Since launching in 2021, Kulfi, founded by Priyanka Ganjoo, has achieved a major milestone with its exclusive retail partner Sephora around every anniversary.
In September 2022, Kulfi initially launched on Sephora.com, becoming the retail giant’s first South-Asian-owned and inspired makeup brand. A year later, Kulfi expanded into physical retail stores as Sephora’s “The Next Big Thing,” an in-store spotlight for new and up-and-coming brands. Kulfi rolled out to 281 U.S. doors and 59 Canadian doors.
According to the brand, Since launching into Sephora, Kulfi has been the No. 1 brand in its end cap, based on sales in-store. Based on data provided by the brand, in 2023, Kulfi’s Kajal Eyeliner was the retailer’s No. 7 pencil eyeliner collection. Meanwhile, its Main Match Concealer, launched in August 2022, was the No. 5 clean concealer on Sephora.com. Its newest product, the Free the Brow gel-meets-serum, which launched this February, has become the No. 9 clear brow gel launch to date omnichannel.
“Last year [2023], we grew 350% year-over-year in the Sephora business. We’re projecting a very similar growth percent this year with Sephora,” Ganjoo told Glossy. “The whole business is growing. We’re not just adding products and distribution. We’ve been tracking our same-store sales productivity, and in May, we were almost double where we were in January of this year.” Ganjoo added that Sephora U.S. sales make up about 50% of its business, while Sephora Canada makes up around 10%. The remaining 40% of its sales come from its own e-commerce site.
Now, building on the momentum, on Friday, the brand is officially expanding into every Sephora store in North America, expanding to all doors in the U.S. and Canada. With the expansion, the brand will remain on one endcap shelf, for now — Ganjoo said the product assortment will still remain tight, with Kulfi’s hero products — concealer, brow gel, eyeliner and shadows, along with select shades of lipsticks and the newly-launched lip staining oils — as the only offerings in-store, while the entire collection will be available online. On its own site, Kulfi has over 50 SKUs, including blush, merch and makeup sets.
However, she said buzzy brands like Danessa Myricks and Patrick Ta are inspirations as both were in Sephora’s “The Next Big Thing” category before transitioning into their own endcaps. According to a December 2023 report, since launching in Sephora in February 2021, Danessa Myricks’ sales doubled and tripled year-over-year in 2021 and 2022, respectively. Meanwhile, Patrick Ta, which launched into Sephora in April 2019, is currently the No. 2 beauty brand at the retailer. Its product sales have grown 200-300% year-over-year in 2024, the company revealed in previous Glossy reporting.
Along with the launch, Kulfi is rolling out a social campaign sharing the news. With the tagline, “Your invitation to play,” the campaign will feature assets that highlight the brand’s hero products along with a new eyeshadow. Those new images will replace Kulfi’s existing imagery on its site, Sephora.com and in-store. Plus, the brand is throwing an in-person event in Canada for the first time to coincide with the launch.
As far as diversifying retail channels, Ganjoo said, for now, she’s focused on the brand’s exclusive relationship with Sephora. “They’re great partners,” she said. However, with the growing demand from international consumers in markets like the U.K., India, Australia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East, international expansion is top of mind.
“I want to make sure that every country we go to we’re focusing on the community there because that’s been our secret sauce, focusing on the local community and creating messaging and campaign products for them. Every creative community is different and what they’re looking for is different, so I want to make sure we have the bandwidth to do that,” said Ganjoo.
In addition to expanding into all Sephora North America doors, Kulfi is also investing heavily in its community. In July, the brand launched its first ambassador program, the Kulfi Besties Program. Aside from product giveaways and special access to exclusive launches, the goal of the program is to encourage brand ambassadors to create local chapters and work with the leads to host local activations. Kulfi is hosting the program on the influencer platform Upfluence and also launched a supporting chat on Geneva.
