---
title: 'An Early Pioneer, Put on Ice, Then Rebooted: A Company Study of Korean Photo Booth Brand PHOTOGRAY and Its Parent APR'
url: https://joelin.cc/en/p/9557
source: https://joelin.cc/en/p/9557
lang: en
pubDate: '2026-10-12'
date_modified: '2026-10-12'
description: A financial-report-based study of PHOTOGRAY and APR, tracing the photo booth brand's five-year pause, franchise economics, and expansion in Korea, Japan, and Taiwan.
author: joe
ai_role: ai_only
translation_of: /p/9557
---

# An Early Pioneer, Put on Ice, Then Rebooted: A Company Study of Korean Photo Booth Brand PHOTOGRAY and Its Parent APR

## Summary

This article translates financial reporting on Korean photo booth brand PHOTOGRAY and its listed parent group, APR. Launched in 2017, PHOTOGRAY spent five years on hold without expanding before restarting in 2022 with an emotionally evocative studio concept. It first tested the model through three months of directly operated stores, then opened it to franchisees, surpassing 100 franchise locations within six months. APR is a listed beauty company with a market capitalization of ₩13 trillion. PHOTOGRAY's share of its revenue fell from 17.8% to 2.8%, reflecting the group's total revenue rising to 2.9 times its previous level rather than a decline in photo booths. Drawing on financial statements, the article attributes its success to transferring D2C methods to physical stores, product differentiation, and capital support, and examines differences between its expansion strategies in Taiwan and Japan.

## Key facts

- PHOTOGRAY launched in 2017 and restarted in 2022, testing its model with an A/B testing approach before opening to franchisees and reaching 100 stores in six months.
- APR's 2025 consolidated revenue was ₩1.5273 trillion, and its market capitalization of ₩13.3841 trillion ranked 58th on the KOSPI.
- Its franchise investment-return multiple was 1.5×. Startup costs of ₩130.88 million were the highest among its peers, while store revenue was comparable to competitors.
- Its 249 Korean stores covered all 17 top-level administrative regions, with 56.6% in the Seoul Capital Area; nine overseas stores were spread across five countries.

I work in the photo booth business, and I make a habit of going through a competitor's parent-company financial statements before commenting. This time, I looked at PHOTOGRAY (포토그레이) and the company behind it, APR (에이피알), which is listed on the Korea Exchange.

After reading them, I first need to correct something I have also gotten wrong in the past: PHOTOGRAY was not a late entrant to Korea's self-service photo booth market. It was one of the original pioneers. Its own parent company simply put that pioneer on ice for five years.

(All figures below are accompanied by their verification dates. Korean won amounts retain their original ₩ values without currency conversion. When I provide a rough estimate to convey scale, I label it separately.)

This article was originally published in Chinese on August 6, 2026, based on the PHOTOGRAY × APR company research completed that day. The Chinese article was last updated on September 16, 2026.

![Article hero image: PHOTOGRAY, an early pioneer, was put on ice for five years—launched in 2017 and restarted only in 2022, it surpassed 100 franchise stores within six months of restarting; 56.6% of its 249 Korean stores were in the Seoul Capital Area](https://image.joelin.cc/cdn-cgi/imagedelivery/0xu8EsaSar9n3zUKY5d7xw/joelin/2026-09/photogray-apr-restart-hero/hero)

![PHOTOGRAY brand logo](https://image.joelin.cc/cdn-cgi/imagedelivery/0xu8EsaSar9n3zUKY5d7xw/joelin/2026-09/brand-logo-photogray/w=180,h=72,fit=scale-down)

## 1. The Most Counterintuitive Point First: It Started Much Earlier Than You Think

Open the business report (사업보고서) APR submitted to the Financial Supervisory Service, and its corporate history explicitly records: “2017.08: Launch of 포토그레이, a self-service photography studio brand.”

In other words, PHOTOGRAY was already operating before PHOTOISM's corporate entity, 서북, was established in 2020, and before the operator of 인생네컷 was established in 2018. Korean official sources and media at the time also described it as “국내 최초”—the first in the country. Between 2017 and 2021, it installed approximately 100 machines nationwide under the name “포토그레이 오리진.”

