Korean Adoptee Builds Cross-Cultural Wellness Brand Around K-Beauty Rituals
Seoul-born entrepreneur Marie Perruchet has turned her experience across France, Asia and Silicon Valley into Clapoti, a wellness brand combining Korean manufacturing, French sensory traditions and practical product design.
A Seoul-born adoptee raised in France has built a wellness business that draws on Korean manufacturing and self-care traditions while reflecting a life spent across several cultures.
Marie Perruchet founded Clapoti in 2022 after a career that took her from international journalism to Silicon Valley entrepreneurship. The company sells face, eye and foot masks, positioning itself at the intersection of Korean beauty production, French sensory culture and functional American-style packaging.
Perruchet was adopted at 18 months and grew up in Normandy without direct access to Korean language or traditions. She later lived in 10 countries, reporting from India and China before moving to the San Francisco Bay Area. There, she mentored startup founders, worked with 500 Global and helped entrepreneurs and corporate teams communicate their ideas. She also wrote the business book “One Perfect Pitch.”
Her path into wellness was shaped by different approaches to beauty and the body. In India, she encountered reflexology and treatments centered on circulation and tension in the feet. In California, she experienced a more ethnically diverse beauty culture. Korean-style bathhouses, first encountered in the United States and later visited in Korea, also influenced her view that self-care could be inclusive rather than tied to narrow standards of appearance.
The business idea sharpened during the COVID-19 pandemic, when access to spas and pedicures became more limited. Perruchet saw an opportunity in at-home care for feet, which she considered overlooked compared with facial products. Clapoti’s name comes from a French word evoking the gentle sound of moving water, an idea she developed during a visit to a Korean spa.
Rather than adopting an existing formulation, Perruchet said she tested products from multiple suppliers before finding partners willing to create custom formulas. The products use ingredients including green tea, hibiscus, perilla and ginger, linking familiar Korean ingredients with a modern personal-care range.
Clapoti now operates mainly through a business-to-business model. Its products are sold through premium retailers and perfumeries in France and elsewhere in Europe, as well as natural grocery stores in the United States. A launch with a Japanese department store is also being prepared.
Perruchet describes the brand as both Korean and French, resisting a single national label. Its development illustrates how K-beauty businesses can expand beyond facial cosmetics by combining Korean production capabilities with founders’ international experiences and locally adapted retail strategies.