The K-Beauty Wholesale Glossary: 38 Terms Buyers Meet on Price Lists and Invoices

28 May 2026 · The Glow Trade

A first wholesale price list reads like a letter coded against you: MOQ, MOA, case pack, RRP, net terms, EXW, EORI, CPNP, PAO. The buyer who guesses half of them orders the wrong quantities, misreads the margin, and signs terms she did not mean to accept. None of these terms is complicated; they are just never written on the page that uses them. Here they are, in plain language, in the order you will actually meet them.

The short version

The order minimums trip up more first orders than any other terms: MOQ is a unit count, MOA is a money floor, and case quantity is the pack size, three separate gates that all have to open.
Wholesale prices are net, shelf prices are gross with VAT inside, and every margin computed by comparing the two directly is wrong by the VAT rate.
The compliance vocabulary, CPNP, Responsible Person, PIF, CPSR, is not bureaucracy for its own sake: it is the checklist that decides whether a product may legally sit on your shelf at all (Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009).

The order and its minimums

MOQ, minimum order quantity: the smallest order a supplier accepts, either per order or per SKU. Per-brand minimums are common at Korean exporters, per-order minimums at EU wholesalers.

MOA, minimum order amount: the same gate measured in money instead of units. A supplier quoting both means you must clear each one, and the difference between MOQ and MOA is exactly the confusion in the minimums article.

Case pack / box quantity: the number of units sealed in one wholesale carton. Many suppliers sell only full cases, so "20 units" can mean "order 24", and case size is the silent author of dead stock.

Inner pack: a smaller bundled grouping inside the case, common for masks and patches. Order multiples often follow the inner pack, not the single unit.

RRP, recommended retail price: the brand's suggested shelf price. A reference point for your pricing, not a promise of what the market will pay, since online comparison sets the real ceiling.

Net price: your price before VAT. Wholesale lists are always net; the shelf price is gross; and every margin computed by comparing the two directly is wrong by the VAT rate.

Pro forma invoice: the supplier's pre-payment invoice that confirms what you ordered before it ships. It is the document your bank transfer and later your customs paperwork must match.

Backorder: an order line the supplier cannot ship now and delivers later. Ask per line whether it is backordered or cancelled, because "partial shipment" without that answer wrecks a planogram.

Allocation: rationed supply when a product's demand exceeds production. Allocated heroes arrive trimmed against your order, and the mechanics are in why bestsellers go out of stock.

The money and the terms

Net terms / net 30: payment due a set number of days after invoice or delivery. First orders are almost always prepayment; terms are earned with history, as the payment terms article explains.

Prepayment: payment before dispatch, the wholesale default for new accounts, usually against the pro forma.

Reverse charge: the EU VAT mechanism for cross-border B2B: the seller invoices without VAT and the buyer self-assesses in their return. Your VAT ID is the key that turns it on.

Import VAT: VAT charged when goods enter the EU from outside, calculated on goods plus freight. A registered business reclaims it; several countries let you defer it, per the import VAT guide.

Volume tier / rebate: discounts triggered by order size or annual turnover. Per-order breaks reward consolidation; annual rebates pay in arrears, per the tiers article.

Currency exposure: the risk your margin takes when the price list is in won or dollars and your shelf is in euros. On long lead times, the exchange rate can move more than the discount.

The compliance file

CPNP: the EU Cosmetic Products Notification Portal, where every cosmetic must be notified before being placed on the market. There is no "CPNP certificate"; the notification is a database entry, per the CPNP article.

Responsible Person (RP): the EU-established person legally responsible for each cosmetic, named on the pack. For imports it is the importer by default, per the RP article.

PIF, product information file: the safety and documentation file the RP must keep per product for ten years. A distributor never receives it; a distributor may ask for evidence it exists, per the PIF article.

CPSR: the cosmetic product safety report inside the PIF, signed by a qualified assessor. A Korean test certificate is not one, per the CPSR article.

