Getting Into Beauty Retail Is Difficult — Staying There Is Even Harder

For years, getting into a major beauty retailer was treated as the ultimate marker of legitimacy for emerging brands in the industry. A Sephora, Ulta Beauty or national mass-market launch could transform an emerging label into an industry success story almost overnight. Today, the prestige of that placement remains in many ways, but the impact of it has changed.
A prominent retail partnership is no longer a finish line; rather, it’s a starting point, a high-stakes test of whether a brand c