It will launch on Ulta’s website and in 464 doors beginning August 24, and expand into an additional 101 stores toward the end of September where it will be featured on Ulta Beauty’s Sparked end cap. The brand’s assortment at the retailer will include its full product collection: The Curl Care Shampoo, Curl Care Conditioner, Hydrating Curl Cream and Curl Defining Styling Gel. Its new Curl Refresh + Hold Spray will be an Ulta exclusive. All products are priced under $24.

“At Ulta Beauty, we’re heavily focused on building an assortment that reflects and supports the diverse needs of our guests, and Ocoa is a standout example of that mission in action,” says Jessica Phillips, vice president of merchandising at Ulta Beauty. “As the first Dominican-American owned hair care brand at Ulta Beauty, Ocoa brings meaningful cultural representation to our shelves and to the broader beauty conversation.”

Ocoa is on track to hit seven figures this year and has seen 400% year-over-year growth compared to 2024. It first teased the partnership during the Dominican Day parade in New York City on August 10. Ocoa founders and sisters Nicol Varona Cancelmo and Cory Varona rented an LED truck that announced that the brand was coming to a “national retailer near you.” The marketing rollout will include ads, PR mailers and buzz generated by Ocoa’s creators program, which consists of nine creators and two ambassadors. Varona Cancelmo and Varona will also host two events at Ulta stores in their home state of Pennsylvania in September.

“We’re really hoping to bring that IRL, pop-up moment to Pennsylvania, which I feel like a lot of people here don’t get to try and do,” says Varona Cancelmo. “And then hopefully, as we continue to grow with them, expand into other cities.”

Ocoa launched in 2021 under the name DN Organics with about $20,000 of the sisters’ savings. After receiving feedback from fellow founders and mentors, the pair poured $100,00 into a rebrand and relaunched it in 2023 with new products, packaging and marketing. The mission remained the same: to encourage Latinas to love their curls and themselves.

The products are formulated with ingredients like mango butter, avocado and hibiscus flower extract inspired by the sisters’ home country of Dominican Republic. The pair immigrated to the United States when they were in middle school. Ocoa, a city located in the southern region, is their mom’s hometown. Ocoa’s packaging design is in English when it’s right side up and Spanish when it’s flipped over, “mirroring our immigrant journey of living in two worlds,” says Varona Cancelmo. Ocoa’s customers are primarily independent Latinas seeking out clean ingredients but has grown to include a multicultural consumer base seeking out a skincare-for-the-scalp approach.

Samples were a big factor in Ocoa’s early success. It generated about 10% monthly sales through its samples program and more than 75% of customers returned to buy the full size collection. Customers could order 1 oz. packets of Ocoa’s products from its website with a small shipping fee attached. Varona Cancelmo shares that she and her sister would also pass them out in their hometown of Redding, Pennsylvania. The brand now charges $14 for four 0.5 oz packets of its products.

“We had a mentor who said, you guys need to put yourselves out there, if people don’t try the product, then how are they going to know how good it is?” Recalls Varona Cancelmo. “Because we knew that when people tried the product, they wanted to come back for more.”

The sisters participated in Ulta Beauty’s Muse Accelerator program last year after applying two previous times. The pair were also part of the Credo for Change Cohort and the DigitalUndivided Philly Breakthrough program in 2022. The brand also launched on Urban Outfitter’s website and Amazon last year, which put them in a retail readiness mindset. “Our prior partnerships really gave us proof that we had the operations figured out in the supply chain—even though there’s still a lot of things as a small business that we have to figure out as we go—and the programs really gave us that pathway to be able to get to finally launching,” says Varona Cancelmo.

It took Ocoa nine months to prep for the Ulta launch. In that time, the brand brought on a logistics supply chain director and customer service and operations manager. It also hired a fractional CFO and fractional strategist.

Varona Cancelmo hopes to expand Ocoa into more Ulta doors down the line. A more far off dream is going international, specifically in the Dominican Republic. She says, “We get a lot of customers who are asking us, when are you coming to DR? And though you can buy on Amazon, it’s not really the same. So, for us, it’s really a dream to be able to go global and take the brand to places that have never heard of Ocoa before as a place and as a brand.”