Then it stopped there.

APR's own official blog explains this very clearly: during those years, the company committed all its resources to online D2C—the MEDICUBE and NERDY businesses—while keeping the photo booth business running at its existing scale, without expansion. It was not until 2022 that the business restarted under a new concept, “감성 스튜디오,” an emotionally evocative photography studio.

The restart method is worth recording: first, operate stores directly for three months to validate the individual-store business model; open franchising only after prospective franchisees approach the company; then surpass 100 stores within six months. This was not the traditional franchise-headquarters approach of “sell the franchise fees first and figure out the rest later.” It brought the discipline of online A/B testing into physical stores.

### Timeline at a Glance

| Date | Event |
| --- | --- |
| 2014.10 | APR's predecessor, 이노벤처스, was established with ₩50 million in capital. |
| 2016–2017 | MEDICUBE, NERDY, and 포맨트 launched in succession. |
| 2017.08 | 포토그레이 launched. |
| 2017–2021 | After installing approximately 100 machines nationwide, it maintained its existing scale without expanding. |
| During 2022 | Restarted with the “감성 스튜디오” concept; operated stores directly for three months before opening to franchisees, surpassing 100 stores in six months. |
| 2022.12 | 111 stores. |
| 2024.02.27 | APR listed on the Korea Exchange's KOSPI market. |
| End of 2024 | 154 stores: 107 franchises and 47 directly operated stores. Franchise locations exceeded 100 for the first time. |
| 2025.09 | APR told the media that NERDY and PHOTOGRAY were “not expanding substantially.” |
| 2026.08.06 | Official store directory: 249 domestic stores and nine overseas stores. |

## 2. What Kind of Company Is APR?

Founder 김병훈 was born in 1988 and studied business administration at Yonsei University. As a student, he tried and failed to build a dating app in the United States. After returning to Korea, he worked on an e-commerce app that never launched. Later, his own experiences with acne and sensitive skin led him to conclude that “the advertising is glamorous, but few products actually solve skin problems.” In 2014, at age 25, he started the business with ₩50 million in capital.

Its report card ten years later, using the August 5, 2026 market close:

| Item | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Market capitalization | ₩13.3841 trillion, ranked 58th on the KOSPI |
| Closing share price | ₩357,500 |
| 2025 consolidated revenue | ₩1.5273 trillion |
| 2025 operating profit | ₩365.5 billion |
| Cumulative revenue for the first half of 2026 | ₩1.3609 trillion—almost matching the previous full year in just six months |
| Q2 2026 operating margin | 24.8% |
| Full-year 2026 revenue guidance | Raised to ₩3 trillion |
| Largest shareholder 김병훈's ownership | 31.94%; 34.80% including related parties |
| Foreign ownership | 37.28% |

Its Q2 profitability had already surpassed Amorepacific and LG 生活健康. This is a company running near the front of the global beauty-tech field, with photo booth stores as one of its businesses.

Three things it does well are relevant to photo booths:

1. Running its own D2C online stores. More than half its revenue comes from its own online stores, giving it direct control over consumer data, pricing, and discounts. Putting PHOTOGRAY on ice in 2017–2021 was precisely the result of choosing where to focus: at that stage, the optimal move was to put all its resources online.
2. Disciplined capital allocation. Cosmetics manufacturing is fully outsourced, with no production lines to maintain, while beauty devices are made in its own factories—two facilities established in 2023 and 2024. It brings production in-house only for categories with high gross margins and substantial technological barriers to entry.
3. The cadence of collaborations. This capability was indeed transferred wholesale to PHOTOGRAY: it treats photo frames as SKUs to be regularly released, rather than one-off marketing materials. I will return to this later.

