Clean curly hair brand Bread Beauty Supply is expanding its retail footprint and audience with a new Ulta Beauty partnership.
“We were really drawn in by the fact that Ulta is historically a haircare destination, and I think they have a really compelling combination of ‘it’ brands and of the moment brands that also offer value,” says founder and CEO Maeva Heim. “Those things I feel like do a really good job of getting that younger customer.”
Bread, which entered Sephora in July 2020 and promptly sold out, premiered on Ulta’s website last month and will be heading to 300 of its stores in February. Available products include its bestselling $24 Hair-Oil, $34 Mud-Mask, $28 Hair-Mask, $28 Hair-Cream, $28 Scalp-Serum, $20 Hair-Wash and $28 Macadamia-Oil.
Bread raised around $2 million in pre-seed funding from Imaginary Ventures, backer of Westman Atelier, Kosas, Hum Nutrition, Ami Colé and Nécessaire. Its average customer is African American or multiethnic and between the ages of 18 to 34 years old, a range skewed toward millennials, but bridging both millennials and gen Zers. According to investment bank Piper Sandler’s latest gen Z survey, Ulta is the generation’s preferred beauty destination, with a 42% mindshare. Sephora leans millennial.
Heim says, “Reaching this different person and having them be able to pick up the product and smell the formula and feel the textures, it just gives us that chance to bring the brand to more people and to different people as well.”
From the very beginning of Bread, a participant in the Sephora Accelerate program in 2019, having a brick-and-mortar presence was important to Heim, who says haircare sales over-index at brick-and-mortar retail. She explains, “We wanted to make sure that we’re able to get the products into people’s hands without them having to kind of guess and make that leap online.”
Heim views Ulta as complementary to Bread’s current retail mix that encompasses Space NK, Farfetch, Selfridges and Cult Beauty as well as Sephora, where the brand was exclusive for 18 months and is in over 70 doors. The plan is to keep distribution tight in the United States going forward. Heim says, “If we were to bring on new distribution, it would have to be really additive and really about reaching a completely different customer from the people that we’re reaching with Sephora and Ulta.”
International expansion is a different story. The brand is exclusive with Sephora in New Zealand and Australia, Melbourne-based Heim’s home country, and she hopes to widen its global footprint over the next year. “There is such a big gap and such a need for a brand like Bread in so many different markets,” she says.
In tandem with its Ulta debut, Bread launched a competition to find a new face of the brand. Entrants have to post on TikTok showing their wash-day routine, hair hacks or favorite hairstyles using Bread’s products. The winner will star in future campaigns and receive a year’s supply of products.
“We really wanted to find a way to build that brand and retail awareness in a way that felt authentic and was anchored in something other than just, ‘Hey, you can find us at a new retailer,’” says Heim. “It’s almost this give and take with our community.” Bread will host in-person activations once it hits Ulta stores.
Heim started Bread after working in brand management at L’Oréal and Procter & Gamble. At Bread, the marketing strategy revolves around Instagram and TikTok. Glances at Bread’s business behind the scenes and digestible educational content have been strong performers. Heim says, “Our approach is always very much around giving people great products and a great product experience without telling them that their hair has to be done a particular way.”
Heim has curly hair and grew up hanging out in her mom’s hair braiding salon in Perth. While her brand’s products were created with 3A to 4C curls in mind, she says there’s a “halo” customer who may not have 3A to 4C curls, but needs guidance on what to do with their hair.
“Because haircare as a category is so far behind in terms of consumer education, everybody is looking for a solution,” elaborates Heim. “And because we’re much more inclusive in our approach and inclusive in who we’re speaking to, other people want to be involved in the brand, too. They like our positioning, they like what we stand for, and they like what we’re saying. So, we’re getting almost everyone coming to the brand.”
Bread’s upcoming products will take the brand beyond the first few steps of wash day. “We know that they’re really hungry for styling products, and we want deliver that in the next six months,” says Heim. “It just gives us so much more room to give people that end-to-end experience, which is what we’ve really set out to do, give you that really simplified, easy but efficient and fun routine that you can take from beginning to end and have all of your hero products at each step be a Bread product.”
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