How Do You Build Awareness for a K-Beauty Launch Before Shoppers Walk Into Ulta?

A K-beauty brand that just launched in Ulta doors needs US creator videos working before shoppers walk in. An unfamiliar brand on a crowded shelf gives shoppers little reason to pick it up. When a Yonhap News reporter toured Ulta and Target stores in New York in August 2026, the shelves said almost nothing about why a Korean brand was worth noticing.

Online buzz alone does little for a K-beauty brand at Ulta, because Ulta sells mostly in stores. Its CMO puts in-store sales at about 80% of the total, and its annual report says 73% of Ulta Beauty Rewards members shopped only in stores in fiscal 2025. Even a K-beauty brand that leads online slips once store sales count. Medicube ranked first in Ulta's online skincare sales in October 2025, but third once store sales were counted.

So each BAZZAAL video features one product Ulta carries in stores and ends with a clear call to find it at Ulta. Videos go up in two waves: in-store launch week and just before the next Ulta sale event.

In short

• Each video features one product Ulta carries in stores and one skin concern. If the video shows an Ulta.com-only item, a viewer who goes to the store won't find it.

• Launch-week videos go to paid collaborations with a contracted posting date, so they are live in in-store launch week. Gifted creators choose their own posting day, so unpaid seeding ships three to four weeks early and its posts build around launch week.

• Post another round just before the next Ulta tentpole, such as 21+ Days of Beauty. Before that, ask your buyer whether your product is in the event's deals.

Where do Ulta shoppers discover K-beauty, and where do they buy it?

At Ulta, the store is the center of sales. Ulta's CMO said in a January 2026 interview that about 80% of sales happen in-store. The annual report adds that Ulta's guests prefer to buy in stores, where they can discover and try products.

K-beauty leans the other way. Numerator, a consumer data company, reported in July 2026 that two-thirds of US K-beauty sales happen online, with Amazon taking 44% of spending, Sephora 24% and Ulta 11%. And 68% of K-beauty buyers said social media influences their skincare purchases. These figures cover K-beauty across all retailers. Still, they show where K-beauty shoppers usually meet a product: online and on social.

The shelf alone does little to bring that shopper in. In the New York stores the Yonhap reporter visited, some Korean brands with strong global name recognition sat where shoppers could easily miss them. There was almost no information on which product to try first.

Ulta leans on creators of its own to make those introductions. Its annual report says influencers and affiliates play an important role in beauty, and it names the UB Collective, its annual class of influencers, and UB Creates, its affiliate program. Its CMO said that whether shoppers discover a product in a store aisle, in a TikTok feed or through a creator, Ulta makes sure they can buy it anywhere. A creator video that sends shoppers into the store fits how Ulta already sells.

Ulta has also used TikTok to drive store traffic. For TikTok Beauty Month in 2024, it ran a campaign that bundled nine TikTok solutions, from in-store pop-up billboards to ad placements. Three TikTok creators and the 40-plus members of the UB Collective added content. TikTok's case page credits the whole campaign with more than 1.2 million Ulta store visits. It ties a 23% lift in store visits to one paid ad placement and does not say how visits were measured.

One industry analysis has tried to model how much of TikTok's effect shows up in store sales. In a 2024 article written with TikTok's marketing science team, the measurement firm Ovative modeled two years of retail clients' media data. More than half of the revenue driven by TikTok media was realized in stores, against about 35% for other platforms. Because TikTok co-wrote it and it measured paid media, read it as a directional signal for creator content.

The same article found that more than 40% of TikTok's incremental revenue came in the weeks after the media ran. If the return lags by weeks, posts need to be live from the first day of launch week so it lands while the product is still new on the shelf.

Why do the first weeks decide the reorder?

Ulta judges new brands by how productive they are in its stores. On the March 2026 call, CEO Kecia Steelman said Ulta was using SKU rationalization "to have more productive items that are in our store." Four-wall productivity across its 1,500 stores, she added, was a focus. She said the team was bringing in wellness and K-beauty while cutting. She noted that K-beauty brands often come in and go out like fashion. Ulta checks efficacy first, she said, so that shoppers buy K-beauty that is "known and trusted." In August she repeated that Ulta would not get caught up in treating K-beauty as fast fashion.

Early sell-through drives replenishment. According to APR, Medicube's parent company, Medicube launched on Ulta.com and in about 1,400 Ulta stores in August 2025. By its third month at Ulta, Medicube's monthly unit sales were about 30% higher than when sales began. Ulta's October purchase order, placed in the month Early Black Friday began, was about 40% larger by value than the opening order in August. In September, promotions and marketing drew enough demand to trigger an extra reorder. In BAZZAAL's view, opening-week sell-through sets reorder volume and shelf space.

