Dermo-Cosmetic Laboratory — Seoul · Made in South Korea
EN · Professional Access
1998 — a 40 m² laboratory in the Jongno district. 2026 — a signature of Korean dermo-science, applied on three continents.
Chapter I — 1998
Seoul, 1998. Hana Seo is a formulation chemist for a major cosmetics group. She has a flaw the industry does not forgive: she reads labels backwards. Not the promises — the percentages. And what she sees angers her: "marketing doses," actives present for the story, under-dosed for the cost.
That same year, in the village of Jeonju, she watches the elder women of a jangdok workshop — the jars where traditional preparations ferment. Their faces carry seventy winters; their hands, plunged all day into ferments, hold a disconcerting softness and firmness. The village calls it habit. Hana calls it a signal. She will spend the next ten years documenting what the jars already knew: fermentation transforms a skin active.
She leaves her position, rents 40 m² under the roofs of Jongno, buys a stability oven and a pH-meter, and formulates her first serum. On the label, an unheard-of gesture for the time: the exact concentration of every active, printed in black on white.
"An active that doesn't disclose its concentration doesn't deserve to exist."
Chapter II — 2008
2008. Dr. Jun Park runs one of the most demanding dermatology clinics in Gangnam. He tests Hana's formulas the way he tests everything: blind, measured, without indulgence. Eight weeks later, he returns with a sentence that becomes the company's compass:
"Your formulas don't promise the moon. They deliver it, measured."
Together they turn the lab into a clinical laboratory: every formula tested on panels, every result documented, every protocol written for the professionals who will apply it. Peelings, microneedling, regeneration: the professional line is born from this alliance of the hand and the measure.
While others buy the words "dermatologically tested," NOVEA prefers a less glamorous and far more expensive sentence: validated by measurement.
Chapter III — 2016 → 2026
2016 — the first European institutes adopt NOVEA protocols.
2021 — the laboratory is certified GMP & ISO 22716.
2026 — NOVEA formulas are applied by 1,200+ professionals in 18 countries, and the Jongno laboratory — now 2,500 m² — screens more than 200 active molecules a year.
Hana still signs every formula. Jun still reviews every protocol. And in the laboratory, before every batch is released, someone reads the label backwards. By habit. By duty.
We are learning. We are evolving.
And we are delighted to continue this journey with you.
