Jennifer Aniston is loving everything, thank you for asking. She loves her main job as an actor playing a career news anchor on The Morning Show or a hairstylist turned amateur detective in Murder Mystery and Murder Mystery 2. And she loves her other, newer job, as a brand founder: Her hair-care line, LolaVie, turns two in September and enters its first retail partnership with Ulta Beauty this month.
Aniston loves problems because she loves solutions and she loves building something from the ground up. She loves her products, of course, and she loves that people love them — and people really do seem to love them, especially the Glossing Detangler. “I’m sure there’s the exception of someone who’s like, ‘Nah, I hate it.’ But that’s life,” she said during a recent phone call with Allure. And, ultimately, she loves those people, too.
Aniston loves her hair — except when she hates it. (You might, too, if your hair became famous at the same time you did.) “My hair has been my challenge and it’s also the love of my life and the bane of my existence. Having worked with another [hair] company years and years ago, I got that bug of being involved, not just as an actor for hire to be the face of something, but to be involved in the production of something.” (Aniston had a stake in and was a spokesperson for LivingProof until Unilever bought the hair-care brand in 2016.)
For a year and a half, LolaVie Restorative Shampoo and Conditioner were available only on LolaVie.com. Now, Aniston loves that the line will soon be stocked at Ulta Beauty, where curious customers can discover it and, inevitably, come to love it. Starting May 1, LolaVie’s entire range — five hair-care products and a detangling brush — arrives on Ulta.com and on May 14, the line will hit shelves in more than 1,350 Ulta Beauty stores nationwide. According to Aniston, other retailers vied to bring LolaVie to retail shelves, but none of them had an in-store hair salon, as all of the Ulta Beauty stores do. “You can get your hands on it right away and experience it,” said Aniston.
LolaVie’s move into Ulta Beauty is yet another hole in the deflating direct-to-consumer bubble. According to NielsenIQ, DTC sales of beauty and personal-care goods peaked in 2020. As digital commerce flourished under pandemic conditions, so did competition, advertising, and market “noise.” In an attempt to sing above it, more and more brands are moving from direct sales into mass retail. Even Glossier, the poster child of the DTC revolution that launched in 2014, moved a selection of its products into Sephora stores this year. A return to beauty retail is imminent, if not already in progress. Data from Placer.ai shows that foot traffic to Ulta Beauty has increased, even compared to pre-pandemic numbers. It’s good news for Aniston, whose immediate future looks like a pearl strand of product launches. “We have a paste we’re working on, we have a deep weekly treatment, a mask, a dry shampoo,” she told me. “Oh, and a dog line. Shampoo for dogs. How could I not do that?” (Aniston loves dogs; she calls them “puppers.”)