K-beauty + J-beauty brand portals, COSRX, Beauty of Joseon, Hada Labo authorized distribution?

The K-beauty + J-beauty retailer model on Magento uses multi-website setup: one Magento instance, multiple storefronts (one per brand), shared customer + inventory tables.

Architecturally:

• Website per brand, cosrx.yourstore.com, beauty-of-joseon.yourstore.com, etc. Each gets its own Hyvä theme, hero, brand story, taxonomy. Customer logs in once, sees their orders across all brands.
• Shared catalog with brand attribute, SKUs are tagged with the source brand. Storefronts filter the catalog to their brand only.
• Per-brand admin user, the COSRX team gets admin access scoped to their brand only. Hyvä + Magento role-based ACL handles this natively.

Korea/Japan-specific build details:

• INCI transliteration, ingredient names need Korean → English INCI mapping (e.g. “센텔라 아시아티카 추출물” → “Centella Asiatica Extract”). I use a custom attribute with both fields populated.
• Different ingredient bans per region, e.g. methylene-bis-benzotriazolyl tetramethylbutylphenol is OK in Korea/Japan, flagged in California Prop 65. Need per-region SKU visibility rules.
• Shipping from Asia, HS-code + duty pre-calc at checkout via Easyship, Zonos, or Passport Shipping. Korean brands love Easyship; Japanese brands lean Zonos.

Authorized distribution agreements are the legal gate, not the tech. Once signed, the Magento setup is 3-5 weeks per added brand.