
Bushbalm Brings Products For Every Body With A Bikini Line To Ulta Beauty
Bushbalm doesn’t beat around the bush when it comes to bikini area-, butt- and pubic hair-related issues that tend to make people squeamish.
The brand’s four-step guide to seat shaving—a good rear view in a mirror and a trimmer for longer hairs are key steps—has garnered 20 million-plus views and 1.3 million likes on TikTok, a platform central to it driving over 1.5 million weekly impressions on social media. Bushbalm is riding the buzz into Ulta Beauty, where four of its products—Bermuda Dark Spot Oil, Bermuda Dark Spot Exfoliating Scrub, Nude Ingrown Hair Oil and Nude Ingrown Hair Exfoliating Scrub—are arriving at Sparked tables dedicated to emerging brands in 107 doors and shaving sections in 990 doors this week.
Another five products will be available online starting the week of March 19, including Sweet Escape Ingrown Hair Oil, Sweet Escape Ingrown Exfoliating Scrub, Piña Colada Dark Spot Exfoliating Scrub and Curve Cream. The products are priced from $22 to $26. Bushbalm hopes Ulta will later stock Hydrogel Vajacial Mask, a currently sold-out hyaluronic acid and aloe vera product that launched last year and is designed to reduce hair removal-stoked redness in less than 10 minutes.
“Adding Bushbalm skincare to the existing shaving section shows that people are looking for these products and what may have seemed niche has clearly become an everyday problem, which requires an everyday essential for anybody who’s grooming their pubic hair,” says Rachel Kerr, director of brand and marketing at Bushbalm. “We feel like this category has gone from being an afterthought to something that’s going to be really exciting in the future with an increase in demand.” Bushbalm estimates 90% of people groom their pubic hair.

To broadcast product performance at Ulta, Bushbalm is placing before-and-after pictures near its merchandise. Kerr promises the pictures are PG. She says, “We want to make sure, when people are in the aisle and shopping these products, they can see the true area we are focusing on, and hopefully can see comparisons and irritations they may be experiencing in those areas that they are too shy to talk about.”
Ulta represents Ottawa-based Bushbalm’s first major retail partnership in the United States. The brand is in Indigo and Whole Foods, and on Hudson’s Bay’s website in Canada. Upon receiving the news last summer that Ulta would pick up Bushbalm, David Gaylord, co-founder and CEO, couldn’t help but cry tears of joy.
“We work so hard, and sometimes in this business, it’s lonely. You don’t see the other side of it until you get to a milestone, and you are really, truly blown away by it,” he says. “Right now, it feels like you can’t celebrate because we are working so hard to do it, and the thing that founders and startups do is you hit this incredible milestone, and you are onto, what is the next major milestone?”
The journey to Bushbalm’s Ulta milestone wasn’t quick. The brand went back and forth with the retailer for about a year to determine the best rollout plan. Initially, debuting on the site before a store presence was weighed, then just the Sparked tables were under consideration for the physical retail liftoff, and finally it was determined that Bushbalm should go into almost three-quarters of Ulta’s store network along with an online premiere.
“Being a small brand, to get the most for our marketing efforts, doing it all at once is a better bet for us. We can do more influencer work and paid ads toward it,” says Gaylord, continuing, “The supply chain is a big concern for them and a fair concern for a lot of smaller brands. For us, a year ago, launching in 990 stores wouldn’t have been a good idea, but we have built up the team and the systems. Now, we’re more experienced on supply chain, so we are pretty comfortable.”
“We feel like this category has gone from being an afterthought to something that’s going to be really exciting in the future.”
Although they contribute a mere 5% of sales, Gaylord mentions Bushbalm’s retail relationships in Canada have been incredibly useful for shoring up its supply chain and systems prowess. Through its relationship with Indigo, for example, it gained an understanding of an electronic data interchange [EDI] system that’s not too dissimilar from Ulta’s. Gabriel Braun manages supply chain and operations for Bushbalm, and the brand brought on Meg Johnston as an operations coordinator about a year ago to pay attention to Ulta in particular. In total, Bushbalm has 17 employees.
The brand’s origin story dates back to 2016 when Gaylord’s co-founders at it, married couple Tim and Melodie Burns, were on their honeymoon, and Tim Burns decided he wanted to clean up his pubic area. Not exactly an easy room-service request, he resorted to beard oil for the task—and the results were surprisingly beneficial. The Burns enlisted Gaylord, who was at Shopify, to assist in creating a brand with a grape seed, jojoba and tea tree oil pubic area product. The trio each invested $217 to kick it off with 100 bottles. In 2019, as Bushbalm began to be a more serious enterprise, they poured in $100,000.
Bushbalm has secured loans from Business Development Canada and ClearBank, but hasn’t drawn external funding outside of them. That could change in two to three years to support growth. On top of the 5% of sales attributable to Canadian retailers, 65% of Bushbalm’s sales are from direct-to-consumer distribution, 20% are from salons and 10% are from Amazon, a mix that’s due to evolve as it establishes itself at Ulta. This year, the brand is expected to generate a $12 million to $16 million in sales. Its revenues have jumped 600% since 2020.
Fresh off an appearance on “Dragon’s Den,” the Canadian version of “Shark Tank,” in 2021, Bushbalm projected it could reach $15 million that year and $30 million in 2022. Apple’s iOS 14 update upended that projection. “I’m more of a realist now and my head is not in the clouds,” says Gaylord. “Nowadays, you can’t pump money into Facebook or Google ads and have that return. You really have to have a product people come back to you or you have to find other channels.”
Bushbalm has pivoted to other channels—specifically, the professional waxing salon channel—and is concentrating on the development of differentiated products. By the end of this year, the brand estimates it will be in roughly 3,500 salons. In 2023, it could be in 6,000 salons. The salons allow Bushbalm to spread into U.S. cities and towns that don’t have Ulta locations and provide education that’s increasingly challenging to deliver online. While Bushbalm aims to profitable in DTC, Gaylord says DTC is primarily about brand influence, and profits are fueled by retail and salons.

Bushbalm is shifting marketing, which is budgeted to be about 25% of its sales, toward salons and retail. For instance, the brand is gifting a free vacation to its top-selling salon. “That’s a $5,000 marketing spend in a totally different way,” says Gaylord, noting gifting and sampling at the salons and Ulta is an important strategy for the brand. Bushbalm is also trying connected television advertising to zero in on specific geographies with Ulta stores. The brand’s core audience is 22- to 34-year-old women, and it has a strong following among Black women.
For two years, Bushbalm doesn’t intend to enter a second large retailer in the U.S., but Target is a target after that. Boots in the United Kingdom and Shoppers Drug Market in Canada are long-term targets, too. Short term, Bushbalm is introducing five new products in 2023 to an assortment that today contains 15 stockkeeping units. Products supercharged with skincare ingredients are on the roadmap.
“We are so routine-focused. We always say our products are not some magic eraser that’s going to work overnight. You really need to incorporate them into a daily and weekly routine the same way people who struggle with acne would do for the face,” says Kerr. “Retention’s high for Bushbalm because it is a product you build into your routine and consistently use to keep bumps away or to brighten the skin where you may be experiencing hyperpigmentation, chafing or dark spots from removing your body hair.”
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