When Kim van Haaster started her skincare brand Bloomeffects in 2019, she felt fortunate to launch at Credo, Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdale’s, and Bluemercury—all at the same time. But she had three problems working against her: 1. The pandemic had just started; she couldn’t promote her new brand. 2. Most of her inventory was trapped behind locked brick-and-mortar doors. 3. She had no clue who her customer was.
Van Haaster didn’t have any trouble securing initial meetings with retailers. She had worked in sales and marketing for beauty and consumer products for years before starting Bloomeffects. Her “Rolodex was still warm,” she told BeautyMatter. She also had a strong industry reputation for sell-in and sell-through in brick-and-mortar retail, which helped land Bloomeffects in so many retailers at once.
But launching at so many different retailers from the beginning gave her target consumer a bit of an identity crisis, and perhaps that is what Ulta Beauty sensed when they rejected van Haaster and Bloomeffects for the first time. “It was very challenging, and I didn’t know who the customer was going to be,” van Haaster said. “It was a steep learning curve.”
Though Ulta Beauty initially gave van Haaster a “no” at that first meeting, van Haaster listened to the retailer’s advice. In an industry where founders can be stubborn about taking input, Lisa Tamburello, Vice President of Merchandising for Skincare, Bodycare, and Suncare at Ulta Beauty, told BeautyMatter she was impressed by how van Haaster took and acted on Ulta Beauty’s counsel. “We always give feedback to brands when we meet with them, helping them see the opportunity to maximize their potential with us,” Tamburello said. “And she [van Haaster] really took it.”
When Bloomeffects, which is projecting $8-$10 million in revenue for 2026, first pitched Ulta Beauty, Tamburello and the team immediately noticed something unique about the brand. She found van Haaster’s founder origin story compelling, and she knew Ulta Beauty guests would recognize it too. “Kim is at the forefront of the intersection of what our guest is asking for today, which is a balance of efficacious skincare with a compelling founder story,” Tamburello told BeautyMatter. “With the amount of skincare brands that are new to market and brands reinvigorating themselves to come back to relevance in the market, Bloomeffect’s tulip-powered innovation brings a unique proprietary angle to skincare.”
Tamburello felt the brand’s tulip technology made Bloomeffects more approachable and believable “when you think about what the guest is looking for,” in a world where skincare can feel intimidating. “And a tulip … who doesn't love a beautiful flower that they can associate with? That transparency and the tulip-powered ingredient they [Bloomeffects] bring to the forefront make the brand’s journey even more approachable and something that could break through, which is what we saw.”
She also identified the value of the unexpected in van Haaster’s founder story. “I also love that it's almost like she stumbled on the idea, because she married this man and that was his life. It's just so humbling.” Tamburello said that she hears a lot of brand stories based on location and where the founder was born, which is what she expected from van Haaster: “I was expecting her founder story to be ‘This is where I’ve always lived and I’ve always loved the tulip,’ but instead it was literally her husband’s farm, his livelihood.”
But Bloomeffects’ love story with Ulta Beauty was not always sunshine and tulips. It took seven years of “dating,” according to Tamburello, before Bloomeffects hit the shelves of 750 doors in February of this year. As much as Tamburello and the Ulta Beauty team saw the brand’s potential from day one, they felt it had a lot of growing to do before it could land on Ulta Beauty’s shelves—apparently seven years’ worth of growing.
During that time, the demand for global relevance at Ulta Beauty grew, and Tamburello recognized that Bloomeffects could resonate with a wider audience. “We could see their [Bloomeffects’] authenticity really cutting through in a different way. And tulips in the Netherlands are unexpected. Of all the things you put on our bingo cards, if you will, that was the most unexpected in terms of us trying to predict the new big thing.”
Since there was so much confusion at the beginning about who Bloomeffects’ consumer was, BeautyMatter asked van Haaster who she thinks Bloomeffects' customer is now. “Our customer is less about demographics and more about psychographics,” van Haaster said. “They’re looking for conscious beauty that’s good for them and better for the environment, but efficacy is still number one. They also want a joyous, sensorial experience—they love yummy, delectable textures and, of course, flowers. You can have someone who’s 16 or 99 and anyone in between who loves the brand."
Over those seven years, van Haaster completely restaged the brand based on Ulta Beauty’s suggestions. “We changed all our packaging, reduced our assortment, got rid of poor-performing and nonprofitable SKUs, and then we looked at the MSRP across the board because we knew the scale was coming with Ulta.”
It wasn’t just that van Haaster took every piece of Ulta Beauty’s recommendations; she embraced them with humility and grace. “I don’t know that every founder knows how to take advice like that, and it’s so valuable,” Tamburello said.
Tamburello recalled being at an Ulta Beauty event with van Haaster earlier in the year, and the founder told her, “‘You know what? I wanted my time to be a year or two ago, but you were right. I was not positioned well enough to be where we are today, to have the momentum behind our back.’ Then she said it’s like listening on both sides of the table, and for her to be that grounded and mature to understand that line of sight so quickly and share it—I do think it's something that's notable, and it's going to help her grow.”
Tamburello concluded that if she were a betting woman, she would wager that Bloomeffects will be around for a long time. “Honestly, Bloomeffects could probably be a heritage brand in the future, if I'm putting my money on it.”