How are K-beauty retailers able to give such big discounts?

Bulk purchase by retailers brings the price down. The price can get really low per item when they purchase in large amounts. The retail price for a product is already much cheaper in Korea than the prices we see on those retailers, but I imagine it becomes even lower in bulk/wholesale. Most retailers and shops also tend to play around with pricing a lot. They'll put a really high value for the so-called original price and then slash it down to a much lower price during a sale, making it appear as a 50%-90% discount when in reality the discounted price is pretty much the real market value/price of the item. Older stocks also gets discounted really low, especially if they are expiring soon or discontinued. I feel like most of the time, the huge discount advertised only applies for the old stuff, not the current ones so I kinda feel cheated/tricked sometimes.

Aside from what had been mentioned above, I actually have experience purchasing cheaper long expiry items (2 to 3 years) which I think it's newly manufactured from certain retailers. From my understanding, it's due to the update of packaging and formulas on Korea, making the older packaging but recently manufactured items much cheaper. They might collect all these old packaging back, and sell it to retailers for a lower price. I would say the profit margin for skincare and makeup are quite high! Some brands do have research department and try to create new technology, yet not all brands do that.

My theory they come with new formulas and products often. So they jusy want to get rid of old stocks ASAP.