Bushbalm is expanding across Ulta Beauty’s full complement of nearly 1,400 stores with four core products and adding placement in the beauty specialty retailer’s wellness selection in 800 stores.
The ingrown hair and dark spot product brand’s four core products are $26 Dark Spot Oil, $23 Dark Spot Exfoliating Scrub, $26 Ingrown Hair Oil and $23 Ingrown Hair Exfoliating Scrub are entering the chain’s in-store installation The Wellness Shop, and two products that have been brisk sellers on Ulta’s website—$19 Roller Rescue Soothing Serum and $19 Hydrogel Vajacial Mask—are going in-store for the first time.
Designed for use following hair removal, the serum contains alpha-hydroxy acid (AHA) and beta-hydroxy acid (BHAs) and a stainless steel applicator. It’s been sold out on Ulta’s site for over three months.
“Roller Rescue actually has become our hero product,” says Bushbalm co-founder and CEO David Gaylord. “We launched it in October last year and ever since it’s been a top seller.”
Bushbalm anticipates its Ulta revenues rising over 50% this year and total 2024 revenues ringing in at $14.7 million. While the forecast is about half what the brand projected for 2023 when Beauty Independent spoke to Gaylord in 2021, it represents a 35% year-over-year increase.
Ulta is Ottawa-based Bushbalm’s inaugural retail partner. Having a behemoth like Ulta to initiate retail distribution is exciting, but challenging and has come with lots of lessons for the Canadian brand. Understanding how to speak to retail buyers about Bushbalm’s beauty-first perspective has been essential.
“It took us a while to figure out what to say to help them be passionate about it. We’ve realized that the hair removal section for too long mostly has products that are alcohol-based. They’re all really old, outdated, bad for your skin,” says Gaylord. “Once we got the point across, ‘Hey, you’ve got this hair removal section, you need some great skincare brands in that section,’ for them, that was the statement that seemingly clicked.”
Shifting the focus from after care—”They’re like, ‘Aftercare for after what?'” recounts Gaylord—to bringing better skincare to the shaving category has been important. The brand also shifted from spotlighting its all-natural formulations to spotlighting tried-and-true science-backed skincare ingredients like AHA, BHA and hyaluronic acid. The latter is a key ingredient in Hydrogel Vajacial Mask.
Bushbalm has honed its pricing strategy, too. Roller Rescue Soothing Serum and Hydrogel Vajacial Mask decreased Bushbalm’s average price at Ulta from $24 to about $21. The brand lowered its Nourishing Body Wash last year to $18 from $21. The highest priced item it plans to introduce this year is a $28 brightener.
“Going from a small brand to slightly bigger, we’ve seen some savings and a body wash at $18 versus $21 is a pretty big deal,” says Gaylord. “The brand is all about approachability. Long term, we do think lower prices and more masstige [positioning] is probably our category…For the most part, we’ll be under $30 for everything.”
Bushbalm, which is sold on Amazon, has an exclusive retail arrangement with Ulta through February 2025. The exclusivity compels it to zero its marketing dollars in on its Ulta partnership. At present, direct-to-consumer distribution contributes the lion’s share of Bushbalm’s sales, and waxing salons contribute roughly 25%. The brand is available in over 3,600 independent waxing salons.
It doesn’t work with a distributor for the professional channel. Instead, a single dedicated salesperson has forged relationships with waxing salons. To support the professional channel, Bushbalm is building a site that will help onboard waxing salons and provide education to them.
Gaylord views waxing salons as a massive opportunity for the brand. “My favorite stat is there’s actually 10 times more waxing and nail salons in the U.S. than there are Starbucks,” he says. “Our professional market is huge, 360,000 of them around the U.S.”
Gaylord points out that a benefit of the professional channel is lower price sensitivity. Waxing salons are generally skilled at upselling as long as products are priced under the price of a waxing service, typically around $50. Bushbalm is leaning into the professional channel by creating products unique to it that aren’t sold at Ulta or on Amazon. Later this year, it will release a professional product range for aestheticians that won’t even be sold on Bushbalm’s site. Along with the range, it’s extending its spa and salon back-bar offerings from two to five or six products.
Bushbalm was started in 2016 by Tim Burns, who brought Gaylord, then at Shopify, on as co-founder. So far, the brand’s merchandise has been funded internally. It’s currently in the midst of fundraising with the goal of raising $10 million in a round expected to close in the summer. Gaylord believes the brand is at the perfect spot to deploy capital effectively.
“Now, we’ve got the momentum with all four channels whereas, in years past, it was super dependent on one or two channels,” he says. “Now if one channel’s down, the others are kind of stable. It’s been great that way.”
