Kelley Liu is taking Song of Skin further into physical retail, using a growing pop-up business as the foundation for a permanent New York flagship and the expansion of her own K-beauty brand, CelDot.

Liu — who has 1.4 million followers on TikTok and 1.2 million on Instagram — will bring Song of Skin, her K-beauty e-commerce and retail business, back to Los Angeles with a two-weekend pop-up running Oct. 8 to 11 and Oct. 15 to 18 at 8303 Melrose Avenue near West Hollywood.

“This L.A. pop-up is going to be our biggest space ever,” Liu said. “Our pop-ups are usually very condensed and small, so people don’t have that much room to walk….We want people to enjoy the space and enjoy just being with the brands from [South] Korea.”

The pop-ups have grown alongside the business. Song of Skin’s first three-day event in New York in October 2024 generated about $300,000, while its second L.A. pop-up weekend in September 2025 brought in $470,000. Song of Skin itself grew from $197,000 in revenue in 2022 to $8.5 million in 2025, according to figures provided by the company.

“My mom and I started with about $3,000, buying just three units of each product,” Liu said. “It was hard to sell even those three pieces in the beginning, until we did social media.”

Born and raised in Flushing, Queens, to a Chinese family, Liu developed an early interest in beauty, recalling spending hours painting her nails after school. Her interest in K-beauty deepened through summer trips to South Korea with her mother, when the two would return to New York with suitcases of skin care. During the pandemic, when those trips stopped, they began looking for a way to access Korean beauty products in the U.S., which eventually became Song of Skin.

“It’s me, my mom, and we have three people in-house that run everything,” Liu said of the company’s lean operation.

Song of Skin will open its first flagship on Nov. 20 at 33 Spring Street in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood, where Liu plans to carry harder-to-find Korean beauty labels and give a different brand a dedicated activation each month.

“The main goal really [is] having products that you can’t buy elsewhere,” she said, noting lesser-known brands like Fiorese alongside more established names including Celimax.

Her own brand, CelDot, will be part of the mix. The three-product lineup includes the $45 Diamond Glass Renewal Cream, $65 Liquid Lift Multi-Peptide Renewal Serum and $32 Diamond Micro Polish Enzyme Cleanser, all made in South Korea. Key ingredients across the range include epidermal growth factor, collagen and niacinamide to help smooth, firm and brighten, along with peptides and copper peptide to support elasticity and enzymes, mandelic acid, ectoin and ceramides to refine texture while supporting hydration and the skin barrier. The cream was soft-launched in May, followed by Liquid Lift, while the enzyme cleanser is set to launch in October. The complete collection will be available on celdot.com, songofskin.com and Amazon this month.

Liu said the brand began because she could not find a moisturizer that delivered the lasting “glass skin” finish she wanted without stickiness. Developing the formula took about a year and a half.

More broadly, she sees K-beauty moving toward a greater focus on ingredients and efficacy, as consumers become more educated and less driven by viral trends.

“A lot of the brands that I’m meeting with now are putting a heavy emphasis on the type of ingredients they’re choosing for their product,” she said. “The consumer is getting more educated on what’s good and what’s bad.”

She has also noticed differences between markets: “I think a lot of people in L.A. are more conscious of the ingredients than New York. People in L.A. love to come in and buy based on ingredients.”

CelDot generated about $236,000 in net sales in its first four months and is targeting $550,000 to $600,000 in first-year sales, according to the company.

Looking ahead, Liu plans to expand Song of Skin into more markets.

“I want very boutique stores because I think that’s how I can bring really niche products to those markets,” she said, noting L.A., Texas, Canada and the U.K. “I want to keep it small.”