Medicube Brand Guidelines: APR’s 2016 Skincare Brand, Toner Pads and the AGE-R Devices

A 2014 Seoul company and its second cosmetics brand.

Medicube is the flagship brand of APR, a Seoul beauty company founded in 2014 by its chief executive, Kim Byung-hoon, The Korea Times reported in December 2023. APR’s own milestone list dates the incorporation of the company, and the launch of its cosmetics brand Aprilskin, to October 2014. It gives July 2016 as the month Medicube was launched, describing it as a “beauty solution” brand.

Medicube was one of several brands the company started in quick succession. APR says it launched the inner-beauty brand Glam.D in December 2016, the street-fashion label Nerdy in April 2017, the perfume and lifestyle brand Forment in May 2017 and the instant photo-booth brand Photogray in August 2017. Hankyung Business, the business magazine of the Korea Economic Daily group, gives the same years in an August 2025 profile and presents the spread as a decision by Kim not to rely on cosmetics alone. In December 2023 The Korea Times listed April Skin, Medicube, Glam.D, Nerdy and Photogray among APR’s businesses; the fashion label now appears on APR’s website as NDY.

The company looked abroad early. Hankyung Business reported that APR formally entered the United States, Japan and China in 2017, three years after it was founded, and began selling Medicube and its other beauty brands on Amazon. At APR’s listing press conference in February 2024, Kim said the company had gone directly into the US, China, Japan and other markets since 2018 and had built its own distribution, The Asia Business Daily reported. APR’s timeline lists subsidiaries in China and Japan in 2017, in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore in 2018, in the United States in 2019 and in Malaysia in 2021.

APR gives its address as Lotte World Tower in Seoul’s Songpa district, and The Korea Times photographed Kim at the company’s headquarters in the tower in September 2023.

Toner pads, then a line of home devices.

An early Medicube product was a toner pad. Hankyung Business reported that APR launched Medicube’s Zero Pore Pad, cotton pads soaked in toner, in March 2017, shortly before the brand went on sale on Amazon and at a time when several Korean companies were starting to sell the format. The magazine credited the company with widening the line rather than leaning on a single product, much as it later did with devices.

The second strand is hardware. In March 2021 Medicube launched AGE-R, a line of home beauty devices, starting with the handheld Derma EMS Shot, according to both APR and Hankyung Business; The Asia Business Daily also dates the AGE-R launch to 2021, and The Korea Times called Medicube APR’s “beauty device brand” in 2023. In December 2021, the magazine reported, APR signed partnerships with two specialist manufacturers, the electronics and parts maker EMtech and the medical-device maker Eazytem. It released three new AGE-R devices in 2022, and by July 2025 the range ran to 11 products.

APR then brought more of the work in-house. The company dates its device research centre, ADC, to September 2022; Hankyung Business reported that a dedicated device research team of about 30 people was set up in January 2023, and The Asia Business Daily gave January 2023 for the opening of the APR Device Center. APR lists the completion of its device plant, APR Factory, in July 2023, the Booster Pro, made in that plant, in October 2023, and a second plant combining device production with an integrated logistics centre in May 2024. In February 2024 The Asia Business Daily reported that the second factory was being built in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, and that the listing proceeds were mainly earmarked for device technology and production facilities.

Later AGE-R names on APR’s timeline include the Ultra Tune 40.68 in May 2024, the High Focus Shot in September 2024, a vibrating cleanser in July 2025 and the Booster V Roller in December 2025. In September 2024 the company also says it began producing its own PDRN and PN ingredients and opened a third campus of APR Factory.

Korean beauty, from conglomerates to start-ups.

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.

A listed parent and a brand sold far beyond Korea.

APR listed on the main board of the Korea Exchange, the KOSPI, in February 2024. The Korea Times reported in December 2023 that the company had filed its securities registration statement with Shinhan and Hana Securities running the underwriting, aiming to open the year’s KOSPI listings. The Asia Business Daily covered Kim’s IPO briefing at the Conrad Hotel in Yeouido, Seoul, on 13 February 2024, and the Korea Herald confirmed the February 2024 debut in June 2026.

Medicube’s reach outside Korea has widened since then. Hankyung Business reported that APR moved from online sales into shops in the United States, joining the beauty chain Ulta Beauty in May 2025, and that it made its CES debut in 2024 and returned in 2025. APR says it opened a brand flagship store, Space Dosan, in August 2024 and a Medicube flagship in Seongsu, Seoul, in December 2025. In June 2026 the Korea Herald reported Kim’s invitation to a fireside chat at the Business of Fashion’s beauty forum in Napa Valley, California, and described Medicube as APR’s flagship brand, run alongside Aprilskin and Forment.

The identity APR documents in detail is its corporate one rather than Medicube’s. Its website describes the APR symbol as several overlapping rings that come together into a single circle, with vertical and horizontal lock-ups and a red-and-black colour system; within that system the AGE-R devices are presented as a sub-brand of Medicube.

For a design guide, Medicube shows how one brand can stretch from a skincare range to a family of devices under a single name. Compare Amorepacific, the long-established Korean beauty group, and COSRX. For this guide we use a deep rose, a soft blush and an ink grey with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Medicube’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.