Medicube, though, was already well known in the US before Ulta. It sold 1.5 million Booster Pro devices in 2024 alone without store distribution, so a newer brand can't expect the same numbers.

A smaller brand built demand before it reached the shelf, too. Soshe, a US indie makeup brand, launched at Ulta on August 2, 2026. According to BeautyMatter, it launched on Ulta's Sparked fixture for emerging brands, which is in roughly 700 stores. Ulta also gave it three-foot inline gondolas in 150 stores. A co-founder started documenting the run-up on TikTok a little over three months before launch. With no PR or influencer spending by the brand, shoppers and micro-creators filmed themselves finding and buying Soshe at Ulta, some before the display was even installed. BeautyMatter wrote that the social buzz appeared to be paying off, and Ulta's first replenishment order exceeded its original full-year forecast.

Soshe had a head start of its own. Within six months of launching at Credo, it became the fastest-growing color brand in that retailer's history, and its founders ran their own TikTok. A brand run from Korea can't copy that directly. What carries over is the format: a person walks into Ulta, finds the product on the fixture and buys it. A brand run from Korea can brief paid collaborations and unpaid seeding creators to film exactly that.

Which Ulta events fall in a brand's first three months?

After the in-store launch, the next date to plan around is an Ulta tentpole. On the June 2026 call, Ulta's CEO said store sales were supported by key events including 21+ Days of Beauty and spring haul. On the December 2025 call, Ulta described 21+ Days of Beauty as designed to drive engagement and conversion.

21+ Days of Beauty runs on Daily Beauty Steals, with select products at 50% off on set days. Ask your buyer early whether your product will be in the deals and on which day. If it isn't, your full-price product will sit next to 50%-off favorites that week. Ask the buyer which event or week can feature the product, and time the second wave to that.

These are Ulta's major annual events and their recent dates:

• Spring 21+ Days of Beauty ran March 7–27, 2025, and March 6–26, 2026.

• Fall 21+ Days of Beauty ran August 29–September 18, 2025, and August 28–September 17, 2026.

• Early Black Friday started October 26, 2025, and October 25, 2026. In 2025, Ulta's Black Friday sale began November 23, five days before Black Friday on November 28.

• The skincare event Love Your Skin ran for three weeks, from December 28, 2025, to January 17, 2026.

Event dates move a little each year. The spring start moved from March 7, 2025, to March 6, 2026. When Ulta announces new dates, rebuild the calendar.

Which events fall in the first three months depends on the launch month. Medicube launched in August 2025, so its first three months included fall 21+ Days of Beauty and Early Black Friday. APR said US shoppers responded strongly during Early Black Friday as well.

A brand that launches in stores in early November gets Black Friday, the holidays and Love Your Skin in its first three months. A brand that launches in April gets no 21+ Days of Beauty in that window, so its first one is the fall event in late August.

When should the videos start?

BAZZAAL builds one backward calendar from the in-store launch date and another from each event date, and each one sets the seeding kickoff and the ship date. A creator campaign runs in this order: brief, casting, brand approval of the creator list, shipping, filming and posting. BAZZAAL's Black Friday calendar allows eight weeks for unpaid seeding, also known as gifting, with 50 to 150 creators. It allows six weeks for paid collaborations and small UGC projects, and 12 weeks for a new brand that still needs a US account and logistics setup. Seeding stock has to be in the US, separate from the Ulta order, before the clock starts.

The eight weeks of unpaid seeding split into two stretches. The first four to five weeks cover the brief, casting, approval and shipping. In the last three to four weeks, creators receive the product, try it and post, and they choose the posting day. In BAZZAAL's MEDIHEAL Prime Day seeding, posts went live over about two weeks, from June 18 to July 3, 2026. So any video that must be live in launch week or on an event's first day goes to a paid collaboration with a contracted posting date.

Start with the in-store launch. According to their launch announcements, EQQUALBERRY, MARSHIQUE and AXIS-Y went live on Ulta.com on October 18 and in Ulta stores on November 1. For a November 1 in-store launch, the backward calendar puts the unpaid seeding kickoff in early September and the ship date in early October. Start paid collaborations by September 20 and set their posting dates in the first week of November.

When Ulta.com goes live first, as it did for these three brands, early posts still point to a product shoppers can already buy. Not every brand gets that gap. Medicube went live online and in stores in the same month, so confirm both dates with your buyer.

Count back from an event the same way. Using the most recent spring 21+ Days of Beauty, in 2026:

• Kick off unpaid seeding by January 9, eight weeks out, with the brief and creator outreach.

• Kick off paid collaborations and small UGC by January 23, six weeks out, with posting dates set around March 6.

• Ship unpaid seeding product to creators between February 6 and 13, three to four weeks out.

• When the event opens on March 6, paid posts are live and gifted posts are landing in the weeks around it.

