How Karmart rode the Thai beauty wave: with Jackson Wang and Lisa from Blackpink as fans and support from Kim Kardashian favourite Patrick Ta, the beauty retailer is setting its sight on the world
Wongwiwat and Pongwiwat Theekhakhirikul discuss starting as a family business, Trump tariffs, and offering premium products
At the nexus of this rapid evolution is Karmart, a multi-brand beauty retailer akin to Sephora which, in its 15-plus years in the business, has grown to become an international company. It’s brought to the world locally made, widely recognised brands like Cathy Doll, known for its sunscreens and cosmetics.
“We started off at the right time, starting this business unit back in 2009 as Thai consumers started to know more about make-up,” says 42-year-old Wongwiwat Theekhakhirikul, Karmart’s managing director. “Now we have a total of 21 brands in our company, of which nine are our own” – including Cathy Doll.
Though Karmart is now a public company listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand, it is in several ways still a family business, having been first established in 1982 by Wongwiwat’s father, Wiwat Theekhakhirikul, long before the company pivoted to cosmetics. In the decades since, Wongwiwat and his brother Pongwiwat, 41, have helped transform a once modest electronics company into a beauty powerhouse, waving the flag for Thailand worldwide with a robust presence in over 30 countries.
Reasonably priced and largely intended for mass consumption, many of Karmart’s most famous brands and signature offerings come in premium-looking packaging for a fraction of the cost of popular beauty products from elsewhere in Asia. “This is the market that we’re targeting, because the majority of Thai people have relatively lower average income than Hong Kong or Taiwan,” says Wongwiwat.
The Thai beauty industry’s growth well outpaces that of Hong Kong, Taiwan and its Southeast Asian neighbours sans Indonesia, with revenues projected to reach US$7.1 billion in 2025, according to market research by Statista.
Wongwiwat points out how Thai spending on cosmetics is virtually on par with that of Indonesia, considering the country has over three times Thailand’s population. That’s not including Thailand’s impact on the neighbouring Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam, a portfolio that is key to Karmart’s expansion plans.