Beauty Creator Risabae's 'TWO SLASH FOUR', Deepening Deficit Despite Top-Line Growth in 2025

The makeup brand 'TWO SLASH FOUR' led by mega beauty creator Risabae achieved remarkable sales growth in 2025, but its deficit was also found to have widened significantly.

TWO SLASH FOUR's sales in 2025 were approximately 5.8 billion won, surging more than 2.4 times compared to about 2.3 billion won in 2024, achieving significant top-line growth. On the other hand, it recorded an operating loss of about 1.56 billion won, with the deficit expanding nearly three times compared to the previous year. Compared to achieving the BEP (operating profit of 50 million won) on sales of 1.5 billion won in 2023, just one year after its establishment, the sales have more than tripled, but the loss margin has grown.

[Source: TWO SLASH FOUR Website]

The main background for the sales growth in 2025 is cited as active distribution channel expansion, including entering the Olive Young online mall and 440 offline stores. Although it succeeded in broadening its contact points with the public through a major platform, profitability deteriorated significantly as selling, general, and administrative (SG&A) expenses surged in tandem with the scale of sales growth. In fact, SG&A expenses, which were about 2.6 billion won in 2024, more than doubled to about 5.7 billion won in 2025.

The core causes of the sharp increase in SG&A expenses are analyzed to be the payment of commissions and salary increases following the entry into Olive Young, as well as massive advertising and promotional expenditures. Advertising and promotional expenses, which were around 1.2 billion won in 2024, increased to 3.2 billion won in 2025. Based on 2025 figures, with sales of 5.8 billion won and advertising expenses of 3.3 billion won, the ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) is at a level of about 175%, which is a low figure compared to the beauty industry average. The high dependence on advertising and poor marketing efficiency acted as the main factors in the expanding deficit.

TWO SLASH FOUR is a brand that started as and spun off from Amorepacific's in-house venture fostering program, 'Lean Startup'. From the beginning, it made a splendid debut by attracting Pre-Series A investments from leading venture capitals (VCs) such as Korea Investment Partners, We Ventures, and TBT Partners. In particular, considering that 2025 was generally a good year for the performance of cosmetics and beauty companies due to strong K-beauty exports, evaluations suggest that the performance so far is somewhat disappointing compared to the combined efforts of a mega creator with over 2 million subscribers, a large beauty company, and massive capital.

However, a positive signal is that it is successfully expanding its public awareness through Olive Young. As the cost-of-sales ratio rose to 27.7% in 2025 from a level of 14.5% in 2024, it is anticipated that a turnaround to surplus will be fully possible if they strictly manage the cost ratio in the future, increase sales based on the expanded awareness, and improve the excessive advertising expenditure structure to boost marketing efficiency. Attention is focused on whether it can overcome the financial bleeding from the initial channel expansion and move beyond the limits of a 'creator brand' to enter a stable profit-generating trajectory.