The Shift from Ulta to Thirteen Lune

I could basically navigate my local Ulta wearing a blindfold, and that includes filling my basket with my haul and checking out with all of my Ultamate rewards. When I walked in, I would typically be on autopilot, grabbing my drugstore lip liner, purple shampoo that I’ve been using for more than a decade, and something small next to the register (that section always gets me). It’s conveniently located next to my kid’s daycare, and you used to be able to find me there from 4:45–5 p.m. before pick-up on Wednesdays. Did you catch that? I said used to, as in past tense.

About a year ago, I accidentally stumbled across Thirteen Lune, and it broke my hardwiring. I found myself without a reason to make my habitual stop, and I heard my wallet whispering “thank you.” 

I didn’t realize it at the time, but there are so many more beauty products that exist outside Ulta’s four walls. The shelves are like real estate there, and the same 15–20 brands dominate the store. The New Arrivals end cap would remain the same for six straight months, and I’d end up just rebuying the same five things on repeat. If you are a loyalist to your staples, then Ulta is great! But for someone still looking for an essential item you haven’t yet found at Ulta, try expanding your search with Thirteen Lune’s extensive global beauty brands.

The first time I actually clicked through Thirteen Lune’s site, I didn’t recognize 75% of the brand names, but once I read the information behind a handful of products, I found myself wondering how I hadn’t come across this store before. 

Now, a year later, I no longer wonder why I’ve subconsciously halted my Ulta spending and morphed into a Thirteen Lune-atic. The brands they stock are solving problems I basically had given up on! For example, I had never seen ashwagandha in a foundation before, but LYS Beauty adds it to combat skin stress (kind of like when I use it in tea on stressful days).

OH EM GEE, Where Did You Get That?

As a girly girl with plenty of like-minded (beauty-centric) gal pals, I know there are two types of girls: Ulta girls and Sephora girls. I’ve been both in different seasons of my life. Living in Manhattan, I was a sworn Sephora lover, collecting my points each year until I was able to gloat about Rouge status. Rouge used to mean unlimited beauty services, aka I would schedule a glam session (for free) before a night out in the city. These days, I think the biggest Rouge benefit is 20% off during their sales—the benefits now don’t even come close to what they used to be. Later on, I moved to New Jersey, where I had an Ulta nearby that carried all of my essentials. I wasn’t going to be shopping at Sephora that frequently anymore, so I ended up moving all of my business to Ulta to collect their big rewards. Now, as a Connecticut resident (and a middle-aged mom of two), I shop at both stores purely out of convenience when I can’t wait on shipping.

But there’s a new girl in town, and she brought a plethora of founder-led beauty brands you’ve probably never heard of from all over the globe. Thirteen Lune is truly in its own lane. It touts exploration over consumption and understanding that beauty should be more than what we’re being fed by the big fish of the industry. They’re more than a store—they’re your new beauty bestie that is going to curate your vanity drawers for you with products from around the world.

The Moral Impact

The part that swayed me to take my beauty business elsewhere wasn’t completely product-related; it was more so related to who deserved my hard-earned money in the first place. I can’t criticize Ulta for their products. They carry many reliable, rave-review-worthy beauty finds. But once I had learned that Thirteen Lune was doing something no one else was, they earned my loyalty. 

Thirteen Lune isn’t a storefront that has a “diversity” aisle tucked in the back corner, like some of the big giants do. Diversity is what the entire company is built around. Nine out of 10 brands on their site are Black or Brown-founded, and the roster spans the globe, from Seoul to Nairobi to Los Angeles. Their mission even focuses on diversity, citing “the beauty of inclusion.”

They don’t only sell under-the-radar labels, though. You’ll find recognizable names like Olaplex, Hourglass, and Jennifer Aniston’s LolaVie right next to a brand name you haven’t heard before. There’s a balance between brands, big and small, so you can kind of get a taste of everything.

I can’t pretend I don’t shop at Sephora or Ulta anymore for emergencies, but shopping at Thirteen Lune when I can has made a difference in how I feel at the end of the day. It makes me feel good to support smaller, lesser-known brands who deserve visibility. The change wasn’t too difficult; I just needed to keep an inventory of my products in my head and know when I needed to restock or explore a new item. 

The focus of my beauty haul used to be just finding a product that worked. It’s still about that, don’t get me wrong, but now I’m also looking at the people behind the products. Each brand has a story to tell, whether that’s the origin of starting out in your basement or the story of someone who’s already made a name for themselves but is trying something new. 

