Stocking Haircare Without a Warehouse

A two-chair salon ordered four Korean haircare lines in the spring. The invoice said four lines, so the owner pictured four boxes. What arrived was four cases of twelve, forty-eight bottles of 500 ml, and the only place for them was the cupboard under the back basin, next to the towels and the water heater. By July the bottom cartons had gone soft, two labels had lifted, and a scalp serum that had lived beside the heater was a shade darker than the one on the shelf.

The order was sized for a stockroom the salon does not have, and nobody asked whether one existed. For a salon, a barber shop or a small studio, the case size and the cupboard decide the order, and they deserve more attention than the price list.

The short version

• Shampoos (CN 3305 10 00) and other hair preparations (CN 3305 90 00) carry 0 % EU import duty from Korea at both the third-country and the FTA rate, verified in TARIC for 1 September 2026, so on a salon-sized haircare order the case size sets the cost, not customs.
• A case of 12 bottles of 500 ml weighs about 7 kg (arithmetic, not a measurement), and a DHL Paket within Germany accepts up to 31.5 kg and 120 x 60 x 60 cm as of 2 September 2026, so four cases travel as one parcel and a salon never needs a pallet.
• Article 6 of Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 makes the distributor responsible for storage and transport conditions while stock is in its hands, and for checking that the minimum durability date required by Article 19(1)(c) has not passed before a unit is sold.

The case is the real minimum

Suppliers quote a minimum order value for the whole order and a minimum quantity per line, and buyers negotiate those two numbers. The number that lands in the cupboard is the third one: the case pack. We see Korean haircare arrive in cases of six or twelve, twelve being the usual figure for 400 ml and 500 ml bottles, and the case is what most suppliers ship whatever the minimum quantity says. Several European wholesalers answer "can I order less than the box quantity" as its own FAQ entry, which tells you how often a buyer finds this out after paying.

So the order is a multiple of cases. Four lines at one case each is 48 units. If the salon retails two bottles of shampoo a week and one of everything else, that is six months of shampoo and most of a year of the rest. Two lines you can sell through in eight weeks beat four you will still own at Christmas.

Ask for a split case before assuming you cannot have one. Some suppliers break cases for a first order, most do not, and the answer only counts in writing. What is normal on minimum order quantities, lead times and payment terms is worth reading before that email goes out, because the case question sits inside those terms.

Haircare ships by weight, skincare ships by box

Air cargo out of Korea is billed on the higher of actual and volumetric weight, and Korean Air Cargo's tariff sets the divisor at 6,000 cubic centimetres = 1.0 kg, so one cubic metre is charged as 166.7 kg however light it is. Boxed skincare never reaches that density, so skincare importers pay for the carton. A case of 12 x 500 ml bottles is roughly 7 kg in something like 13 litres of space, near 500 kg per cubic metre. That is arithmetic on a typical bottle, not a measurement of yours, but the direction is not in doubt: a haircare case bills on what it weighs, and every extra bottle costs its own freight.

For a salon that means the parcel network, not a pallet. Four cases at about 7 kg each come to roughly 28 kg, inside the 31.5 kg maximum and the 120 x 60 x 60 cm limit for a DHL Paket within Germany, both read from DHL's product page on 2 September 2026. Other national carriers publish their own limits. A supplier who proposes a pallet for four lines is quoting the logistics they use for shops; ask for parcels. Duty does not enter it, since both shampoo codes are at 0 % from Korea, so the freight line on the quote is the one to read closely.

A cupboard is a warehouse if you treat it like one

Article 6(4) of the cosmetics regulation puts storage and transport conditions on the distributor for as long as the product is under their responsibility, and Article 6(2) requires a check that the minimum durability date has not passed before the product is made available. Neither article publishes a temperature. Nobody does, so ask the brand for the storage line on the product's technical sheet and keep the answer with the invoice.

The basin cupboard fails on three counts at once: humidity from the drains, heat from the water heater, and cardboard on a floor that gets mopped. Move the cases to the driest shelf in the building, off the floor, away from anything that runs warm and out of the front window. Keep retail and back-bar stock apart, because a retail bottle opened for a treatment is a bottle you can no longer sell, and the back-bar sizes of the same lines exist so you never have to.