## 3. PHOTOGRAY in the Financial Statements: A Business Diluted to 2.8%

This is the table I most wanted to show readers after going through the financial statements. APR's revenue by segment, on a consolidated basis, in millions of Korean won:

| Segment | Brands | 2025 | Share | 2024 | Share | 2023 | Share |
| --- | --- | ---: | ---: | ---: | ---: | ---: | ---: |
| Cosmetics/beauty | 메디큐브 (MEDICUBE), 에이프릴스킨, and others | 1,077,126 | 70.5% | 338,518 | 46.8% | 214,291 | 40.9% |
| Beauty devices | 메디큐브 (MEDICUBE) AGE-R | 406,984 | 26.7% | 312,643 | 43.3% | 216,190 | 41.3% |
| Other (기타) | 널디 NERDY, 포토그레이 (PHOTOGRAY) | 43,235 | 2.8% | 71,593 | 9.9% | 93,328 | 17.8% |
| Total | | 1,527,345 | 100% | 722,754 | 100% | 523,809 | 100% |

From 17.8% down to 2.8%. It looks like a collapse—but that is a misreading, and an easy one to make.

Point one: the main reason is a surge in the denominator, rather than a shrinking numerator. APR's total revenue grew from ₩523.8 billion to ₩1.5273 trillion over two years, reaching 2.9 times its previous level. During the same period, PHOTOGRAY's store count was rising: from 154 at the end of 2024 to 249 in the official directory in August 2026. Put a business that has not contracted inside a denominator that triples in two years, and its share naturally gets compressed.

Point two: “기타” combines NERDY and PHOTOGRAY; the financial statements do not separate them. You cannot simply treat ₩43.2 billion as PHOTOGRAY's revenue. The export column also indicates that NERDY was the main source of the contraction: exports in the Other segment fell from ₩21.47 billion in 2023 to ₩9.86 billion in 2024, then to ₩23 million in 2025. The overseas fashion business had almost fallen to zero. The decline in domestic sales—from ₩71.86 billion to ₩61.73 billion to ₩43.21 billion—was much more moderate.

Point three: PHOTOGRAY has no separate corporate entity. None of APR's 13 listed subsidiaries has anything to do with photography; PHOTOGRAY is a business division within APR itself. The financial statements' “사업의 목적,” or business purposes, include “자동사진촬영기 운영업,” the operation of automatic photography machines, and mark it as an actively operated business. The applicable-regulations section also specifies that franchise-business regulations concern the “포토그레이 가맹점 사업,” or PHOTOGRAY franchise business. It therefore follows a dual model of directly operated stores and franchises, with APR itself serving as headquarters.

What does APR itself say? Its September 2025 response to Korean media outlet 더팩트 was:

> “We are currently consolidating our identity in beauty, so we are not substantially expanding the NERDY and PHOTOGRAY businesses.”

My interpretation: within today's APR, PHOTOGRAY's strategic role has been downgraded from “a new growth engine” to “a cash-flow business allowed to pay its own way while maintaining a touchpoint with younger customers.”

## 4. Expensive to Open, Slow to Pay Back—and Deliberately So

The Korea Fair Trade Commission's franchise disclosure documents, using 2023 as the reference year, contain a striking table comparing startup costs and average annual franchise-store revenue across several self-service photography studio brands:

| Brand | Startup costs | Average annual franchise-store revenue | Investment-return multiple |
| --- | ---: | ---: | ---: |
| 하루필름 | ₩55.55 million | ₩225.48 million | 4.1× |
| 포토이즘컬러드 | ₩71.72 million | ₩229.6 million | 3.2× |
| 포토그레이 (PHOTOGRAY) | ₩130.88 million | ₩202.8 million | 1.5× |
| 포토시그니처 | ₩105.81 million | ₩141.75 million | 1.3× |
| 인생네컷 | ₩99.95 million | ₩88.8 million | 0.9× |

At first glance, PHOTOGRAY looks weak. But look more closely: its average franchise-store revenue, ₩203 million, is almost in the same league as the top two. The problem lies in the denominator: startup costs are 2.4 times those of 하루필름 and 1.8 times those of 포토이즘컬러드.

That low 1.5× multiple therefore reflects the high cost of opening a store. Where does the expense come from? From the differentiation itself:

- Premium interiors combining gray tones and stainless steel.
- Eight-stage, celebrity-grade lighting, including optimized reflectors.
- Automatic retouching filters using AI facial recognition.
- Flexible layouts beyond the standard four-photo strip.
- The industry's first adhesive photo paper.

