More than 220 brands descended on Orlando for Ulta Beauty World in April, and for Black founders navigating retail’s toughest challenges, the conversations happening there are proving just as valuable as the shelf space.
The Black beauty market has been one of the most consistent growth stories in consumer retail for decades. Black consumers spend more on beauty products per capita than any other demographic in the United States, and the market is projected to nearly triple in value by 2034. Those numbers tell one story. The experience of the founders building brands inside that market often tells another.
Access to capital remains a persistent barrier. Resources that larger, more established brands take for granted are harder to secure and harder to sustain for founders who are earlier in their journey. That gap is real, and it shapes everything from product development timelines to the ability to meet the volume demands that major retail partnerships require.
Which is why an event like Ulta Beauty World, held April 15 and 16 in Orlando and drawing more than 3,000 attendees across more than 220 brands, carries weight beyond a standard industry conference. For Black beauty founders, the access it provides to buyers, press, and consumers in a concentrated setting is not easily replicated anywhere else.
What visibility actually does for a brand
Octavia Morgan, founder of OCTAVIA MORGAN Los Angeles, described her time at the event as a defining moment for where her brand is headed. She is still in the earlier stages of building, which means every conversation with a buyer and every interaction with a consumer carries outsized significance. The infrastructure required to succeed in retail, supply chain management, quality assurance, the capacity to scale without compromising what made the product worth noticing in the first place, is something Morgan is actively working to build alongside the brand itself.
Her takeaway from Ulta Beauty World was that getting into retail is only the beginning of the work. Being ready for what retail actually demands is a separate and ongoing challenge.
The human side of getting on shelves and staying there
Janell Stephens, founder of Camille Rose Naturals, has been in the retail game long enough to know what separates brands that last from brands that don’t. For her, the answer comes down to relationships and consistency in equal measure.
Engaging directly with store representatives matters because those are the people who can advocate for a product on the floor, answer customer questions, and create the kind of organic endorsement that no marketing budget can fully manufacture. When the people closest to the customer believe in what a brand is doing, that belief travels.
But belief alone does not keep a product on the shelf. Stephens was direct about the ongoing demands of retail presence: products have to perform, feedback from consumers has to be taken seriously, and the trust a brand builds has to be earned continuously rather than assumed after an initial placement.
What Ulta is putting behind these brands
Ulta Beauty has made a series of commitments in recent years aimed at closing the gap between the market’s potential and the support Black founders actually receive. The company’s MUSE Accelerator program offers financial support and mentorship specifically for underrepresented founders. Ulta has also committed $50 million toward diversity and inclusion efforts and signed the Fifteen Percent Pledge, an initiative designed to ensure Black-owned products hold shelf space proportionate to the Black share of the American population.
Those commitments matter in practical terms. Accelerator programs give founders access to the kind of institutional knowledge and network connections that are difficult to build independently, particularly when capital constraints are already limiting what a founder can invest in their own growth.
Building something that outlasts the brand
For Morgan and Stephens and the founders like them, the conversation at events like Ulta Beauty World is never entirely about the current product or the next retail deal. It is about what they are building toward and what it means to build it as a Black entrepreneur in a space where that representation is still not evenly distributed.
The Black beauty market’s growth is not waiting for the industry to catch up. The founders driving that growth are moving with or without institutional support. What platforms like Ulta Beauty World offer is the chance to move faster, with more visibility, and with the kind of connections that turn a strong product into a lasting brand.
