RIMAN
May 8, 2025
South Korea's Fair Trade Commission said on May 8, 2025 that it will refer RIMAN Korea, the company behind the Incellderm and Botalab cosmetics brands, and its former chief executive to prosecutors for violating the country's Door-to-Door Sales Act. The regulator also issued a corrective order.
According to the commission, RIMAN Korea operated as a multilevel marketing company from March 2020 through November 2024 while registered only as a sponsored door-to-door sales business, a category that carries lighter rules. The company built a sales organization of three or more levels, running from education-provider branch heads and agency heads down through power managers, managers, sales planners and planners, and paid branch and agency heads sponsorship allowances tied to the performance of every seller beneath them. Paying allowances beyond one level is not permitted for sponsored door-to-door sellers.
Sponsored door-to-door businesses face no capital requirement and, when at least 70 percent of sales go to end consumers, are exempt from consumer damage insurance, sponsorship payout caps and product price limits. RIMAN Korea registered as a multilevel seller in late 2024 while the investigation was under way and told the commission it had not known that its sales method required that registration.
The commission also found that RIMAN Korea approved name changes for sellers who had joined and worked under other people's identities, effectively allowing unregistered people to act as distributors. The company had applied in April 2024 to settle the case through a consent decree, but the request was rejected.
RIMAN Korea has about 83,000 sellers and reported 174.7 billion won in sales for 2024, which the commission said would rank it seventh in the multilevel sales industry by revenue.