Ulta Beauty Expands Textured Haircare Assortment With The Potion Studio

Ulta Beauty has added indie textured haircare brand The Potion Studio to its retail lineup, continuing the specialty retailer's push into targeted hair solutions.

The brand debuted on Ulta's e-commerce platform on Aug. 9 before expanding into 460 brick-and-mortar stores by Aug. 23. The rollout builds on its existing retail footprint, which includes 25 Nordstrom doors and Nordstrom's website. At Ulta, The Potion Studio joins an expanding haircare lineup that recently welcomed Jupiter, Growus, and Nutrire, alongside established textured brand leaders such as Pattern, Cécred, Rizos Curls, Ocoa, Mielle, and Camille Rose.

Independently owned and self-funded since its 2021 launch, The Potion Studio has more than doubled its annual revenue year-over-year. Founder Aziza El Wanni expects sales to quadruple in 2026 driven by the nationwide retail expansion.

El Wanni, who grew up in Suriname with Palestinian and Caribbean parents before living in Amsterdam and Los Angeles, launched the brand after struggling to find manageable routines for curly hair. Guided by her mother, she initially mixed home formulations using ingredients like avocado oil, tonka bean oil, and egg yolks. Drawing inspiration from Middle Eastern and Caribbean beauty traditions, she founded The Potion Studio to offer streamlined routines designed to perform across different climates.

"It was about inclusivity, but I wanted it to be very intentional. I believe in multifunctionality and that less is more," El Wanni said. "We’re lazy naturals. Our hair will still look good and be healthy, but we don’t have to spend all this time and money on a 10-step routine that will probably make our hair too heavy by day three anyway."

Ulta is stocking five core products from The Potion Studio priced between $12 and $32, spanning shampoo, conditioner, leave-in conditioning spray, moisturizer, and styling gel. The offering also features a $30 mini styling kit and four hair accessories priced from $23 to $30. Formulated for versatile use, the brand's shampoo doubles as a body cleanser and beard wash, while its conditioner can be used as an intensive treatment mask. Its top sellers include the Rose Bomb Leave-In Conditioning Spray and Monoi Mango Moisturizer.

The retail expansion comes as shifting demographic trends drive demand for diverse beauty offerings. Pew Research Center data indicates that as of 2018, more than 45% of U.S. Generation Z consumers identify as non-white, while market research from NaturallyCurly estimates that 65% of the U.S. population has wavy, curly, or coily hair. Internationally, Euromonitor International reported in 2024 that nearly a quarter of global consumers have curly hair, with higher prevalence among younger cohorts.

"The hair category continues to become more nuanced and personalized as our guests embrace their natural textures and look for products that speak to their individual hair needs, routines and identities," Shianna Davey, VP of merchandising at Ulta, said via email. "As the next generation of beauty consumers becomes increasingly diverse, it’s important that our assortment evolves alongside them."

Davey added: "Our goal is to offer meaningful choice across curls, coils, waves and textures, while bringing forward brands and founders with distinct perspectives on how people care for and express themselves through their hair. The Potion Studio is a great example of that evolution. As a Black and Middle Eastern-owned brand, it brings an authentic point of view to the category, pairing products created with textured hair in mind with a fresh, expressive approach to the category."

"As the next generation of beauty consumers becomes increasingly diverse, it’s important that our assortment evolves alongside them."

To accelerate its commercial readiness, The Potion Studio participated in two prominent brand incubators last year: Maesa Magic Incubator and Sephora Accelerate—a cohort that also featured emerging beauty startups like Omora Beauty Lab. Fellow Accelerate alumnus Bounce Curl, known for its viral hairbrush, expanded into roughly 215 Sephora stores in March. El Wanni credited these programs with sharpening the brand's pricing structure and market positioning, shifting it from mass-prestige toward a more premium standard.

"I learned that you can’t undervalue your brand through pricing. At first, I wanted to position the brand closer to masstige, but I realized that the brand itself is much more premium and finding the perfect balance is key," El Wanni explained. "For example, our 8-oz. gel is priced at $28, which still sits somewhere between mass and prestige, but it allows us to offer a more concentrated, premium product rather than competing directly in the mass market, where products are typically larger sizes and sold at lower price points."

The incubator experiences also highlighted how compelling brand storytelling reinforces pricing power. "People are buying into a story, a feeling and an aesthetic, not just a product. It’s about positioning the brand in a way that the consumer would want to position themselves alongside it," she noted.

The Potion Studio's shift toward premium price points aligns with wider momentum in prestige haircare. According to Circana data, U.S. prestige haircare sales rose 11% in the first half of 2026, with unit volume up 8%. Targeted treatments—including serums, masks, oils, leave-in formulas, and scalp care—served as the primary growth engines for the category.

Having grown without external venture backing, the brand historically relied on grassroots marketing, selling at artisan and flea markets across weekends. That hands-on field strategy is shaping its Ulta launch. El Wanni plans to conduct in-person visits to nearly 20 Ulta stores in the Los Angeles area. In addition to biweekly pop-ups at Nordstrom, she is distributing gift kits containing the Monoi Mango Moisturizer and Rose Bomb Leave-In Conditioning Spray to 4,610 Ulta sales associates.

"At the end of the day, it’s still up to you as a brand to stay true to yourself and to make sure that what you’re communicating on your social media or as a founder and what retailers are communicating are all aligned," El Wanni said.