount price)	-4.18
CosRX Oil-Free Ultra-Moisturizing Lotion 20ml	12.52	9.33	iHerb	3.19
Total	112.68	176.51		-63.83

Above I used the retailers I probably would have purchased the products from. I try to stick to well known retailer that I trust, but the thing is that some of the products are simply not available at such retailers.

Based on this calculation, I ended up saving 64 GBP. However, I know that the cost of shipping is different for every country so that would have a huge impact on the overall saving.

Had I had this parcel delivered to the UK and paid only 9.99 USD instead of the 36+ I did pay, I would have still saved a bit of money. Not as much, but still it would have made sense for me to place this order.

I do not want to go into more detail here as there are many factors to consider, but this can be a good way to think of your order and determine whether it is worth placing once.

The monetary value of this order may be impressive, but what truly sets shopping at Style Korean apart is the fact that many of these items are not easily obtainable in-store. This depends a lot on your location of course. I can find some of the items in local stores but not only do I not really trust those retailers but also the prices are very high. In addition, the chances of getting such fresh items are very slim.

As also shown above, some items are available at Pure Seoul for those of you living in the UK or having fewer issues with customs even if in the EU. I saw the products myself when in the store and was super tempted to get them but it was the prices that put me off. This is one of the reasons I came across Style Korean actually. I was looking to get some of the products I regretted not buying due to their high prices during my trip to London.

There are obviously many advantages and disadvantages and each of you needs to consider your position, but as a store overall, Style Korean truly impressed me. The quality of the items, their range of products and prices are all great and for me, it was worth it.

Summary

• Style Korean is a retailer with a huge variety of products, many of which you could struggle to find locally
• All products seem to be authentic
• Prices are great and there are many discounts running at all times
• Signing up s a member is worth the while as you can get 1 product for 1 USD plus additional benefits
• Shipping is super fast and the store delivers all over the word
• Custom taxes are not included

How to get the most out of your Style Korean order?

• Make sure to use all the discount codes you can find
• Keep an eye on the ongoing promotions
• Sign up as a member and make use of the points system
• Compare prices with other stores or countries before placing your order
• Keep your eyes peeled for 3 for 3.33 USD each promotion – this is in exchange for honest reviews on social media and you get a selection of products monthly from which you can pick
• Follow BlushSuede for more tips and special offers as I will definitely showcase them 🙂

Frequently asked questions

Is Style Korean legit?

Yes, Style Korean is an established retailer and has been in business for over 8 years.

Where does Style Korean ship its products from?

South Korea

Are Style Korean products authentic?

Yes.

Is it worth ordering from Style Korean?

This depends on a few factors such as your location and what type of products you are looking for. In my opinion, Style Korean offers a great selection of products and they are usually fairly priced. Furthermore, the store has many discounts and promotions running in order to provide customers with even better deals. Plus. many of their products may not be available locally.

Does Style Korean offer free shipping?

Currently, free shipping is only available for beauty orders only and only for select countries. To read the up to the date information access this link.

Is there a Style Korean app?

Yes, you can download the app from Google Play Store and App Store. But you can just as easily shop from their website.

What is worth becoming a Style Korean member?

Yes, becoming a Style Korean member is worth it as you get access to additional discounts and freebies. The most popular membership benefit is the ability to purchase one product for 1USD which is an awesome deal!

You may also get one 5% member coupon discount and 10 USD worth of points.

Additionally, once a member you start getting points for your order and for any reviews you may write.

I hope this article has been helpful in deciding whether ordering from Style Korean is right for you. If you have any more questions, please let me know in the comments section below.

In conclusion, I had a great experience shopping at Style Korean and would highly recommend it as a store

Have you ever shopped at Style Korean? What was your experience like?

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