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Ulta Beauty's Salon Services Go Viral With Black Women on TikTok After Years of Textured Hair Push
Black women on TikTok are praising Ulta Beauty's salon services in videos racking up thousands of views, spotlighting a textured hair strategy the retailer began building in 2018. The chain's curriculum, stylist recruitment and merchandising work predates the social media moment.
The surge in posts traces back to at least 2018, when Ulta Beauty brought in hairstylist and educator Pekela Riley to develop a textured hair curriculum, recruit Black hairstylists and weave textured hair into its salon menu, merchandising and marketing. Riley, who has owned Salon PK in Jacksonville, Fla., for 21 years, sat on the retailer's pro team until 2023.
She framed the effort as a matter of scale, noting that Ulta's ambition to be a destination for all things beauty depended on serving 60% to 70% of the world's population efficiently. Textured hair, she said, had often been treated as a niche rather than a core category.
On TikTok, creator Brittany Ohh walks viewers through services including colour, a short bob cut, sew-ins and overlays. She is part of a wave of Black women either praising Ulta's salons or trying them for the first time, with clips drawing thousands of likes and views. Affordability, convenience and results are the recurring themes, and some posters say they are leaving independent stylists for the retailer.
Ulta hairstylist and TikTok creator Kimmbraa put the shift bluntly in an Oct. 16 video, saying the chain is pursuing both Black stylists and Black clients. Another creator posting as Dr. D | Life After the PhD has assembled a directory of roughly 300 Black hairstylists working at Ulta.
The attention lands on salon services inside a beauty specialty retailer rather than a standalone salon, tying in-store styling to social media discovery. Ulta's earlier investment in education and staffing is what the current wave of videos points to.