For the last few weeks we have been seeing TikTok videos telling us about the new Korean Beauty and Pop store that would open in March in London’s Piccadilly Circus, the “Ultimate Store in Central London for KPop and KBeauty Fans”. So we just had to go check it out, here is what we found…
When we were in Korea last year (we may have mentioned that before!) we attended a Street Festival and Dance Challenge event run in association with KPop Playground, it was one of the highlights of our time, so when we saw the TikToks for this new store opened with KPop Playground we were eager to see it. The advert told how the new dedicated store in London’s West End was the biggest and the best, with a massive range of KBeauty products to rival an Olive Young as well as a massive Pop store with Every Artist you could name all in one place.
We got to Haymarket on Monday lunchtime and walked up and down looking but couldn’t see any new shop fronts with KPop Playground on it was only when we stopped to search the app that we spotted a banner with the purple logo and a sign saying ‘Downstairs’ inside one of those crappy London Souvenir shops. You head past the rows of plastic Big Bens and hats saying I Love London, down a flight of stairs and into the pink and purple basement.
Past a pair of Staffers arguing over which video to play, the 5 year old SF9 track or the 7 year out of date Ateez track, which could have been cool if they were really into 3rd gen KPop but their argument was over which ‘New Track’ they had just heard of to play! I guess its good they are backtracking… or maybe we got the wrong end of the stick.
What of the new massive store? Well it’s about the size of a kid’s bedroom honestly about 8m square, two rows of shelves with a few half decent beauty products, a few face masks and a few brands of toners and face creams. I suppose the selection though meagre was the most talked about products recently – however at full price and some – The Some by Mi Retinol Face Masks were priced at £25.99 whereas you can buy online for £12/15 so there is a fairly hefty hike on the price.
Under the air vent of the shop above were 3 glass shelves with about 50 Albums of Girl Groups and a really odd selection at that. Not the hoards of every KPop artist you have ever heard of as advertised on Tiktok and Instagram. We were expecting something akin to the shops in Myeongdong, that were packed to the ceilings with no exaggeration with 5,000 albums. This however had only a handful of Twice, Itzy, Nmixx and IVE all from random timeframes and no theme or options on editions.
Round to the side were the Boy Groups – A Stray Kids album and Enhypen from 5 years ago, a fairly extensive selection of the new album from ZeroBaseOne (and about a dozen copies of each member at that) SF9’s last album and A whole shelf of BTS albums from ten to five years ago, oh and Jin’s last album! There was one Seventeen album but the separate members were marked on each – which means someone must have opened them at some point but there was only 3 of the 13 members.
There was no Soloists or lesser known groups.
All the albums were approximately the same price ratio as Sokollab – ie about £40-90 each.
We suspect they made have bought the old stock from another failed KPop shop like when KPop Street had a store, because the stock seemed rather random and outdated.
There was some accessories which were fairly reasonable prices like Keyrings, Bookmarks, Jewellery etc
That was it, oh they also had Midsy and Once Plushies at £40 each and a Few Light-sticks at 3 or 4 times the Korean prices. The other half of the basement floor was taken over by a Photo booth with a large selection of props and hats etc and Life4cuts special edition where you can pose with your favorite Kpop groups, which change fairly often. Then 2 Norabang (Korean’s Karaoke) booths. A small room which we think is for the beauty procedures.
The only thing that did look good – was the fact they hold a Photocard swap in store which was free to attend and participate in – take notes Sokolabs!
So we climbed the stairs back up to the street and headed off in search of coffee, because there was nothing worth our time or money in there. The claims of the ‘Best KShop in London’ are… well…. possible! Given how awful all the KPop Shops in Central London are! They all charge way too much for a skant selection of albums and too much for other merch, you are still better off buying direct from Korea, if you can find a K-Addy (Korea Postal Address) to send a bulk order to in Korea and then ship that to London. Get your beauty products from Wishtrend, Yesstyle and Olive Young and the albums from KPopalbums.com, both of which we have reviewed on this blog in the past and we recommend – certainly over this waste of time of a shop!
So don’t bother with London’s Ultimate K Shopping Experience.
Well there you go, another place we visited so you don’t have to! Have you been yourselves, what did you think? Do you know of a better Store in London to visit? Let us know in a comment!
Climbing Moss 