To keep posts coming between launch week and the next event, BAZZAAL casts new creators every month for the first three months. In the program BAZZAAL has run with SKIN1004 since 2023, a new creator list is built each month. If a month falls short of its posting target, BAZZAAL backfills the shortfall in the next month's casting.

What product and message should each video feature?

Choose the product from what Ulta carries in stores. Cosmorning searched Ulta.com with its K-Beauty filter on June 15, 2026, and found 713 of 1,368 products sold online only. The filter also includes Korean-inspired brands from other countries. A shopper who sees an online-only product in a video and goes to the store won't find it.

Then check which stores carry it. Ulta runs more than 1,500 US stores, and a new brand may not be in all of them. Soshe's Sparked fixture was in roughly 700 stores, and its own gondolas in only 150. Look at where the product is stocked first, then pick creators and ad targeting to match.

Once the product is set, pair it with one skin concern. In MEDIHEAL's Amazon Prime Day campaign in June 2026, creators matched the pads with blemishes and redness and the eye patches with tired-looking eyes. A shopper who can't get an explanation at the shelf can still pick the product by remembering that one concern.

The last line tells viewers where to buy it. Many MEDIHEAL captions closed by telling viewers to find the product on Amazon during Prime Day. For a product Ulta carries in stores, point viewers to Ulta stores and Ulta.com instead. Naming both is worth it: Ulta's annual report says guests who shop in stores and online have historically spent more than three times as much as store-only guests. When Soshe's followers asked where they could find the products, the brand built a tool that shows which Ulta stores carry them.

Videos that go up before the in-store launch should say when the product reaches stores, so early viewers don't make a wasted trip. Links matter too, since many viewers will tap before they ever drive to a store. Ulta has its own TikTok Shop now. It laid out the plan on its March 2026 call, and in August its CEO said the shop was adding new brands. Ask your buyer whether your product can be listed there, so creator links can point to Ulta instead of Amazon.

What can a brand that launched in stores in November do if its campaign starts late?

A campaign that starts after the in-store launch is already too late for launch-week videos. In that case, count forward from the kickoff. From a November 9 kickoff, six weeks lands on December 21 and eight weeks on January 4. That is too late for Black Friday on November 27, and Ulta's Early Black Friday had already started on October 25.

So Black Friday runs on what already exists. If creators already have the product from an Amazon or TikTok Shop campaign, book them for paid posts. Put ad spend behind live videos that feature a product Ulta carries in stores. BAZZAAL doesn't run a creator's post as an ad without consent, and running one as an ad means securing usage rights for a set period. If a video points shoppers to Amazon, it won't work as is. Ask for edit rights along with usage rights, and run a cut with an Ulta call to action.

A campaign that starts on November 9 aims at the events after that. Paid collaboration videos go live around December 21, in time for the last shopping days before Christmas. Gifted posts land from mid-December into early January, which overlaps Love Your Skin. The 2025 event ran from December 28 to January 17, and TODAY pitched it as a chance to revamp a skincare routine for the new year. Check Ulta's announcement for the 2026 dates and count again.

FAQ

How do you tell whether the videos moved store sales?

Link clicks and discount codes only track online orders. Store impact has to be read from store sales in the weeks before and after the videos land. Before launch, ask your buyer which store sales data you will get and how often.

Does Ulta publish how and when it cuts underperforming SKUs?

No. On the March 2026 call, Ulta's CEO said only that the team is working on SKU rationalization while bringing in wellness and K-beauty. Ask your buyer when your line review falls and which sales measures they watch.

Can a haul or routine video feature several products?

It can. The product Ulta carries in stores still has to be clear, and keep it to one concern shoppers can remember at the shelf. Soshe's creators bought several products, but the heart of each video was finding Soshe in an Ulta store.

Related reading: Sephora and Ulta: Your First Six Months After Landing · What Does Ulta Look for in K-Beauty Brands? · What Does It Cost to Pay a Creator for Usage Rights?

Sources

1. Ulta Beauty. Annual report on Form 10-K, fiscal 2025. Filed March 2026. Guests' preference for stores, 73% store-only members, 19% omnichannel members spending over three times as much, 1,505 US stores, UB Collective, Ulta Beauties and UB Creates.

2. Numerator. K-Beauty Category Surpasses $2 Billion in Sales. Jul 28, 2026. Two-thirds of sales online, spending share by retailer, 68% social influence. Survey fielded Jun 15–16, 2026, to 2,300+ K-beauty buyers.

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26. BAZZAAL blog. Sephora and Ulta: Your First Six Months After Landing. Aug 22, 2026. Opening-week sales velocity and reorders.

27. BAZZAAL blog. Should a New K-Beauty Product Launch on TikTok Shop US First?. Oct 31, 2026. Three to four weeks to receive, try and post.

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29. BAZZAAL. SKIN1004 case study. Monthly creator lists and carry-over rule.