Ulta Beauty’s first official campaign inside its own TikTok Shop was a rapper’s perfume. Ice Spice co-hosted a July 22 livestream to launch In Ha Mood, a Revlon fragrance sold exclusively by Ulta. The retailer supplied the storefront; everyone else supplied the reason to watch.

The follower counts explain the casting. Ulta’s account reached 1.9 million followers this month, against Ice Spice’s 14.1 million. The company that owns the shop is the smallest name inside it.

What Ulta bought was a window. In Ha Mood sold only through the TikTok Shop at $28 to $79, reaching Ulta.com weeks later. The reward for opening a channel was a few weeks as the only place to buy something people already wanted.

The contract underneath belongs to Revlon, which signed Ice Spice to a global fragrance licence in May 2025, more than a year before Ulta had a shop to open. The launch was going to happen somewhere. Ulta won the room, not the artist.

The stream itself was modest. It drew 178,000 views and 5.95 million impressions, figures Revlon gave Glossy, and the two creators hired to co-host brought another 741,000 followers to the room. No sales number was released, which is usually a number of its own.

Ulta did not open a channel in July; it booked a headliner.

The number that travelled afterwards was impressions. Kecia Steelman, Ulta’s chief executive, told the August earnings call the shop had cleared 100 million of them since launch, and put the loyalty file at 47 million active members. It rented the first number and owns the second.

The shopper who arrives this way is borrowed. They came for Ice Spice and left a row in Ulta’s loyalty file. Whether they return for anything without a famous name attached is the question the campaign was not built to answer.

The affiliate half of the shop works the same way. Polite Society ran the largest affiliate campaign in its history through Ulta’s storefront in June, as we wrote at the time. The storefront has been busy twice now, and both crowds arrived under someone else’s name.

Sephora opens its own TikTok shop today and has written the arrangement down. The Drop Shop promises a monthly exclusive fronted by a celebrity host, the brand rotating out when the month ends. What Ulta improvised in July is a rival’s stated policy by September. Neither has said what happens in a month when nobody famous is free.