INCI: the standardised ingredient naming on every cosmetic label, in descending order of weight. Reading INCI lists is a core buying skill, and CosIng is the free lookup.

PAO, period after opening: the open-jar symbol showing how long a product keeps once opened, used when minimum durability exceeds 30 months.

Batch code / lot: the production reference on the pack that makes recalls and expiry management possible, decoded in the batch code article.

GPSR: the General Product Safety Regulation, in force since December 2024, which among other things requires online listings to name the manufacturer and the EU responsible operator.

Safety Gate: the EU's weekly public alert system for dangerous products, formerly RAPEX. Searching it costs nothing and belongs in the buying routine, per the recalls article.

The import paperwork

EORI: the customs ID every EU importer needs, free from your national customs authority. One number, valid EU-wide, per the registrations guide.

HS code / TARIC: the commodity classification that decides duty and document flags. Skincare mostly sits at 3304 99 00 with 0 percent duty from Korea, per the HS code guide.

Incoterms: the eleven standard trade terms (EXW, FCA, FOB, CIF, DDP) that split costs and risks between seller and buyer. They move freight responsibility, never product-law responsibility, per the Incoterms article.

Certificate of origin / origin declaration: the proof that goods qualify as Korean for preference purposes. Under the EU-Korea agreement it is a declaration on the invoice, not a stamped certificate, per the FTA article.

Landed cost: the true unit cost after product, freight, insurance, duty, clearance and handling. The only cost figure worth comparing suppliers on, per the landed cost article.

Customs broker: the licensed party that files your import declaration. In direct representation they file in your name and the liability stays yours, per the broker article.

The market words

Grey market: genuine goods moving outside the brand's authorised channel, with the warranty, labelling and documentation gaps that brings, per the grey market guide.

Parallel import: the legal version of grey trade inside the EEA: genuine goods first placed on the EEA market, resold onward. Different from importing non-EU versions, which is the dangerous one.

LOA, letter of authorisation: a brand's document naming an authorised distributor or reseller. Marketplaces ask for it; suppliers who are authorised provide it; suppliers who stall are telling you something.

MFDS: Korea's Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, the regulator behind Korean cosmetics rules and the functional-cosmetics categories.

Functional cosmetics: the Korean legal category for whitening, wrinkle-improvement and sun-protection products. The category names are Korean law, not EU claims, per the claims article.

Olive Young: Korea's dominant health-and-beauty retailer, whose rankings are the demand signal the whole trade watches, per the trends guide.

Hwahae: Korea's big review-and-ranking platform, the second public demand signal, strong on ingredient-led products.

Ankorstore / Faire: the B2B marketplaces where independent retail buys wholesale across categories. Useful for small minimums, thinner on K-beauty depth, compared in the marketplace comparison.

Questions buyers ask

A supplier uses a term differently than this glossary. Who is right?

Usage wins over definitions: wholesale terms are conventions, not statutes, and the only version that matters is the one in the quote you accept. When a term decides money, MOQ, MOA, net terms, tier thresholds, get its meaning in writing once per supplier, in the first order email. The ten seconds of awkward precision is cheaper than discovering their "case of 12" is your "display of 24" after the invoice is paid.

Which three terms cause the most expensive misunderstandings?

MOQ versus MOA, because buyers clear one and get blocked by the other. Case pack, because it rewrites your quantities and fills stockrooms with multiples you never wanted. And net price versus shelf price, because comparing a net wholesale price with a gross retail price inflates the imagined margin by exactly the VAT rate, which is how new buyers talk themselves into assortments that cannot pay the rent.

Do I need to know the compliance terms if I only buy from EU wholesalers?

You need them precisely enough to check your supplier: RP on the pack, notification done, PIF exists, batch codes present. The distributor's duties are lighter than the importer's, but they are verification duties, and you cannot verify vocabulary you do not recognise. The glossary is short on purpose; these are the terms the checks are made of, and the verification habit is built in the supplier vetting checklist.