OliviaUmma's Hye Kim Shares Her Emerging K-Beauty Brand's Origin Story
Sometime in early 2023, when Hye Kim was driving to Palm Beach, her then-13-year-old daughter, Olivia, said six words that her mother would never forget. “‘You love beauty, and you’re Korean,’” Kim says with a laugh, recounting the moment her daughter suggested she start a beauty brand. “I was like, why didn’t I think that way?” That was precisely when OLIVIAUMMA — which translates to “Olivia’s mother” in Korean — was born.
The idea felt obvious in retrospect. As a child growing up in Korea, Kim would go to the jjimjilbangs, or spas, every Sunday with her own mother, watching her carefully apply yogurt and cucumber face masks. “I think every Korean probably has a similar experience,” she says. “Every town had that kind of sauna, and it’s not like a fancy thing. It’s very accessible. I think in the U.S., people see it as very privileged to take care of their skin or do self-care, but it’s not a special thing. Everybody talks about K-beauty now, but we grew up like this.”
Now she’s passing that same ritual down, spending weekends going to Pilates and doing their skin care together, hoping her daughter will one day look back on those moments the way she looks back on the Sundays spent with her own mother. “When we do something together that we have in common, we feel bonded and connected,” says Kim. That feeling of connection through a shared routine is, in many ways, the entire point of OLIVIAUMMA.
Kim is right about everyone talking about Korean beauty. The conversation surrounding it hasn’t stopped in the past 15 years and shows no signs of slowing down. According to NielsenIQ, K-beauty sales in the U.S. hit $2 billion in 2025, up 37% year over year. But Kim will tell you Korean beauty was never really a trend to begin with. “For Koreans, self-care and skin care have been part of our culture,” she says. “It was always there. For me, it’s natural that beauty is a part of life.”
After Olivia’s auspicious suggestion during that car ride, Kim got to work. (She had previously spent nearly a decade working in the fashion industry, importing emerging South American designers to Korea.) She contacted family friends who owned a well-known lab in Korea and flew there soon after. Naming the company after her daughter was an easy decision, and she’d already had the Instagram handle for years. As for the products themselves, Kim knew exactly what she wanted — and what she didn’t. After a decade living in Miami, with its art deco architecture and candy-colored palette, she had no interest in the minimalist, earth-toned aesthetic dominating so much of the beauty space. “I’m not a black-and-white person,” she says. “I’m very colorful — the way I dress, and I’m very expressive.” The goal was for OLIVIAUMMA to feel like something you’d actually want on your bathroom shelf, not just in your routine. “I want people to feel good when they look at them,” she says. “Every morning, every night — I want something that makes people happy.”
The brand officially launched in October 2023, starting with four products: the Glass Skin Tanghulu Shine Muscat Cleansing Foam, Blueberry Serum, and two lip glosses. When the first products arrived and were real, physical objects she could hold, Olivia was surprised. “She said, ‘I didn’t know you could actually do it,’” says Kim, laughing. The real gauntlet came when Olivia said she wouldn’t use the brand until it was sold at Sephora. “She was challenging me at every step,” says Kim. “But every time I showed her something real, she’d say, ‘Oh my God, you really did it.’” When OLIVIAUMMA finally launched at Sephora last March, Kim flew Olivia to New York for the occasion. “She was, like, shocked, and she said, ‘I’m really proud of you, you’re amazing.’” Kim now brings her daughter to Korea every summer, sometimes letting her sit in on meetings with manufacturers to show her what really goes on behind the scenes of making a beauty brand.
Kim’s approach has been anything but conventional. By most measures, Kim did everything backward — launching in the U.S. first, unknown and unaffiliated, rather than in Korea. But OLIVIAUMMA continues to grow — and if the brand’s Sephora trajectory is any indication, it’s just getting started. The Milky Resurfacing + Brightening Toner Pads became a viral sensation, selling out within three weeks of hitting Sephora shelves and spawning TikToks of customers frantically searching for them in stores. This summer, the brand will expand its Sephora presence with a coveted spot on the retailer’s “Next Big Thing Wall,” and they have two new product launches planned for later in the year that Kim remains tight-lipped about but is nevertheless excited.
Through it all, Kim is aware of what her story represents and who she wants it to reach. In a space that’s dominated by male founders backed by venture capital, she is something rare. “I’m an immigrant, and I’m a single mom,” she says. “I didn’t know anybody, but I wanted to show that there are new ways to build a beauty brand, and I hope that story can encourage other people, too.”
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