Our First Import: K-Beauty, Container Ships, and Curated Kits: From glue dots to global shipping — the making of our first Spa Night Kits.

Before we ever held a single product in our hands, we mapped it all out on paper — what a full 6-step skincare routine might look like for someone just starting their journey. We drafted kit themes like we were naming signature cocktails: Ultra Marine, Nourishing Glow, Gentle Detox, Calming Essence. Each one had a vibe, a purpose, a feeling. Then came the puzzle of filling them.

Enter: the wild world of Korean wholesale websites.

We spent late nights clicking through endless product listings, half of which were beautifully effective skincare — the other half? Slightly unhinged translations like “Milky Piggy Cream” and “10! The maximum number of human fingers,” (which, for the record, was meant as a bold claim about product effectiveness… we think). We’d scroll, laugh, squint, Google-translate, and cross-reference reviews until we landed on the good stuff — the ones we could stand behind.

Eventually, we placed our first big order. And then… we waited.

For a month.

And the whole time, we kept imagining that box — our box — floating somewhere on a massive container ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. There’s something surreal about realizing your dream is literally bobbing across the sea. We’d look at photos of shipping ports and joke, “Think our jelly masks are in that one?”

No customs drama for us, thankfully — our shipper handled the hard parts. But when that box finally arrived, it felt like opening the door to a whole new chapter.

We unboxed every item by hand — masks, serums, jellies, ampoules — and spread them out across the table like a treasure haul. Then the real work started: hand-assembling each Spa Night Kit. We matched products to their theme, wrote our own step-by-step instruction cards, and sealed everything together with way too many glue dots (seriously, they were everywhere).

They weren’t perfect. Some kits had crooked labels. Some glue dots popped off in transit. But they were ours. And when we brought them to our very first pop-up, people got it immediately. A full, themed skincare night — in one cute, affordable pouch. No guesswork. No overwhelm. Just care made simple.

Those kits are still a hit at every event. And every time someone picks one up and says, “This is such a good idea,” we think back to that floating box, the jelly mask spreadsheets, and the night we laughed ourselves to tears over a cream named after piglets.

That’s where it all began. A shipping container. Some glue dots. And a whole lot of heart.