Banila Co Brand Guidelines: The F&F Cosmetics Brand Behind Clean It Zero

A fashion company’s cosmetics brand.

Banila Co is a South Korean cosmetics brand launched in 2005 by the fashion company F&F, KED Global, the English-language service of The Korea Economic Daily, reported in March 2023. F&F, launched in 1992, grew through apparel licences that include Discovery Expedition and MLB, KED Global reported in 2021. Korean Wikipedia says Banila Co opened its first store in Seoul’s Myeongdong shopping district in 2005, and describes it as the road-shop brand of F&CO, a company set up as a subsidiary of F&F to run a cosmetics business.

The cosmetics company later moved out of the listed fashion group. Chosun Biz reported in September 2023 that F&CO had originally been wholly owned by F&F and that in early 2009 F&F’s chairman, Kim Chang-soo, took over all of its shares, citing its low profitability. The paper described F&CO as a family company that sits outside the F&F Holdings group, with Kim registered as its chief executive. KED Global described F&CO in March 2023 as wholly owned by Kim and said that Seung Beom Drake Kim, F&F’s chief technology officer, also led F&CO as its chief operating officer.

F&F itself has been restructured since. KED Global reported in November 2021 that the fashion company had been split from its parent, now F&F Holdings, and relisted on the Korea Exchange that year. Banila Co therefore sits beside the group rather than inside it: a cosmetics brand created by a fashion company, now run by a company owned by that fashion company’s chairman.

Base makeup and a cleansing balm.

Korean Wikipedia presents Banila Co as a stylish cosmetics brand focused on base makeup and lists among its main products the It Radiant CC Cream, the Clean It Zero series, the Two Kisses Dual Tint and the Seoul Foxtail Mega Volume Mascara. It says the brand ran 98 stores in Korea as of May 2016. By September 2023, Chosun Biz wrote, Banila Co shops had become harder to find than before, though the paper recalled that the brand had once drawn a following for products from primers to colour makeup. Korean Wikipedia also says that it entered China in 2009 and opened a standalone brand shop in Harajuku, Tokyo, the same year; and that it followed with the Philippines and Taiwan in 2015 and Malaysia in 2016. The article says Banila Co applied the trend-conscious, eye-catching design of F&F’s fashion labels to cosmetics.

Clean It Zero, a cleansing balm, is the line most often attached to the name abroad. The Guru, a Korean business news site, wrote in August 2026 that Banila Co had built recognition in global markets with the Clean It Zero cleansing balm, and in November 2025 that in Japan the line was sold through drugstores, variety shops and online malls.

Base makeup is the other half of the range. The Guru reported in August 2025 on week-long Banila Co pop-up stores at the @cosme flagship shops in Tokyo and Osaka, built around the Romantic Blush Lip & Cheek, a product for lips and cheeks shown in 20 shades at the pop-ups, with the Prime Primer Classic also on display. In August 2026 the same site reported the launch of the Covericious Ultimate White Cushion Air on the Japanese marketplace Qoo10, a lighter version of the existing Covericious Ultimate White Cushion.

Pop-ups have also carried K-pop names. In September 2025 The Guru reported on a Banila Co pop-up store on the second floor of Loft in Shibuya, Tokyo, from 17 to 30 September, fronted by Jeonghan of the boy band Seventeen and the girl group BabyMonster. The paper said two Romantic Blush Highlighter shades, until then sold only at the brand’s flagship store in Seongsu, Seoul, were offered there, and that the Shibuya event followed the @cosme pop-ups of August.

Packaging is used as a seasonal device. In November 2025 The Guru reported four limited-edition package designs for the Covericious Ultimate White Cushion, named Jelly Honey Macaron, Jelly Soft Mint, Metallic Glitter and Metallic Mirroring, announced to mark the brand’s arrival in a new Loft store in Shinjuku, Tokyo.

Design and documentation.

Korean beauty brands tend to present themselves through the groups that own them as much as through their own names. Two companies own many of the labels in this guide. Amorepacific, whose history page dates its founding company, Pacific Chemical, to 1945, lists brands including Sulwhasoo, Laneige and Innisfree on its corporate website. LG H&H owns lines such as The History of Whoo, Sum 37 and O HUI, according to the Korea Times in 2023. Other names covered here are run by separate companies, and each guide states its owner as dated sources give it.

The companies publish a good deal about themselves. Corporate history pages give launch years, founders and owners, and brand pages set out philosophies in the companies’ own words; those claims are attributed in each guide rather than repeated as fact. Where a launch date differs between a company and the press, both versions are given.

Much of the visual identity is set out in shops. Korean trade and daily press have reported flagship stores in detail: a lantern-themed building in Gangnam, a hanok store in Bukchon, a glass-walled visitor house among Jeju’s tea fields. Logo changes are reported as news too, with new wordmarks, colours and packaging announced to the press and rolled out across products, advertising and store interiors.

Export markets shape the story. Brands covered here have opened stores in China, Hong Kong, Australia and North America, and some later closed them; the Korea Herald, Korea Times and Korea JoongAng Daily have covered each move. Campaigns often pair a named range with a celebrity ambassador or a cultural partner, and each guide names those only as dated reports do.

More than one brand.

F&CO has added brands around Banila Co. In November 2019 iNews24 reported that the company had launched Curly Studio, a brand dedicated to mascara, and described F&CO as the company behind the skincare brand Banila Co and the makeup brand B by Banila. Korean press reports on the company’s activity in Japan consistently describe F&CO as an F&F affiliate and write the brand name in capitals, as BANILA CO.

F&F has also gone into cosmetics directly, separately from F&CO. KED Global reported in March 2023 that F&F had launched MLB Beauty in China in September 2022, selling online through Tmall and Weibo, with a cushion foundation in a leather case bearing the MLB logo, and that F&F hoped the cosmetics would benefit from the awareness of its MLB clothes, hats and sneakers in China.

For a design guide, Banila Co shows how a fashion group’s habits, from seasonal packaging to pop-up stores, can be carried into cosmetics. Compare Etude, an Amorepacific makeup brand, and Tonymoly, another Korean road-shop brand of the 2000s. For this guide we use a sherbet pink, a berry and a plum ink with a geometric sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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