All these differentiators cost money. They buy a distinctive brand character and higher spending per customer, at the cost of slower payback for franchisees and an inherently slower expansion pace than competitors. This is a deliberately chosen premium-price position.

As an aside, here is a record of one of my own hypotheses being disproved: I originally thought PHOTOGRAY had a distribution advantage through CGV cinemas. This investigation found no evidence of any PHOTOGRAY partnership with, or presence inside, CGV, so I am withdrawing that hypothesis for now. The distribution advantage I did find was university shopping districts: 34 of the 249 domestic stores, or 13.7%, have a university name directly in their store names. That is roughly one store at a university entrance for every seven or eight locations, spanning private universities in Seoul and national universities in the regions. This corroborates APR's official blog description of its “university-customized store” strategy at 이화여대 and 숭실대, including collaborative frames featuring university crests and mascots.

## 5. Why Has It Worked? My Four Explanatory Factors

| Factor | Explanatory strength | Evidence |
| --- | --- | --- |
| ① Transferring methods: applying D2C tactics to physical stores | Highest | Three months of directly operated stores to validate the model before opening to franchisees—the physical equivalent of A/B testing; releasing collaboration frames as SKUs; using AI retouching for software-driven differentiation. The result was more than 100 stores in six months. |
| ② Product differentiation | High | In a crowded market with at least 500 stores, it entered by making photos look different. The cost is measurable: startup costs 2.4 times higher and an investment-return multiple of 1.5×. |
| ③ Capital: a listed parent with deep pockets | Moderate, and overrated | Capital allows it to tolerate slow progress. Its store count still amounts to less than 60% of the market leader's, and the financial statements show that APR has not poured capital into this business. |
| ④ Distribution partnerships | Unsubstantiated | No supporting evidence was found for the CGV hypothesis, which has been withdrawn. |

To put it in one sentence: PHOTOGRAY's success comes from having a parent company exceptionally good at e-commerce, which brought its experimental discipline, release cadence, and data-driven approach into physical photo booths. Money simply gave it the means to choose a path where stores are expensive to open and slow to pay back, but look different.

## 6. Global Footprint: A Company Changing Its Model

### 249 Stores in Korea: Official Directory, Checked August 6, 2026

It covers all 17 top-level administrative regions: Seoul, Gyeonggi, Incheon, Busan, Daegu, Gwangju, Daejeon, Ulsan, Sejong, Gangwon, North Chungcheong, South Chungcheong, North Jeolla, South Jeolla, North Gyeongsang, South Gyeongsang, and Jeju. None is missing. Achieving 17 out of 17 with a footprint of 249 stores is quite unusual.

| Area | Stores | Share |
| --- | ---: | ---: |
| Seoul | 69 | 27.7% |
| Gyeonggi | 59 | 23.7% |
| Incheon | 13 | 5.2% |
| Seoul Capital Area subtotal | 141 | 56.6% |
| Remaining 14 regions | 108 | 43.4% |

A frequently quoted claim needs correcting here. Media reports have said that PHOTOGRAY is “not concentrated in the Seoul Capital Area,” but the actual capital-area share is 56.6%, while the area accounts for roughly half of Korea's population. That amounts to modest overrepresentation. The statement was a comparison with industry peers and should not be quoted as evidence of an even distribution.

> ⚠️ There are two store-count series, and I do not reconcile them. The official directory listed 249 stores on August 6, 2026; Korean media reported approximately 228 in November 2025. Their counting bases may differ, such as whether they include directly operated stores or count installed machines. I consistently use the official directory with its date, without averaging the figures or describing its count as “approximately.”

