The idea of paying $160 for a beauty expo ticket and then walking away with more than $2,000 worth of beauty products almost sounds like a scam. And yet, it was reality for more than 3,000 attendees at Ulta Beauty World, held in Orlando on April 15 and 16. Now in its second year, the consumer event doubled attendance and featured 220 vendors, including labels like Cécred, Pattern Beauty, Anastasia Beverly Hills, Dyson, Charlotte Tilbury, Clinique, Fenty Beauty, Starface and Sol de Janeiro.

“You can’t not be at Ulta Beauty World,” Jeff Lee, co-founder and CEO of Dibs Beauty, tells Fashionista. “This is the greatest beauty event of 2026, and any brand that is any brand is here.”

It wasn’t only established brands that participated — emerging beauty players also made the most of Ulta Beauty World. For them, this was a prime opportunity to spread awareness, introduce their products to consumers and compete against larger names on an even playing field.

Below, founders and executives from up-and-coming beauty brands break down the ins and outs of participating in Ulta Beauty World — from maximizing visibility to managing sample numbers to measuring post-event success.

Brand Awareness

Noyz, a 2-year-old genderless fragrance brand, has gained decent momentum since its launch via early influencer partnerships and activations at events like Coachella and (coming up) Stagecoach, but it still has a ways to go to stand out from mega brands or even celebrity-owned labels. So the company used this opportunity to educate booth visitors on its product by spotlighting its newest scent, Rinse Cycle, and its lineup of fragrance milk. Malena Higuera, Noyz’s chief commercial officer, personally gave each visitor a one-on-one demonstration on how to layer the various scents.

“Any chance that someone comes through those doors and is hearing about Noyz for the very first time gives us a chance to tell our unique story,” says Higuera. “There’s nothing better than shaking someone’s hand, sharing the experience with them and giving your tips and tricks live.”

Bonnie Szucs, chief commercial officer of Bubble Skincare, agrees that the benefit of being at Ulta Beauty World is introducing the brand to first-time customers, so it’s key to make a positive impression. “We’re an independent, female-founded, female-owned brand, so you don’t always have the budget or the investments that some of the big brands do,” Szucs says. Each person who stopped by the Bubble booth walked away with a “top secret product” that goes live in June. “We want to build up that hype for the product early,” Szucs says of the strategy. “But it also gives everyone here an exclusive preview of something that hasn’t even launched yet.”

Meanwhile, makeup brand Polite Society optimized brand visibility by bringing a wide breadth of products. The 3-year-old label is best known for the Big Mouth XL Lip Plumper. While it’s grateful to have a hero product so early in the business, “we’re not just a plumper brand,” laughs Emily Yourman, marketing director of Polite Society. “We’re still an emerging brand, so awareness is our number one priority right now. We want to make sure we’re giving you a good range of samples and products so that you can find something within the line that you’re obsessed with.”

Last year, Polite Society went viral for its pink-and-cream striped canvas “Big Ass Tote,” which the brand brought back this year; visitors waited in line as long as 20 minutes to get inside the booth and grab one alongside their shade pick of the Pout Glossy Lip Balm. “Being here gives us an opportunity to have those in-person touch points with the actual consumers, get their excitement and their energy and hear from them on what products they’re loving and what more they want from us as a brand,” Yourman says.

The Opportunity to Take Branding IRL

Of course, for brands to connect with consumers one-on-one, visitors must feel compelled to stop by the brand’s booth in the first place. That’s no easy feat for any participating label. Add in the fact that most up-and-comers are dealing with limited budget and booth space, and it’s safe to say many emerging brand teams thought long and hard about their booth design. 

Body and hair-care brand Saltair took a less-is-more approach: The booth featured a coral pink color theme, two video panels for visual appeal and touches of floral decor, but otherwise, the focus was on product education and customer interaction. “We went for visual impact versus spatial and having a lot of different things going on,” explains Erin Sale, Saltair’s chief marketing officer. “And honestly, it’s great because then we get to have more of a one-to-one connection and conversation with the consumer.”

Octavia Morgan, founder of the eponymous luxury fragrance brand, also went with a pared-down design. She spent 10 months locking in her booth concept, called “Room 33”: a hotel-inspired environment centered around her new fragrance, which goes live in August.  Morgan says the design was the hardest part. “You have to ask yourself, ‘What does this look like and what are you going to feature?’ So for me, I like for the customer to lock in on a single product. We have four of the fragrances that we sell in-store, but I really wanted to showcase the new fragrance.” 

Meanwhile, Dibs Beauty, Fwee and Half Magic each opted for something interactive: The former brought to life a beauty “DMV.” Makeup artists blush shade-matched attendees, who then had their photos taken and printed on their Dibs Beauty ID card. “At the end of the day, blush should not be intimidating for anyone, and we just want to walk everyone through the process and have them feel like they have the color, the format and the finish that’s right for them,” Lee says.

K-beauty brand Fwee brought its Korean in-store experience to the Western consumer, literally. It shipped in decor, furniture and its keychain booth from one of its Korean stores to include in the booth. There, visitors could get a custom version of Fwee’s signature Pudding Pot scooped and placed in a keychain. “Our fans see our Instagram pages, see that we have our stores in Asia and our fans in America are like, ‘I really wish I could have that experience.’ So we wanted to bring at least a little bit of it here,” says Connie Kim, strategy division director of Fwee.

At Half Magic, the brand’s glitter-heavy image does a lot of visual heavy lifting. “The new customers that come over, they are coming over because they’re seeing glitter. They’re already glitter-curious,” says founder Donni Davy. The booth added a gem station, allowing participants to try on Glitterpuck Pressed Glitter and have makeup artists apply the brand’s face gems. “Looking around, you see all these insane booths that are like construction sites,” Davy adds. “Obviously, we have nowhere near that much money to spend on that, but we have so much heart.”

Social Media Engagement, Sales and Community Feedback

After the expo, brands have the opportunity to assess social reach and online sale conversions to measure success. “We look at the digital conversation always because it’s such a great barometer of whether or not you’re in the conversation and whether or not people are out there and talking about you organically after the fact,” Lee says. 

Online metrics like tagging, mentions, account follows and comments all factor into digital engagement. Bubble Skincare even looks at Reddit threads. “Last year, it was amazing,” Szucs says. “We saw everyone on Reddit being like, ‘Oh my gosh, the Bubble booth was amazing. It was one of our favorites.’ For us, it’s about community connection.”

Higuera agrees that the priority is gaining community favor. “I always like to call it ROO, return on objective; because ROI, return on investment, assumes one direct line to a sale,” she explains. “To me, the objectives of today are: Are we connecting with the community?” She’ll look at how booth visits will translate to social media follows, tags and product reviews. She hopes that in the coming weeks, this will convert into store visits and sales. 

Morgan also looks at how many samples she gave out and booth traffic as key metrics. Those numbers will help her determine how much product she needs to bring next time. “As an emerging brand, they’ll tell you to bring everything. But I feel like you have to be very strategic about what it is that you want to highlight,” she notes.

Ultimately, it takes an immense amount of time, energy and money to participate in Ulta Beauty World; in return, brands have a unique opportunity to gain significant exposure and foster customer loyalty.

“Building community and trust is so important for a brand at this stage; and having our consumers feel really valued and letting them know we’re so thankful for them and for their support,” Davy says. “That’s why I love Ulta Beauty World so much, it’s because I get to meet everyone who’s supporting the brand. That keeps me going for real. I’ll be on a high from this for a few days.”

Disclosure: Ulta Beauty World paid for Fashionista’s travel and accommodations to report this story.

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