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On this week’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, co-host Sara Spruch-Feiner sits down with Kim van Haaster, founder of Bloomeffects, to discuss the brand’s seven-year journey to Ulta Beauty.
Bloomeffects officially launched at the retailer in February, but the journey was years in the making — and included multiple rejections, a brand redesign and, perhaps most compellingly, a social post that transparently documented the whole process, including those rejections.
On this episode, van Haaster candidly shares how Bloomeffects reworked its packaging and assortment to turn Ulta’s no into a yes, what the brand changed to get into retail (including lowering some prices) and why Ulta was so worth fighting for for Bloomeffects.
Highlights from the episode, below, have been lightly edited for clarity.
On renovating the brand’s look to get into Ulta
“We always felt like it was necessary because times change, and we were in our seventh year, so we did have a feeling that the brand needed to evolve and have a bit of a spruce up, a freshen up. However, when the merchant team, point-blank, says your brand comes across as old-fashioned, and that’s a quote, then it’s time to reassess. And that’s exactly the feedback that we received from Ulta. And I think at that point we had been trying and pitching for three or four years, and there was never truly a reason why we were knocked back. Most of the [responses] were a very polite decline: ‘Not at this time,’ ‘We’re full for the year,’ or ‘We’ve booked the calendar for the year, come back next year.’ And after three years of that, it really got to a point of, well, ‘What could we change?’ And I’m so happy that we asked that question, because it was kind of a revelation when they said, ‘The glass is very heavy. It’s not dot-com friendly, and there are elements of the packaging that need to be updated to reflect the Ulta client.’ So, we went back to the drawing board. They were not part of the process; they told us what they didn’t like, but they didn’t tell us what they wanted to see. And that was a huge risk for us. As a brand founder, I created the initial look and feel of the brand. It’s something that you’re very married to as a founder, so you have to check your ego and listen to your customer, and in this relationship, Ulta is our customer. … We just took it on the chin and said, ‘OK, give us six months. We’ll come back.’ And that’s exactly what we did.'”
A breakthrough moment
“We said, ‘We’re here to show you what we did with that [feedback].’ … We just owned it. Literally, the ‘old-fashioned’ quote was on the screen, and then we showed them the presentation. There were a lot of nods. There were a lot of smiles, but they’re pretty tight-lipped when you’re pitching, and it took about three months to hear from them again. We pitched in January or February that second time around with the new packaging, and then we followed up every week with an email. ‘Have you had time to consider it?’ Tulip season is in April, and the flowers only bloom for two weeks in the year. So I’m thinking, ‘Can we get them over to Amsterdam?’ I started reaching out and inviting them to the fields. Nothing, no response. Literally, ghosted. And then we had tulip season, which was in the middle of April, and we had a big influencer event. And thank goodness we have such great creative partners. We had a lot of content creators, and it was the biggest brand event that we’d ever had — and I think that really helped, because they probably couldn’t avoid us on social media. It was probably on their For You page [when] they were scrolling. And a lot of key people connected with Ulta — Ulta Beauty Collective members — were there, as well, supporting the brand. After that, we sent a sizzle reel and a recap of the event, and that’s when we got a response. It was two or three days after the event, and finally, I got the email in the middle of the night. I woke up at 4:00 or 5:00 my time, which would have been in the middle of the night in Chicago, and I was punching my husband to wake up, and I’m like, balling. It was just cries of relief, but also happy tears, all at once. It was just so overwhelming, because for literally seven years, we’d been trying to launch at Ulta, and it was just a [dream] come true.”
Owning rejection
“Creating that post was really about sharing that moment I had in bed when I received the email, breaking down in tears. I think more people need to know the struggles of an indie business and an indie founder, and how difficult it can be to get into major retail. The Instagram-versus-reality trend touches on that, but we wanted to show the longevity of the journey and how gritty we were, and the intestinal fortitude we had to keep coming back and coming back and coming back. It was the social media team internally who came up with the idea of actually showing the emails redacted, and in quite an aggressive way, with the sound effects and whatnot to get the point across, and then have that hallelujah moment when we were celebrating. And so I guess you could say that it’s risky, but Kecia [Steelman], the Ulta Beauty CEO, actually DMed me right afterwards, and I’ll read it to you. It says, ‘I absolutely loved seeing your post. Never — in caps — give up. I admire grit.’ … And I’ve been talking about grit, so it was really quite rewarding to read the same language being used. I’ve been talking about grit and intestinal fortitude this whole time. And she said, ‘I admire grit and determination. Please find me at FLC and introduce yourself. I love seeing brand founders like you break through, congrats,’ and a bunch of emojis. I literally cried. That was another [message] that made me really, really cry. … I truly do feel like I’m back home with Ulta.”
