Ulta adds Junoco refillable body care gifts with lower-waste pods

Ulta Beauty added Junoco’s 14-product body-care assortment to its shelves, and the gift hook is immediate: four of the in-store items can be restocked with swap-in refill pods sold online at Ulta. That makes the line feel less like a one-time indulgence and more like a gift that can keep showing up in someone’s routine.

Junoco built the range around an after-shower ritual, with body butter, melt cream, scrubs, oils, glow mist and a hand-and-foot mask in the mix. Founder Kyle Jiang said the brand wanted to introduce a “more complete Junoco world” across shower, skin, scent, glow and finishing touches, which is exactly the kind of structure that makes body care easier to give than a single hero product. A recipient can use the Full Body Melt Hydrating Body Cream, Soft-Whipped Hydrating Body Butter, Silky Buffing Butter Exfoliating Body Scrub, Cleansing Body Oil Rinse or SatinSlip Hand & Foot Cream Mask as part of a set, rather than as a standalone bottle on a crowded shelf.

The refill system gives the launch its retail logic. Ulta’s Conscious Beauty Sustainable Packaging standard requires at least 50% of a brand’s total packaging, by weight, sold at Ulta to be recyclable, refillable or made from recycled or bio-sourced materials, so Junoco arrives in a format the chain is already built to support. Junoco says each refill pod cuts plastic usage by 78 percent, a number that matters because it turns sustainability into something shoppers can actually see and repeat, not a vague promise attached to a label.

The business case is just as visible. Earlier reporting said Junoco’s refill system drove a 32 percent increase in repeat purchases from November to January, and the company has said it planned to reach 20 refill-friendly products within two years. Junoco, founded in 2018 by Kyle Jiang and co-led by co-founder and CMO Mira Peterson, has described itself as a California-developed brand focused on clean, vegan “skin-close care.” At Ulta, that positioning now lands inside a mainstream beauty retailer with product pages that include Sustainable Packaging tags, giving refillable body care a clearer path from niche sustainability play to practical gifting.