South Koreans flocking to Germany to buy budget DM products

We might all be jaded by a regular trip to DM to buy Balea Cremeseife, but some South Koreans are spending hundreds of won and travelling thousands of miles to get their hands on it. What's behind the craze? 

South Korean social media goes mad for DM

Budget products from DM are exploding in popularity among people from South Korea. The trend is largely being driven by South Koreans who live in, or are visiting Germany, shopping at DM and then posting videos of their purchases on the internet.

“Tourists’ hype around DM is a true phenomenon,” economist Thomas Roeb of the Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Seig told the Thüringer Allgemeine. “DM has a good reputation among many people in eastern Asia, particularly when it comes to skincare products and dietary supplements.”

According to Roeb, this is largely due to the fact that own-brand products sold at the drugstore are high quality and affordable compared to own-brand products from other toiletries and cosmetics chains across the world.

DM products are also sold on the Korean market

Certain products from DM have also been available on the Korean market for a number of years, DM representative Kerstin Erbe told the newspaper. DM partner Lotte Group distributes around 100 own-brand DM products in South Korea.

According to Erbe, DM Germany has to do little to make sure these 100 products sell, since the brands have all built up such a positive reputation on social media. So in demand are the DM products sold by Lotte Group in South Korea that many customers are buying them up to resell them on various online platforms.

Bringing in 12,4 billion euros in 2024, DM’s profits far outpace that of direct competitors. Rossmann made 9,9 billion euros in the same year. But it is unclear how much DM’s popularity in South Korea, which has a population of 52 million people, contributed to higher turnover.