Beauty Investor Kiuda Group Acquires Majority Stake in CGETC

What happened

Kiuda Group, a San Francisco investment firm focused on beauty and wellness companies, has taken a majority stake in CGETC, a cross-border logistics provider based in City of Industry, California. Beauty Independent reported the deal on June 15, 2026. It is Kiuda's first acquisition. David Byun, who founded CGETC in 2003, remains president, and Kiuda founder and CEO Keunyoung (Ky) Ma has taken the CEO role at CGETC. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The seller

CGETC moves Korean brands' products into the U.S. and onto American retail shelves. It books ocean freight from Busan to Los Angeles, acts as importer of record and clears customs for brands with no U.S. entity, then receives, stores, picks, and packs orders for Amazon, Walmart, TikTok Shop, and other channels. Its work also covers e-commerce operations and regulatory compliance. The company runs three warehouses in Southern California and one in Atlanta, has an office in Seoul, and plans to open a facility in South Korea later in 2026. It has a team of more than 67 people.

CGETC has served more than 800 companies, including Korean beauty brands Purito, Amorepacific, Torriden, and Mediheal, with products distributed through Walmart, Amazon, TikTok Shop, Walgreens, and Costco. Ma says CGETC has close to 350 clients today and grew 75% last year. She also says logistics businesses often run profit margins under 10% and CGETC's exceed that. "We are playing in the more specialized space, which is exciting, and there's even more improvements we can make there," she told Beauty Independent. "We've been really fortunate to be able to find product-market fit, where we know the customers really well, and we know their customers really well."

The buyer

Kiuda invests in and leads companies in the beauty and wellness infrastructure ecosystem. Ma describes it as an "evergreen fund" backed by entrepreneurs and high-net-worth individuals, and the firm declined to disclose how much capital it has raised. Search Fund Partners invested in Kiuda in 2026 and has Jim Edmunds on its board, and Maven Equity Partners also lists Kiuda among its portfolio companies. BeautyMatter reports that Kiuda was founded by former employees of Amorepacific, which is also among CGETC's customers, and McKinsey & Company, and that the combined business will be called KORA Group. Ma grew up in the South Korean port city of Masan and in Tallahassee, Florida, and studied at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Kiuda says it typically takes a majority stake, keeps founders involved in a role worked out with them, and pairs upfront cash with retained equity, milestone incentives, and equity in the wider Kiuda platform. It says it does not look to "flip" companies after a few years.

Ma frames the deal around fragmentation in the services Korean brands buy. "The growth in K-Beauty was creating demand for an integrated cross-border infrastructure," she said. "Right now, there's a lot of these disparate point solution providers." In announcing the deal, she wrote that Kiuda intends "to build CGETC into a one-stop cross-border infrastructure platform for beauty — pairing freight, customs, warehousing, and fulfillment with forecasting, trend analysis, and inventory intelligence, and expanding through further partnerships."

What this means for freight forwarding owners

CGETC's buyer came from its customers' industry, not from logistics, and the case Ma makes for the business rests on how well it knows those customers and the specialist customs, compliance, and channel work they need, rather than on freight capacity. For freight forwarding owners whose customers cluster in one category of imported goods, that puts investors from that category on the buyer list alongside logistics acquirers, and it makes the customer roster and the category-specific services the assets to present first. Our guide to selling a logistics company covers how to prepare for that conversation.

OffDeal is an advisory firm that helps lower-middle-market business owners sell with confidence. Reach out to learn more about our expertise with freight forwarding businesses in California.

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Source: Beauty Independent - https://www.beautyindependent.com/kiuda-group-cgetc-build-one-stop-infrastructure-platform-k-beauty