Ulta Beauty has built a growing fragrance following thanks to its largely affordable mix of designer classics and indie and celebrity brands. But soon enough, a version of Maison Francis Kurkdjian Baccarat Rouge 540, the blockbuster luxury scent that retails for upwards of $300 a bottle, will hit Ulta stores. Sort of.
On August 2, affordable fragrance brand Oakcha will launch eight of its scents at more than 100 Ulta stores across the U.S. and nine of its scents on Ulta.com. The brand plans to grow to 700 Ulta stores in October.
“We are in Ulta because we want the customer to have a firsthand experience and experience the perfume before buying it,” said Aziz Ghani, partner at Oakcha.
The Ulta curation will include the likes of Sweven, the $50.95 scent “inspired by” the famed Baccarat Rouge 540, and the juicy Strawberry Sensations, made in collaboration with fragrance influencer Paul Fino, better known to his 2.9 million TikTok followers as Paul Reacts.
Ghani said Fino, who has worked with Ulta on events and paid partnerships, was crucial to helping Oakcha build a relationship with the retailer. The brand plans to work with Fino on events to promote its Ulta launch later in the year.
“We’ve been online for six years, and there were many other ways for us to go to brick-and-mortar, like having our own small stores in major cities,” said Ghani. “But we thought that Ulta is a better partner because they have a big footprint nationwide.”
Oakcha was launched in 2020 as part of a wave of “dupe” perfume brands that hit the market amid the post-Covid fragrance boom, offering lower-priced versions of designer and luxury hits like Le Labo Santal 33 and Creed Aventus. Oakcha has since expanded to original scents, like the sweet gourmand Cotton Candy, which Ghani said is its best-seller.
While dupes built its popularity, Oakcha wants to be known as more than just a brand for dupes going forward.
“We did start as a dupe brand. But then we transformed into more like offering dupes plus our own collection,” he said. Ghani called the designer-inspired creations “impressions” of higher-end scents, rather than exact replicas. “Even the impressions we make, it’s not exactly like the actual scent. It’s like an impression of that, but it has its tweaks.”
Oakcha is looking to Ulta’s extensive brick-and-mortar presence to grow the brand, but the online realm of social media has been instrumental to much of its growth. The brand launched on TikTok Shop in 2024, and TikTok and Instagram fragrance reviews have helped spread the word. According to data from Charm.io, Oakcha’s TikTok Shop sales grew by over 125% year over year to $6.2 million in the first half of 2025.
But Ghani said the brand is no longer seeing growth on TikTok Shop as more and more competing brands enter the social app’s shopping platform. And the rising costs of fuel have put a strain on the business.
“TikTok Shop is not growing for us at the moment,” he said. “Because there’s more competition. … Costs are going up. There’s less money in marketing. We’re in a different time.”
Entering hundreds of Ulta stores gives the brand another valuable sales channel; Oakcha anticipates its Ulta launch should grow its business by 20% in the first year. According to the retailer’s first-quarter 2026 earnings report published in June, fragrance was the strongest growth driver for the quarter, with growth in the “high teens” that drove its share of Ulta’s overall revenue from 11% in Q1 2025 to 12%.
Ulta’s partnership with Oakcha comes as numerous other major retailers have embraced dupe brands, many of which started as online-only. That includes Dossier and MCo Beauty, both of which launched at Target in 2025, and Alt Fragrances, which launched at Sally Beauty that same year.
The original designer versions of some of the dupes in Oakcha’s catalog are stocked at Ulta, like YSL Libre and Valentino Donna Born in Roma. But those dupes won’t be on Ulta shelves competing with the originals. Instead, the eight in-store and nine online Oakcha scents Ulta will carry stick to either Oakcha originals, like Cotton Clouds, or dupes of luxury perfume lines not stocked at Ulta. That includes Mind’s Mirror, inspired by Louis Vuitton Imagination, and Madame Rose, inspired by Parfums de Marly Delina.
Whether they choose to buy Oakcha’s creations or the original luxury version, one thing can be said for sure about fragrance consumers: They are buying perfume.
“People are getting into fragrances in a way where they’re buying multiples,” said Ghani. “It’s like a monthly [purchase] or a fragrance every two months.”
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