TikTok Shop’s top oral-care brand is diversifying its distribution strategy with a strategic launch into 300 Ulta Beauty doors.
“It may not be a big dollar business [to start], but to us, this is a game-changing business [decision],” Puneet Nanda, founder and CEO of GuruNanda, told Glossy. “We believe that, to get recognition from a beauty store like Ulta, a store that caters to middle America, rather than Sephora, which caters to the top [earning] Americans, we can bridge the gap [between wellness and beauty] and bring GuruNanda into the beauty realm.”
Laura Beres, vp of wellness at Ulta Beauty, told Glossy that interest in oral care among Ulta shoppers has increased in step with holistic care, and that ingredient awareness has also grown. GuruNanda is based on several Ayurvedic practices, like oil pulling, and uses ingredients like coconut, peppermint and spearmint oils. “We’re committed to evolving our wellness assortment to meet the growing interest in self-care solutions that go beyond traditional beauty,” Beres said.
GuruNanda launched into 300 brick-and-mortar Ulta Beauty locations and Ulta.com on Thursday. It comes on the heels of Ulta Beauty’s January announcement that it will expand its wellness section this year. Penny Coy, Ulta Beauty’s svp of merchandising, told Glossy that every single Ulta Beauty location received a dedicated wellness section earlier this year, with oral care, nutrition, sleep, hormonal health, mindfulness and stress relief being main focuses.
According to Mintel market research company, the oral-care market is projected to reach $10.8 billion this year, representing a 6.3% annual growth rate.
GuruNanda also sells DTC and through Amazon, CVS, Target and Walmart. During its best sales day on TikTok Shop in 2024, GuruNanda sold close to $1 million worth of oral care products, as reported by Glossy in January.
Ulta Beauty launched GuruNanda with five SKUs, including two traditional offerings and three whitening products. This includes Toothpaste for $9.99 and Oil Pulling Mouth Rinse for $14.99, plus Whitening Strips for $9.99, Whitening Mouthwash for $12.99 and a Whitening Pen 2-Pack that retails for $17.99.
Nanda launched GuruNanda in 2015 after selling his family’s longtime oral-care manufacturing business, which made toothbrushes and a variety of other oral-care products for leading brands, in 2012. Nanda quickly focused on social selling, eventually growing the brand’s Instagram following to 100,000 and TikTok followership to 172,000. His personal accounts have 133,000 and 366,000 followers, respectively.
However, Nanda told Glossy that his once-record-breaking sales on TikTok Shop began to dwindle after former President Joe Biden resurrected the idea of a TikTok ban in early 2024. “We saw a big, big decline, “ said Nanda. By the end of 2024, GuruNanda’s TikTok Shop sales dropped by 70%. Earlier this year, when President Donald Trump said he may ban the app, GuruNanda’s sales dropped again to land around 10% of what they were at their peak.
“They’re starting to come back,” Nanda told Glossy, and he has high hopes for the coming months as TikTok could be transitioned out of the states and replaced by the new M2 app, he said.
GuruNand’a entry into Ulta Beauty is a chance to reengage his lost TikTok customer, he told Glossy. “The reception [on social media] has been amazing — better than when we announced [our entry into] Target stores,” Nanda said. “Our customers are very excited to find us at Ulta Beauty.”
He believes overlap between TikTok users and Ulta shoppers is high. “The Target customer is the Instagram customer, and the Ulta and Walmart customer is more the TikTok customer,” he said.
Nanda told Glossy that the brand’s Whitening Strips are currently the top whitening strips at Walmart, by volume. The company has not topped the dollar sales of Crest, which sells its whitening strips for three to four times the price of GuruNanda. Nanda hopes for the same success at Ulta, which sells whitening products from Beach House Group-owned Moon for $39.99, similar to that of Crest.
To do so, Nanda told Glossy he’s actively mobilizing GuruNanda’s 400 in-house TikTok influencers — for which he has monthly payment retainers to make content — to drive shoppers into Ulta Beauty stores.
“We will be driving a lot of traffic to Ulta,” he said. For Nanda, launch awareness is vital; profiting, or even breaking even, on the Ulta launch is secondary, for now. These 400 content creators will begin entering Ulta Beauty stores in August to make content that drives shoppers into stores. Nanda hopes the brand will help cement oral beauty as a top beauty category going forward in beauty retail.