### Nine Overseas Stores Across Five Countries

| Country | Stores | Details |
| --- | ---: | --- |
| 🇯🇵 Japan | 3 | All inside カラオケルーム歌広場, a karaoke chain: in front of Ikebukuro West Exit Park, at Kamata Station East Exit, and in front of Kaihin-Makuhari Station North Exit. |
| 🇹🇼 Taiwan | 1 | Ximen, Taipei. The official account acknowledges that this is currently the only location in Taiwan. |
| 🇵🇭 Philippines | 3 | Malate, Tagaytay, and Ayala Mall. |
| 🇨🇳 China | 1 | Wukang Road, Shanghai. |
| 🇺🇿 Uzbekistan | 1 | Tashkent. |

United States, Vietnam, Thailand, and Australia: the official directory contains no locations in any of them. Korean diaspora media in the United States began carrying franchisee recruitment advertisements in 2025, targeting Los Angeles's Koreatown and New York's SoHo, but recruitment does not mean stores have opened. Vietnam, Thailand, and Australia appeared repeatedly in media reports during 2022–2024 as markets “under consideration” or “targeted for entry.” I found no evidence of store openings.

### Japan: From Opening Its Own Stores to Placing Machines Inside Other Businesses

This was one of the strongest signals I found in this research.

In 2023, PHOTOGRAY opened its first Japanese store in Harajuku, Tokyo, using a directly operated flagship strategy. That store has now permanently closed.

In July 2026, the model changed completely: KARROT COMPANY and APR signed a contract making KARROT COMPANY the sole authorized distributor in Japan, responsible for the wholesale distribution and installation of PHOTOGRAY booths nationwide. The business model is machine leasing, with a minimum six-month lease and no operational burden on the host venue, allowing amusement and commercial facilities to “try before they buy.” That same month, エクシング (XING), part of the USEN&U-NEXT group, announced trial installations at four locations: Ariake, Kamata, Ikebukuro, and Kaihin-Makuhari.

My interpretation: this approach is highly capital-efficient, but offers very little control over the brand. There is no rent to pay, no store staff to maintain, and almost no cost of failure. The trade-off is that consumers remember “a Korean photo booth inside 歌広場” rather than “a PHOTOGRAY store.”

This is the choice a company makes when it no longer wants to commit substantial capital to its photography business. It aligns completely with the signals in the financial statements discussed above.

### Taiwan: One Store, but a Valuable Location

PHOTOGRAY has already entered Taiwan, with just one location in Ximen, Taipei. Its official social account says so itself: “If you want to find PHOTOGRAY in Taiwan, this is currently the only place.”

This article is not a store guide. I have compiled the address, opening hours, and current collaboration-frame availability on the photo booth information site's brand page: [PHOTOGRAY brand page](https://photobooth.joelin.cc/brand/photogray/).

Here, I want to make three observations at the company level:

1. Its location choice is exceptionally precise. It chose the Ximen underground market, which opened only in January 2026 following a Taipei Metro redevelopment and focuses on anime, 2D fandom, and K-pop culture. The location value of one store could outweigh ten generic sites.
2. The cadence of IP collaborations would be difficult for local brands to replicate with equivalent resources. This Taiwanese store ran three Korean celebrity collaborations in July 2026 alone, complete with a giveaway of signed instant photos. Those collaborations are being supplied by IP relationships at the parent group's Korean headquarters. The actual competitive battleground is “what frames are available this month.”
3. If the Japanese model is replicated in Taiwan, the threat will take the form of PHOTOGRAY machines appearing inside particular malls and entertainment venues. Monitoring should therefore shift from “number of stores” to “number of locations where machines appear.”

Will APR make a serious push in Taiwan? Public information available for 2026 suggests it will not, for four reasons:

- Financial statements: the segment containing photography accounts for 2.8% of revenue, and the company has explicitly said it is not expanding.
- Business model: Japan has shifted to a distributor-plus-machine-leasing approach, a low-commitment model. Taiwan has only one store, with no visible expansion cadence.
- Geography: APR's Q2 2026 regional revenue growth was +264.6% in North America and +380.3% in Europe, while Asia grew only +14.5%. The company's attention is on North America and Europe, with Asia further down the list.
- Corporate organization: APR's Taiwanese subsidiary is registered for cosmetics wholesale and retail. Its 2025 revenue was approximately ₩2.98 billion, and it had only just emerged from losses. It lacks the organizational depth to support large-scale store expansion.

