Hanahana Beauty Rebrands And Rolls Out To Ulta Beauty Stores

Hanahana Beauty has entered Ulta Beauty via the specialty retailer’s Sparked program focused on emerging brands.

It will roll out to 400 locations on March 5 following its premiere online last month. Bestselling Body Butters in lavender vanilla, amber vanilla, bamboo coconut and eucalyptus varieties will be available in stores, while the entire product line, which also includes a 2-in-1 Body Bar, powder mask Skin Nutrition and two additional Body Butter scents, is sold online. Products retail for between $15 and $32. Hanahana Beauty sources shea butter, its key ingredient, directly from the Katariga cooperative in Tamale, Ghana.

Founder Abena Boamah-Acheampong has been building toward an Ulta partnership since 2021, when she ramped up the brand’s retail readiness efforts. Prior to Ulta, it landed at e-tailers Thirteen Lune and Revolve in 2022, and expanded to J.C. Penney stores early this year. As Boamah-Acheampong began considering Hanahana Beauty’s next distribution steps, Ulta reached out to her and invited her to pitch. The launch at the retailer, by happenstance, occurred on her birthday. She calls it divine timing.

“Ulta was one of our top picks because I look at Ulta as a beauty grocery store,” says Boamah-Acheampong. “They have everything, especially when it comes to body care and skincare and also haircare, too, so it just felt like a great fit.”

Muffy Clince, director of emerging brands at Ulta, says, “Abena’s passion and approach to developing consciously clean skincare products sourced directly from women in Ghana deeply inspired us, and we knew the brand would be equally as exciting for our Ulta Beauty guests to discover. Through Sparked, we’re thrilled to support and share Abena’s mission to help women feel confident in their own skin by providing greater access for all to shop Hanahana Beauty’s body butters at Ulta Beauty.”

Hanahana Beauty underwent a packaging makeover to coincide with its Ulta debut. Its glass jars were swapped out in favor of larger recycled plastic containers. Customers have long been requesting bigger sizes, Boamah-Acheampong explains, but the brand’s vendors pushed back on enlarging the original glass material. Plastic ended up being the best option. The formulations haven’t changed, but prices have been bumped up 15% with the rebrand along with sizes being bumped up 25%

Boamah-Acheampong says the packaging renovations “allowed us to be creative and advertise and market ourselves and our aesthetic in this way on a jar that was larger, and I would say is quite retail-ready.”

Sales from Hanahana Beauty’s past six years of business are financing the bulk of its Ulta partnership. Boamah-Acheampong shares that the brand has registered a 68% increase in annual revenues since 2020. The introduction of retail has been critical to driving sales.

Currently, Hanahana Beauty is in the process of fundraising. The goal is to secure $1.5 million, and it’s $360,000 so far. Late last year, Boamah-Acheampong told Beauty Independent that Hanahana Beauty’s goal for this year is to surpass $5 million in sales and try to pin down a retailer in the United Kingdom. Among the angel investors who previously backed the brand are Hannah Bronfman and Alexis Ohanian.

Bronfman, the influencer, HBFIT founder and daughter of Edgar Bronfman Jr., former Warner Music Group CEO, has been a customer of Hanahana Beauty from the start of the brand in 2017, and she’s matured into motherhood with it in her routine similar to many of its perennial fans. “Maybe you were 26 at the time we launched, but now you have a child and your children are using it,” says Boamah-Acheampong. “Now, we’re looking at what does it look like to be a household type of brand.”

Hanahana Beauty’s retail journey hasn’t always been as smooth as its products. Often, retailers told her they already had a shea butter brand, and the category is too saturated to squeeze in a new entrant. “You have so many different shampoos, serums, masks, but, when it comes to shea butter, you can only have one brand?” she asks.

Even though she didn’t agree with retailers’ explanations, back-to-back rejections made her take a deep dive into Hanahana Beauty’s philosophy and how it can grow around its products. Boamah-Acheampong says, “We want to think around, what does it mean to create results-driven products? But also expand around daily use body care and skincare products when we continue to do our product development.” Shower products are potentially in the brand’s product development pipeline.

Philanthropy is an arm of the brand that’s particularly meaningful to Boamah-Acheampong. She established Circle of Care in 2018 to support the cooperatives supplying raw ingredients for Hanahana Beauty’s products. She recently partnered with a nonprofit to provide reproductive healthcare and education to women in different Ghanian cooperatives and their families.

As Hanahana Beauty reaches a major retail moment, Boamah-Acheampong is going through a transition from founder to CEO to successfully scale the business. Although it’s scaling, she’s interested in it accelerating at an intentional pace.

“I try not to put as much pressure on myself or compare my journey to other brands because I know that we’re on our own track around sustainability, not just in the commercial view of things or in a marketing view, but really internally,” says Boamah-Acheampong. “What does it mean to sustain a company that I want to grow for years and years and years, not just to hit a certain mark or a milestone in that sense?”