When I moved from Seoul to Berlin, something changed.
My skin became dry and irritated. My hair felt rough and harder to manage.
At first, I did what most people do. I focused on skincare. I changed cleansers, tried richer moisturisers, rearranged the whole routine twice.
But nothing made a meaningful difference. The more products I tried, the more frustrated I became.
Here's the part that took me a while to admit: the products weren't the problem.
Before this, I spent years developing beauty products for the Korean market – skincare and personal care. I knew how good products are supposed to be made, and I knew how to build a routine that worked. That's exactly why Berlin made no sense to me. I was doing everything right, and my skin was getting worse.
It just took me longer to realise what had actually changed.
Water Mattered – My Mother Knew It Before I Did
Growing up in Korea, I was taught that water mattered. Whenever we travelled abroad, my mother would remind me to wash my face with bottled water if the local water felt harsh or unfamiliar.
At the time, it sounded like one of those things mothers say. But she wasn't entirely wrong.
I travelled to Europe frequently from a young age and noticed the difference. My skin felt drier. My hair felt rougher. Showers simply felt different.
Still, I never thought much about it. Those trips were temporary.
Then I moved to Berlin.
What had once been an occasional inconvenience became part of everyday life. The difference was impossible to ignore.
The Water in Berlin Is Not the Water in Seoul
The more I researched, the more the pieces started to connect.
Tap water in Germany is some of the cleanest drinking water in Europe – and for drinking, that's true. But "safe to drink" and "kind to skin" are not the same standard.
Water designed for municipal treatment is intended to be safe for consumption. That doesn't necessarily mean it was designed with the skin barrier in mind.
Seoul, where I grew up, is a soft-water city. Berlin sits around 17 °dH – roughly 303 mg/L of dissolved CaCO₃, around four to six times the level I grew up with. On top of the minerals, the water arrives at your shower with residual chlorine left over from municipal treatment.
| City | Hardness (mg/L CaCO₃) | °dH | Classification |
|---|---|---|---|
| Madrid | ~55 | 3.1 | Soft |
| Seoul | ~50–80 | 3–4.5 | Soft |
| Berlin | ~303 | 17 | Hard |
| London | 250–300 | 17–21 | Very Hard |
Sources: Berliner Wasserbetriebe, UK Drinking Water Inspectorate, TapWaterScan – Madrid, Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment – Korean drinking water.
That was the one thing I had never changed. Not my cleanser. Not my moisturiser. The water hitting my skin every single day.
And many of the concerns people try to solve with skincare alone are shaped, at least in part, by the water underneath it.
A Category Built Around a Simple Idea
Around the time I moved to Germany, filtered shower heads were becoming increasingly popular in Korea. People were paying closer attention to how water affects skin and hair.
An entire category was evolving around a simple idea:
Water matters.
That was where it started. Not to bring a Korean shower filter to Europe. But to take one of the world's most advanced shower-filtration cultures and rethink it for European hard-water conditions.
Because Europe didn't have Korea's water. And Korea didn't have Europe's hard water.
Building PICKI NIKI
PICKI NIKI was created to bridge that gap.
It took more than two years of research and testing - and plenty of false starts - to build something I would actually trust on my own skin. Not because I wanted another shower filter. Because I wanted to solve the problem that started all of this.
The result: a shower filter engineered in Germany, made in Korea.
The solution I eventually built wasn't a water softener, and I never wanted to pretend it was. Instead, I focused on the things a shower filter could realistically improve: neutralising chlorine, capturing particles and creating a more comfortable shower experience for skin and hair. Everything else would need to be earned through testing rather than promises.
That testing happened at three independent Korean institutes – KEWI, KTR and P&K Skin Clinical Research Centre. In KEWI's test under shower-flow conditions, free chlorine went from 0.19 mg/L to non-detectable (100 litres at 2.52 L/min, 22 °C). The full certification summary is on the filtered shower head product page.
I wanted to build something designed around the reality of European water – not ideal laboratory conditions. Something grounded in testing, not marketing, that treated water as part of the beauty routine rather than as an afterthought.
Over time, I've come to think of it as step zero. The part of the routine that happens before skincare, before haircare, before anything else: the water itself.
Most importantly, I wanted to keep it honest. No miracle claims. No exaggerated promises. No pretending a shower filter can do things it cannot. Just thoughtful engineering, measurable testing and a product designed for the water people actually have.
I did that work so you wouldn't have to. You shouldn't need to understand water chemistry to enjoy your shower. That part is my job. Yours is simply to turn on the water.
Who It's For – And Who It's Not
If you have moved from a soft-water region to a hard-water region – Korea to Europe, the US east coast to the UK – and your hair or skin has changed for the worse, the water is the first variable worth looking at.
If you have lived in a hard-water region your whole life, you may not realise what you are getting used to. Most of our first-time customers tell us they notice how different the water feels within the first couple of weeks.
And to be clear about the boundaries: a shower filter is not a treatment and makes no medical claim. If you have eczema, colour-treated hair or a sensitive scalp, the right contact for those concerns is a dermatologist. What a filter changes is the water those concerns sit in – chlorine and particles are variables you can control. You can read more about how we built the company and why honesty is the product principle we started with.
Looking back, the signs had always been there. I just didn't see them until they became part of my everyday life.
Because in the end, it wasn't my skincare. It was the water.