Buying from Thirteen Lune should allow you to rest your head easily at night knowing exactly whose vision you’re funding. I didn’t expect to ever have a feeling from a beauty haul delivery other than “ooh, a new mascara,” but now I definitely do. 

The Stories Behind the Products

Almost every website includes an “About Us” tab, but 99.9% of people never bother to click into it. I encourage you to click on one and read what the business wants you to know about them. They’re sharing something on that page with you that’s important to them! Take a few minutes to learn something about your favorite restaurant or your dog groomer. Human connection is fading in the world around us, and it should be something we put a heavier focus on. 

Thirteen Lune puts their focus on connecting the consumer to the founder by sharing the stories behind their products. Their “About Thirteen Lune” page calls out their focus on “the beauty of inclusion” and gives context to how they champion it: Their curated products from around the world can fit into everyone’s makeup bag, no matter what shade of foundation you wear. 

They also dedicate another section of their website, “Shop Talk,” to sharing founders’ stories that give you a real fly-on-the-wall point of view into some of the brands they offer. I now connect the beauty within the product to the beauty within each story told. 

Take Charlotte Mensah, for example. Thirteen Lune showcased her journey to becoming an A-list hairstylist dating back to the 1980s, when she broke into the industry after learning to care for her sister’s hair as a young girl. During a trip to Ghana, she discovered manketti nuts and then built an entire haircare line that actually worked for women with afro and curly textures. In 2018, she became the first Black woman inducted into the British Hairdressing Hall of Fame. I have zero texture in my box-blonde hair, but knowing an award-winning line came out of one woman’s curiosity about a single ingredient has made me pay attention to the ingredients of the products I have on my shelf at home.

Then there’s Marco Ochoa, founder of Ecobrow. Now, eyebrows may be small, but his story is not. As a kid, he used to play in his mother’s makeup and obsess over old Hollywood glamour. He spent two decades becoming an expert at brow threading, even trusted by Lady Gaga! I’ve never had my caterpillars threaded, but the idea that someone turned that level of skill into a clean and natural product line instead of keeping it locked to a studio chair is exactly the kind of thing I’d never pick up on while shopping in a store.

And then we have founders who share their tales of scientific fascination leading to innovations that have big impacts. Meerika Khanna, CEO of Rthvi, is a trichologist who launched the Revitalize Scalp Oil that focuses on scalp health, leading to healthier hair growth—an approach to haircare that is often overlooked until the damage is already done. She promotes a proactive outlook instead of treating breakage or thinning. The idea of being proactive and treating my hair before I see damage is something I hadn’t considered until I read about Khanna’s story.

Shopping off the shelves of Ulta, I wouldn’t know these stories—or any stories, really—and now that I have read them, I can’t un-read them. This isn’t a guilt trip, but it’s something to be cognizant about if you care who actually gets to tell their story in this industry. I look back at the $1,000 I would spend every year to qualify for Rouge status and cringe thinking about how that money was spread across an industry that still doesn’t reflect who’s actually buying and building in it.

To be clear, Sephora and Ulta are doing their jobs of selling the already-established products that move and make consistent and forecastable profits. But Thirteen Lune sits on the opposite side of the spectrum, supporting the brands that fit their beauty portfolio and represent inclusion. It’s not the same model, but it is why I switched my mentality. It was never “Ulta doesn’t carry good products.” It was just a simple mindset shift of who I was buying from.

From One Habit to Another

If you are a do-gooder like me, then the path to making a change in the beauty industry should be simple. Realistically, it’s easier for me to order my beauty supplies online from Thirteen Lune from the couch after the kids go to sleep than it is to find a parking spot, make sure I remembered my wallet, and ignore the urge to impulse buy the goodies in the checkout line. Could I have done that with the Ulta or Sephora website before? Sure, but it doesn’t give you that same emotional connection. 

I think of Ulta as my “emergency room” now. It’s there if I can’t wait five to eight business days for my delivery or if I need a specific brand I can’t find at my “primary care office.” 

If you told me in 2014 that I would be giving up my rewards status to shop small, I would’ve laughed you all the way to Staten Island from NYC. I’m fully committed to being the change I want to see, and for me, that is moving my lion’s share of beauty business to founders who built something real—whether they’re a name you already know or one you’re about to meet.