Glow Recipe hits 1,000 Ulta doors. Sarah Lee and Christine Chang leave a Sephora-only run.

Glow Recipe is going into Ulta Beauty. On December 6, the fruit-forward skincare line lands in 1,000 Ulta stores with its full assortment. For nearly a decade, U.S. specialty-beauty shoppers mostly found it at Sephora. Ulta is the second national aisle, not a goodbye to the first.

Sarah Lee and Christine Chang run the company as co-founders and co-CEOs. Both are Korean American. They met as young marketers at L’Oréal in Seoul, then moved through the company’s New York ranks: Lee on Matrix, Lancôme makeup, and L’Oréal Paris haircare; Chang on a Kiehl’s turnaround in Korea, a Columbia master’s in East Asian studies, then Kiehl’s global team in New York. In 2014 they put about $50,000 of their own money into Glow Recipe as a curated K-beauty shop online. Sephora later asked them to help build its first nationwide K-beauty window campaign. In 2017 they pitched their own formulas over lunch to merchant Artemis Patrick, who went on to become Sephora’s first female CEO. Watermelon Glow Sleeping Mask and a blueberry cleanser started on the Next Big Thing wall. The mask kept selling out.

They were never just importers with a Seoul catalog. They were bilingual operators who had already worked inside L’Oréal’s machines, then built a brand Americans could find without a forwarding address. Shark Tank came in 2015. A televised deal with Robert Herjavec never closed. They kept going. Fortune and later trade coverage put sales around $300 million for 2023. The public heroes are still Watermelon Glow PHA + BHA Pore-Tight Toner and Niacinamide Dew Drops, both about $36. The founders have said one of each sells roughly every twelve seconds worldwide. Beauty Independent has called Glow Recipe Sephora’s top indie brand globally, and one of the retailer’s overall top five. TIME put Lee and Chang on its 2024 TIME100 Next list.

Ulta is a real bet on how far that reach can stretch. The chain runs more than 1,500 U.S. beauty doors and already stocks K-beauty names such as Medicube and Anua, plus brands that once lived only at Sephora, including Rare Beauty and Amika. Lauren Brindley, Ulta’s chief merchandising and digital officer, told Women’s Wear Daily that Glow Recipe makes skincare feel fun without sounding unserious. Chang put it simpler: Sephora and Ulta pull different shoppers. If you only sit in one of those rooms, you leave money on the other side of the mall.

The warm-up starts November 17. Glow Recipe’s $36 Exopeptide Caffeine Brightening and Depuffing Fresh Slices Eye Mask goes up on Ulta’s TikTok Shop first. The founders plan a TikTok Live through Ulta’s account. Holiday gift sets exclusive to Ulta come with the December store rollout. The eye mask caught fire in September during “eye patch gate,” when Fenty Skin and others teased hydrogel patches in the same twist-to-slice jar from Korean packaging maker Samhwa. Glow Recipe says it will be first among that U.S. group to actually sell. Chang’s public answer was about the formula and a liquid-free hydrogel, not who owns the plastic.

Sale rumors have followed the brand for years. North Castle Partners took a minority stake in 2021, and Rich Gersten joined the board. Lee has said they have not raised again since, and that the books stayed tight enough to fund growth from cash flow. Asked again with the Ulta news, she said the work in front of them is the expansion and the eye mask. Believe the shelf plan until someone files papers. A second national retailer is the cleanest test of whether watermelon dew drops sell past the Sephora endcap.

The Korean thread is still in the products people actually buy. In October the brand launched a $38 Glass Balm Duo with Buldak, the Samyang spicy-noodle label. Chang called it a love letter to foods they grew up with. Earlier Glass Balm shades already nodded to bingsoo, the shaved-ice dessert. Someone who never shopped Sephora for K-beauty can still meet that joke in an Ulta lip aisle.

If you are building a smaller brand, or still running a family shop that pays the rent, the path is less mysterious than the pink jars suggest. Learn the category inside a big company if you can. Start with money you can lose. Get one retailer that will teach your story. Take a minority partner only if they leave you the wheel. Open a second door when exclusivity starts to feel like a ceiling. Vera Oh puts VOESH in 611 Target Beauty Studio doors and Two finance exiles put Korean konjac jelly in Target's beauty aisle are the Target versions of the same hunger. Immigrant-Owned Small Business Financing Basics and Small Business Banking When Your Books Don't Match Mainstream Templates help keep inventory money from becoming household money. If a buyer call starts floating around your own shop, read Succession and Exit Planning for Immigrant-Owned Family Shops before you treat gossip like a term sheet.

Lee and Chang spent a decade making fruit-jar skincare feel normal at Sephora. Ulta is where they find out how many more bathrooms want the same shelf.