Beplain

Beplain is a South Korean skincare brand that positions itself as fragrance-free, genderless clean beauty for sensitive skin, built around transparent ingredient lists and reinterpreted traditional Korean botanicals. The company describes its work as combining "the power of traditional ingredients with cutting-edge science," with mung bean, matcha catechin, chamomile and centella asiatica (cica) recurring across its lineup. The brand is owned by Moments Company, a Seoul-based affiliate of Birdview, the operator of the Korean beauty-review app Hwahae [3].

The brand sells through multiple channels: it runs a global direct-to-consumer store at beplainglobal.com, is stocked in Korea via Olive Young and Hwahae.

Sources disagree on Beplain's founding year. The K-beauty specialist Hey K-Beauty dates the brand to 2018 [3], while the editorial outlet AmoreCosmetics records it as "a Korean beauty brand that was founded in 2019" [6]; the two figures plausibly distinguish a corporate founding from a retail-market launch. The brand's own About and homepage pages do not state a founding year, and the names of its founders are not publicly recorded in the available sources.

According to the company, the name "Beplain" is meant to convey a "plain (general) feeling" intended to span generations and genders, with a representative stating that "genderless and clean beauty are our key strategies" [3]. The first products — the Greenful pH-Balanced Cleansing Foam and the Cicaful Ampoule — were developed from customer insights gathered through Hwahae, which Beplain describes as having an exclusive partnership with the platform.

Beplain frames its products as gentle but effective, aimed at sensitive and barrier-compromised skin. Its stated mission is to "solve skin concerns and inspire confidence by reinterpreting traditional ingredients with a modern twist," and its tagline is "From nature, back to nature." The company says everything for the skin "should be stress-free," and emphasises fragrance-free formulation, transparent ingredients and sustainable packaging across its marketing.

The retailer-editorial site Skinorea characterises Beplain as having "pioneered the clean beauty movement in Korea" [4]. The brand sits in the indie, ingredient-led tier of K-beauty, with messaging directed at consumers who scrutinise formulas and prefer gender-neutral products.

Beplain organises its range partly by hero ingredient, with collections built around mung bean and matcha catechin, alongside milk ceramide, niacinamide (cited at 5%) and peptides. Several products lead with high concentrations of a single botanical: the Cicaful Ampoule is described as containing 84% centella asiatica extract with chamomile and rice ferment filtrate, the Chamomile pH-Balanced Toner as 80.6% French chamomile extract at a low pH of 5.5, and the pH-Balanced Cleansing Foam as containing 33% mung bean extract [3].

Two products account for much of the brand's domestic recognition. The Cicaful Ampoule reportedly ranked first in Hwahae's essence/serum/ampoule category for several months and placed second in the 2019 Hwahae Beauty Awards; the cleansing foam was ranked the top cleansing foam on both Hwahae and Olive Young [3]. Skinorea states the mung bean line has "won over 20 beauty awards across major platforms in Korea" [4].

The brand presents environmental coexistence as a core value, stating it is "committed to coexistence and balance, living in harmony with all life on Earth." Reported sustainability measures include reef-safe sunscreens and box packaging made from sugarcane bagasse, a biodegradable material, to reduce plastic use [4]. AmoreCosmetics reports that Beplain avoids artificial perfumes and keeps "more than 20 allergens" out of its products.

The brand's cruelty-free and vegan positioning is partly contested. AmoreCosmetics states Beplain has "banned animal testing from their production process" [6], but the ethics review ConsciousBunny describes it as "currently unclear whether or not Beplain is truly cruelty-free," noting the brand holds no organisational certification [5]. AmoreCosmetics also observed that the company removed references to "vegan" from its social media. ConsciousBunny nonetheless describes the products as "100% vegan," reports that the Cicaterol series specifically is "100% EVE vegan-certified," and states the products are manufactured in South Korea.

Beplain is operated by Moments Company, an affiliate of Birdview, which owns and runs the Hwahae review app — a platform Skinorea describes as having over 10 million active users [4]. Hey K-Beauty reports that the brand recorded annual revenue of about 2.3 million US dollars in 2019, with roughly 10% drawn from overseas markets including the United States, China, Japan and Singapore [3].

Beplain is active. It operates a live global direct-to-consumer site shipping to a set of US states and through Amazon, maintains Instagram (@beplain_global) and TikTok (@beplain.us) accounts, and is distributed across Korea and the US.