Brick-and-mortar retail is booming, forcing many longtime DTC beauty brands to shift strategies and enter wholesale in hopes of promoting growth and expanding their customer base. To improve consumer access and visibility, clean beauty pioneer Beautycounter is joining big-name DTC brands like Glossier and making the leap to mass retail.

Beautycounter is adding to the clean beauty offering at Ulta, with the official rollout beginning February 26 on Ulta.com. On March 5, Beautycounter products will be available in 500 Ulta stores nationwide.

“Our partnership with Ulta is an exciting and natural next step toward achieving our mission of getting safer products into the hands of everyone,” Beautycounter Chief Commercial Officer Kara Trousdale tells BeautyMatter. “I’ve long admired Beautycounter’s ability to reach consumers wherever and however they shop. Its omnichannel model is truly consumer- and mission-first.”

The move to mass retail comes ahead of the brand’s 10th anniversary. Beautycounter was founded by Gregg Renfrew in 2013, when clean beauty was the exception, not the rule, as it is now. Since its founding, Beautycounter has held itself to the highest standards in clean beauty and advocates for more health-protective legislation to reform the beauty industry at the federal level.

Over the past 10 years, the brand has built an omnichannel selling ecosystem that includes Beautycounter’s own website, physical retail stores in locations including New York City and Denver, as well as through tens of thousands of brand advocates that sell products through their own social and personal networks.

Trousdale spent eight years at Amazon before joining the executive team at Beautycounter in March 2022 to help scale the brand’s retail partnerships and drive its next phase of growth. She has no plans to wind down the social-selling model as the brand continues its expansion into mass retail.

“Every business decision we make considers two questions: How do consumers want to shop? And, how we can achieve our mission of getting safer products into the hands of everyone?” says Trousdale. “Our direct sales channel continues to be one of the most compelling answers, and it's why we'll continue to prioritize it even as we grow our other distribution channels. Our brand advocates educate customers and help drive our mission better than anyone else.”

While the awareness of clean beauty has certainly gone mainstream, customers and even brands are still confused about what “clean” really means. Last month, Sephora filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by a customer who alleges the retailer's “Clean at Sephora” label is a form of false advertising. The plaintiff alleges that some “Clean at Sephora” products contain potentially harmful synthetic ingredients, putting into question the definition of “clean.”

The benefit of Beautycounter’s brand advocates is that they can deliver the brand’s clean beauty standards and what it really means to be a clean beauty brand on a one-on-one basis. Beautycounter’s brand advocates can also mobilize for change on a much bigger scale.

“We also know that our brand advocates have been instrumental in helping us move forward critical legislation that makes beauty safer,” says Trousdale. “This is the power of community."

As consumers become more aware of ingredients and their effects on their health, beauty brands and retailers will need to rethink their own standards. A representative for the brand states that Beautycounter will be ​​the “anchor brand” for Ulta’s Conscious Beauty program, which means that the brand’s products exemplify Ulta’s high standards for clean beauty.

“We’re so proud to be the leader in clean, but we should also acknowledge that meeting our standards is not easy,” Beautycounter Chief Impact Officer Jen Lee tells BeautyMatter. “Part of why we’re so excited to partner with Ulta is that it allows us to continue to raise our overall profile in the industry, knowing that as brand awareness grows, so does the opportunity to share our playbook and let the industry know that it's possible.”

Ulta is the country's biggest beauty retailer and has the power to raise clean beauty standards across the industry. Bringing Beautycounter in stores and online shows a commitment to helping consumers navigate the crowded clean beauty landscape. Ulta also benefits from the advocacy efforts that Beautycounter engages in, which has resulted in the passage of more than 10 pieces of legislation since Beautycounter was founded in 2011.

“We share the same values, the same ethos, and frankly, the same objectives of raising the bar for clean beauty,” Beautycounter CEO Marc Rey tells BeautyMatter. “Clean has now become a bit of a buzzword, which was not the case 10 years ago. It ​​helps enormously to have retailers [and] people like us who explain [what clean beauty is] and make sure that the rules are clear. From every point of view, it's a win-win and a very powerful partnership.”

To celebrate the Ulta clean beauty expansion and the brand’s 10th anniversary, Beautycounter is launching its most extensive media campaign in the history of the brand called Raise Up Beauty, which the brand hopes will galvanize consumers around the brand’s work to elevate the standards of the beauty industry.

“From a fresh look and feel to featuring some of our Brand Advocates in the imagery, we are celebrating our people, a decade of progress, and introducing Beautycounter, and our mission to new consumers,” Beautycounter Chief Marketing Officer Luana Bumachar tells BeautyMatter. “Raise Up Beauty is both a call to action and a reminder that through our collective efforts, we can drive the industry beyond clean ingredients towards a world where all beauty is uncompromising.”

Ulta has welcomed several new brands in store and online since the start of 2023, including  conscious skincare brand Provence Beauty, haircare brand Odele, skincare brand Moon Juice, and temporary hair dye brand Hally—all under the Conscious Beauty umbrella. While Beautycounter may be a clean beauty pioneer, it’s clear that Ulta is making significant strides to support the beauty industry’s transition to a cleaner future.

“We’ve spent a decade defining and navigating clean, charting the path before ‘clean beauty’ was a trend, and our goal in this next chapter is to share what we've learned,” says Lee. “We're committed to raising up the industry leading it beyond clean where all beauty is uncompromising.”