Anua Brand Guidelines: The Founders’ 2019 Heartleaf Toner Brand From Seoul

Two university friends and a brand builder.

Anua is a Korean skincare brand launched in 2019 by The Founders Inc., a Seoul company that describes itself as a brand builder. Vogue reported in November 2026 that The Founders was set up in 2017 by Changju Lee, now co-founder and chief executive, and Seonhyeong Yi, whose paths crossed at Seoul National University, and that the company is self-funded. Korean press calls the pair co-chief executives. Etoday reported in May 2025 that they studied economics and anthropology, worked together at a biotechnology company after graduating and decided to start a business from there, and that neither came from the cosmetics industry.

Anua was not their earliest venture. Vogue said the founders began with Project 21, a pet lifestyle brand, and the company also runs Fromlabs, a haircare label; Etoday said Anua accounts for most of the group’s business. The brand’s in-house team remains in Seoul, Vogue reported, while a US subsidiary, Anua Inc., works from Los Angeles, according to The Korea Times in July 2026.

The brand runs two main websites: anua.com for its global shop, to which anua.us now redirects, and anua.kr for Korea. The village of Anua in American Samoa is an unrelated namesake, and so are the many other businesses that use the words “The Founders” in their names.

One plant, then a range.

The brand was built on one plant. Anua’s debut product was the Heartleaf 77% Soothing Toner, made with heartleaf, the herb Houttuynia cordata, known in Korean as eoseongcho. Chosun Biz dated the toner to 2019, and Etoday listed it in 2025 among the brand’s top sellers alongside the Heartleaf Pore Control Cleansing Oil and the Heartleaf 77 Clear Pad. The word “Heartleaf” still opens many of its product names, and the number 77 recurs across that original line.

The range then widened. Vogue traced the brand’s turn beyond heartleaf to a Niacinamide 10% + TXA 4% Serum, followed by an Azelaic Acid 10% Serum, launched in December 2024, and a PDRN line including a cream and a hyaluronic acid serum. Later, Vogue said, the brand made a milder version of its Heartleaf Cleansing Oil, with fewer ingredients, after customer feedback. Its product names follow a consistent pattern: an ingredient, often with a percentage, and then the format.

Etoday described how the company develops products. It works back from customer interviews and review analysis, an approach it calls reverse design, and it keeps its range narrow, putting resources into a few core products rather than adding many. For the TXA serum, Etoday reported, the company chose pink as the product’s colour concept rather than the yellows and oranges common in that category.

Colour also shapes its events. In September 2026 Seoul Shinmun reported that Anua had held a two-day pop-up called Anua Vita Station at Toronto’s Union Station, a yellow-led space built around its vitamin C line, to introduce a capsule mist developed for Sephora Canada, with a linked promotion at the Sephora store in the same station. The paper listed the rest of that vitamin C line as a Vita 10 serum, a Vita 10 sleeping cream and a Vita C serum mask.

Design and documentation.

The Korean skincare brands in this group introduce themselves through a small set of fixed elements: a short coined name, a plain wordmark, and product names built from a line name and a format, so that a toner, a cream and a pad from the same family share their first words. COSRX explains its name as “Cosmetics + Rx” and writes it in capitals; Dr.Jart+ glosses its name as “Doctor Joins Art” and, in a 2018 redesign by Pentagram, turned the plus sign into a mark for its different lines.

Export shapes how these brands appear. Their online shops speak to buyers in more than one country, and the dated press tracks how two of them reached shelves abroad: Dr.Jart+ entered the American market with Sephora in 2011, according to English Wikipedia, and Chosun Biz reported in 2025 that COSRX was sold in about 150 countries. Campaigns follow the same route, from outdoor screens in Times Square to K-pop ambassadors named in a launch.

Several have been bought by larger groups, and this guide describes those deals plainly, by date and stake. Amorepacific took a 38.4% stake in COSRX in 2021 and moved to 93.2% in 2023; Estée Lauder invested in Have & Be, the company behind Dr.Jart+, in 2015 and completed its purchase in December 2019. Where a brand remains independent, the guide says so only where a dated source does.

Each entry draws on corporate pages for founders, owners and export markets, and on dated independent press for anything beyond the company’s own word. Product lines are named as the companies publish them; the guide does not describe what the products do, and the palettes and typefaces shown are an unofficial interpretation rather than any brand’s own.

Online, then shelves.

Anua grew online before it reached shops. Chosun Biz reported in August 2025 that the brand began selling abroad in 2021, and The Korea Times said it debuted in the United States in 2022. It joined the online stores of Ulta Beauty in October 2024 and Boots in December 2024, Chosun Biz said, and the Indian beauty platform Nykaa in July 2025. It reached Ulta’s physical shops in February 2025, according to Vogue, and by July 2026 The Korea Times reported it was sold in all 1,500 Ulta stores in the United States. Vogue also listed Sephora, Selfridges and Boots among its stockists and reported a rollout to 40 Space NK stores in September 2026, alongside summer pop-ups at Selfridges in London, Birmingham and Manchester. In June 2026 it held its Dew on the Go pop-up in New York for the PDRN line, Vogue said. As of May 2025, Etoday said, the brand was sold in about 160 countries.

Its campaigns have grown with it. On 1 June 2026 Anua named Kendall Jenner as its global brand ambassador for the PDRN Collagen Glow Facial Serum Spray, The Korea Times reported, and she attended its pop-up in New York’s SoHo district that month. Vogue described a year-long campaign tied to the Netflix animated film K-Pop Demon Hunters, with a short film by the director Kylie Kang and 48-hour pop-ups at two Ulta stores in Los Angeles, in Santa Monica and Westwood, in October 2026. Its chief marketing officer for North America, Michelle Miller, joined in April 2026, Vogue said, and the brand calls itself “digitally native.”

For a design guide, Anua shows how a brand can grow from one plant into a range with its own colour codes, such as a pink concept for one serum and a yellow pop-up for its vitamin line. Compare Sephora, one of its stockists, and Torriden, another Korean skincare brand. For this guide we use a heartleaf green, a petal pink and a warm sand with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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