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Sephora has launched numerous new brands in recent months, many of them buzzy and beloved — but perhaps none has been as hotly anticipated as Ultra Violette (that’s pronounced “violet”), the Aussie sunscreen brand first launched in 2018.
Sephora marks the brand’s official debut into the U.S. market — a landmark occasion, because, as co-founder Bec Jefferd said on this week’s episode of The Glossy Beauty Podcast, “You can’t be a serious global beauty brand if you aren’t in the U.S.”
That’s in spite of the fact that the brand has already launched in 29 other markets. Jefferd and co-founder Ava Matthews met as coworkers at Mecca, the premier Australian beauty retailer. Growing up in Australia, sun protection is a focus, even in childhood, given the country’s climate and high skin cancer rates, Matthews said. Still, in 2016, when they began ideation for the brand, the duo saw the opportunity for a brand that approached the category differently.
“[Sunscreen] wasn’t at the center of a skin-care routine. We were talking about it as a skin cancer preventative or something to wear in summer, even in Australia,” Matthews said. “There were a lot of people talking about sun care in a serious way, in terms of [skin] cancer, but no one talking about sun care as a kind of prestige skin-care product.” For reference, Supergoop launched in 2007, as did Coola; while Vacation launched in 2021, as did fellow Aussie sunscreen brand Naked Sundays.
Ultra Violette, with its brightly colored packaging and elegant formulas, quickly became one of the hottest sunscreen brands on the market — its unavailability in the States only added to its cool factor. In-the-know editors got it overseas or had friends bring it back when they traveled — it became ubiquitous in chic poolside pics.
As recently as 2021, Matthews and Jefferd had no plans to launch in the States, but now, with formulas they’ve deemed just as good as their Aussie counterparts and the promise of a new broad-spectrum filter likely soon to be approved in the U.S., the time was right. And though the U.S. has not approved a new filter since 1999, 2026 might change that. As of March 28, the brand is on Sephora.com and in-store at all doors.
As for the marketing for the Sephora launch, influencer partnerships are about to kick off, mailers have gone out, and a New York City breakfast, co-hosted by Tinx has been held. As Matthews put it, “We’re really not prepared to fuck this up.” The U.S. range features five products, to start, four sunscreens and one lip product — with SPF, of course — in two shades. Prices range from $22-$40. In 2024, the brand closed a 15 million Australian-dollar minority investment from equity firm Aria Growth Partners.
In this episode of The Glossy Beauty Podcast, the co-founders discuss why it finally made sense to launch stateside, why there’s promise in the long-awaited new sunscreen filters in the U.S. and who the Ultra Violette customer is, especially as the sunscreen market has become more crowded.
Below are highlights from the episode, which have been lightly edited for clarity.
Changing their minds about a U.S. launch
Jefferd: “We said we didn’t want to launch in the U.S. until the filters on the monograph changed. It is likely that there will be some changes to the monograph, and that gave us a bit more curiosity about what we could create in this market. … We’re beauty girls, we grew up in beauty. You can’t be a serious global beauty brand if you aren’t in the U.S. And just over two years ago, we really started to challenge the assumptions we’d made when we made that statement. … So we ran some experiments with our product development team, which, at Ultra Violette, is a really big team. We’ve got some real depth of expertise, and we pride ourselves on doing real product development — not just taking turnkey formulations. … We took some of our hero products and tried to formulate the exact same texture and the exact same payoff using only American filters, and then, using the current American filters plus the potential new filters. [We were asking ourselves], ‘Could we make this almost identical?’ And with some of them, we were surprised we could. Some we couldn’t, as in we couldn’t formulate something exactly the same with the current filters. But when we looked at what we could create, we felt there was enough of a range. We had a hero product, we had a chemical, and w had a mineral product. We had a face and a body. So we had enough [to create a range that we could be] really proud of bringing to market. … There’s a lot of negativity around the the SPF monograph in the U.S. and, yes, there are some gaps in terms of some of the more modern filters that are missing, but there’s still a reasonable amount that you can work with. And it’s great that the FDA does treat this category so seriously, because it is serious, and these are really important claims you’re making in terms of sun protection.”
Why customers choose Ultra Violette
Matthews: “People are looking for brands that are not necessarily American in this space. … People don’t kind of know where to go. … There’s a lot of gray market on Amazon. As an Australian brand, I would hope that there’s a lot of trust in us. We’ve got a lot of authority. Because [Australian] skin cancer rates are so high, [sun protection] has to be taken with a level of seriousness that I don’t think exists in any other country. … Sunscreen has traditionally been a grudge step — it’s something people don’t want to wear. It’s not a fun or sexy category. It’s a hard category. It’s almost like vitamins, in a way, because you don’t see the change immediately. You may only know that you’ve taken a supplement because your pee is bright yellow. Sunscreen is the same. Unless the product looks and feels beautiful on your skin, which ours does — they leave a glowy finish on the skin — that instant gratification that you get with so many of your other beauty products just doesn’t exist because sunscreen is [a long-term investment].”
Bemotrizinol, the next FDA-approved filter?
Jefferd: “[Bemotrizinol] is the most widely used filter in Europe. It’s been available for use in European sunscreen since the early 2010s, and it’s a broad-spectrum filter, so it covers UVB and UVA. And because it’s a more modern filter, [simply put] it’s got more heavy-duty performance, so you can use less of it. [When you can use less of a] filter but still get the same claim and the same protection of UVB and UVA, [it means] you can put other great stuff in the formulation that makes the texture feel nicer, and [makes the formula more] beneficial for the skin. … We’re excited about it. … We use it in a lot of our formulations in Australia, and everywhere else in the world. … It’s a great filter, but it’s also tricky. I don’t know if there will instantly be an explosion of people using this filter. You have to know what you’re doing in terms of using it carefully. We’ve even had a couple of missteps in formulating with it in the past in terms of keeping a formulation stable, so we’ve also been super careful about how we use it in our U.S. range … A lot of people are just waiting to see what happens. …. It’s a big deal to incorporate [a new filter] into formulations that have already been tested, are already stable and are already on the market. I also think [it will probably be used] in conjunction with other filters. I doubt you would see it just by itself as a filter. That’s typically what you see now. … And because it hasn’t yet been approved in the U.S., a lot of formulators haven’t been working with it, so they’d need to get familiar with how they work with this ingredient. … [Still], it’s encouraging for two reasons. One, it gives formulators something new to work with. But two, it paves the way for a process that the FDA has now gone through that can potentially open the gateway for other filters to come into the market. So, we’re hoping that isn’t just a [one-time thing]. Hopefully, it provides a pathway for additional filters to come through. [If] formulators [have more] to work with, more products can be created. Ultimately, what we’re about is giving someone a formula that they like to wear. So [more filters] gives us the flexibility to create new and interesting things.”