Then run the shelf first-expiry-first-out. Article 19(1)(c) requires a minimum durability date on the pack, or a period-after-opening symbol where durability runs past 30 months, and Korean packs carry both formats depending on the product. Write the date on the case in marker when it arrives, put the new case behind the old one, and get a minimum remaining shelf life on delivery in writing before the first order. Short dating on arrival is one of the most common complaints European buyers make about wholesale cosmetics, and on 48 bottles it turns a slow line into a lost one.

Reorder on a clock, not on an empty shelf

A salon without a stockroom cannot hold safety stock, so the reorder happens on a fixed day rather than when someone notices a gap. Four weeks is the interval that works in a room with no storage: long enough to reach a minimum order value from two or three lines, short enough that no line needs more than a case and a half on hand. Reorder a line when it drops to half a case, back up to one full case, not two. A line that hits zero twice in a quarter has earned a second case. A line with no unit sold in 90 days is not reordered, and its remaining bottles go to the back bar as treatment cost.

In a salon the rebuy happens between visits, so the two or three products that actually move between appointments should sit at a full case while everything else waits at half.

The one-page cupboard rule

Copy this onto a sheet and tape it inside the cupboard door.

HAIRCARE WITHOUT A STOCKROOM

1. BEFORE THE FIRST ORDER, ASK IN WRITING
   - Case pack per line? Will you split a case for a first order?
   - Minimum order value? Can two lines reach it?
   - Minimum remaining shelf life guaranteed on delivery?
   - Ships by parcel? Weight of one case?
   - Storage condition on the brand's technical sheet?

2. SIZE THE FIRST ORDER
   Lines: 2, not 4. One case each.
   No line whose case you cannot sell through in 8 weeks.
   Cases x weight per case stays under the parcel limit
   (DHL Paket, Germany: 31.5 kg, 120 x 60 x 60 cm, 2 Sept 2026).

3. WHERE IT LIVES
   Driest shelf in the building, off the floor. Not the basin
   cupboard, not beside the heater, not in the window.
   Retail stock and back-bar stock on separate shelves.
   Never open a retail unit for a treatment.

4. WHEN IT ARRIVES
   Write the durability date or period-after-opening on the
   case in marker. New case behind the old one.
   Photograph the invoice and the case label together.

5. REORDER, SAME DAY EVERY 4 WEEKS
   Down to half a case ........ reorder to one full case
   Zero twice in a quarter .... reorder to two cases
   No unit sold in 90 days .... do not reorder; move to back bar

Questions buyers ask

Can I order less than a case of shampoo wholesale?

Sometimes, and only if you ask before paying. Most suppliers ship whole cases because the brand packs them that way, but a first order or a slow line is often the exception. Get the answer on the quote, because "minimum order quantity 6" on a price list does not tell you whether the case is 6 or 12.

How long does unopened Korean haircare keep?

The pack tells you, and no supplier can promise more than the pack. Under Article 19(1)(c) of Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 the product carries either a minimum durability date or, where durability exceeds 30 months, a period-after-opening symbol with a number of months. Ask for the minimum remaining shelf life guaranteed on delivery and refuse the order if the answer is a shrug.

Do I need a stockroom to sell haircare in a salon?

No, but you need a shelf that is dry, cool and off the floor, and a count once a month. A salon that reorders on a fixed four-week cycle with one case per line runs retail haircare out of a single cupboard. The stockroom becomes necessary when the order outgrows a parcel, which for haircare is around four cases.

Sources

• European Commission, TARIC measure information, CN 3305 10 00, origin Korea, simulation date 1 September 2026
• Korean Air Cargo, Air Cargo Tariff, chargeable weight rule, 2026
• DHL Paket, national parcel weight and size limits, 2026
• EUR-Lex, Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 on cosmetic products, Articles 6 and 19, 2009

The duty rate, the carrier rule and the parcel limits were checked against the publishers' own pages on 1 and 2 September 2026; the case weights are arithmetic on a typical 500 ml bottle and the reorder rule is our practice, not a published benchmark.