## 7. What I Could Not Find: An Honest List

One of the biggest research pitfalls is turning “I could not find it” into “it does not exist.” I explicitly mark the following questions as unresolved:

| # | Unresolved question | What remains unresolved |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | Who operates the Taiwanese store: headquarters directly, a distributor, or a franchisee? | No public information. |
| 2 | Is the PHOTOGRAY trademark registered in Taiwan, and who is the registrant? | I could not complete the applicant-search process in TIPO's search interface. This is an incomplete search, not evidence that the trademark is unregistered. |
| 3 | What are the Taiwanese store's prices? | Neither the official social accounts nor media reports list them. I will not convert Korean or Japanese prices to fill the gap. Figures circulating online are secondhand accounts from internet users, not official announcements. |
| 4 | What is PHOTOGRAY's standalone revenue? | The financial statements combine it with NERDY under “기타” without a breakdown. There is currently no way to resolve this. |
| 5 | Have the U.S. franchise recruitment efforts produced physical stores? | Only recruitment advertisements were found; the official directory lists no locations. |

## 8. Further Reading

- For a Japanese comparison, I previously wrote: [The Leading Player in Japan's Photo Booth Market: An Introduction to Tokyo Stock Exchange-Listed FURYU](/p/1918). Note: the “94% market share” cited in that article comes from a 2021 survey. The market structure changed after SEGA returned in July 2025, and a supplementary note appears at the end of that article.
- Another article from the same research batch: [A Company Study of PHOTOISM's Parent 서북: The Market Leader Was Actually Losing Money Last Year](/p/9563).
- How this industry developed in Taiwan: [A Report on the History of Taiwan's Photo Booth and Korean-Style Photo Booth Industries](/p/5848).
- Market changes over the whole of last year: [2025 Annual Review of Taiwan's Photo Booth Industry](/p/8281).
- How to find photo booths in Korea, use them on-site, and retrieve your photos on your phone: [Guide to Korean Photo Booths](https://photobooth.joelin.cc/guide/korea-photobooth/).
- This brand's locations, opening hours, and current collaborations: [PHOTOGRAY brand page](https://photobooth.joelin.cc/brand/photogray/).

What the stores look like in person: in December 2022, I photographed [two Photogray RAD stores in Busan](/p/9621), where the prices at the time were 4,000 and 5,000 Korean won. For the Korean industry's thirty-year history, see [Thirty Years of Korean Photo Booths](/p/9638).

## Sources

### Primary Sources: Financial Statements and Official Materials

- [DART electronic disclosures](https://dart.fss.or.kr/) — APR Corp.'s 12th business report (사업보고서), covering fiscal year 2025 and submitted on March 23, 2026: corporate history, segment revenue, 13 subsidiaries, shareholder status, and audit opinion.
- [PHOTOGRAY official store directory](https://photogray.com/photodb/board.php?bo%5Ftable=store), checked August 6, 2026.
- [APR official blog: “How Did PHOTOGRAY Succeed as a Late Entrant?”](https://apr-blog.com/photogrey-success).
- [APR official brand page](https://apr-in.com/apr%5Fphotogray.html).
- [エクシング (XING) press release, July 23, 2026](https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000002901.000004747.html).

### Secondary Sources: Media

- [서울경제: “Self-Service Photography Studios Grow More Than 20%… Fierce Battle for First Place Among the Top Three,” March 4, 2024](https://www.sedaily.com/NewsView/2D6XQ0KZLF).
- [소비자가만드는신문: “‘Startup Fever’ in Self-Service Photography Studios: 하루필름 Ranks First in Revenue Relative to Investment,” October 17, 2024](https://www.consumernews.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=716682), using Fair Trade Commission franchise disclosure documents with 2023 as the reference year.
- [더팩트: “APR Consolidates Its Identity in ‘Beauty’: Are NERDY and PHOTOGRAY Taking a Back Seat?” September 1, 2025](https://news.tf.co.kr/read/economy/2239069.htm).
- [와이드경제: “APR's PHOTOGRAY Continues Expanding Its Store Network,” November 21, 2025](https://www.widedaily.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=283420).
- [다음 Finance — 에이피알 (278470)](https://finance.daum.net/quotes/A278470), share price and market capitalization at the August 5, 2026 close.

This article is my personal research notebook, not investment or financial advice. All figures are accompanied by verification dates and sources; readers should check the latest disclosures themselves before citing them.