By Team CurlyNikki
MoKnowsHair Just Joined Ulta’s MUSE Accelerator- Could Ulta Shelves Be Up Next?
If you have been on these natural-hair internets long enough, MoKnowsHair needs no intro. Before every beauty brand had a curl chart and every retailer had a textured-hair aisle, Monica Stevens was online teaching us how to actually handle our hair. And now her product company is getting a serious retail-development boost!
Ulta Beauty announced MoKnowsHair as one of eight companies in its 2026 MUSE Accelerator, a 10-week program designed to prepare emerging brands for growth and national retail. Each participant receives $50,000, mentorship and direct retail-readiness training. And yes, we immediately had the same thought you did:
Does this mean MoKnowsHair is coming to Ulta??! ‘Cause, let’s go!
Not yet. But it’s possibly, probably happening haha We predict! And hope and pray!
What is the Ulta MUSE Accelerator?
Ulta launched MUSE Accelerator in 2022 to support early-stage founders and brands that have historically had less access to the machinery required to scale nationally.
The 2026 program begins September 14.
This year’s eight brands are:
- AWARE Hair
- Blue Water Girls
- Dos Mundos
- MIA Outdoor Hair
- Mochiglow
- MoKnowsHair
- Prados Beauty
- Prereq Care
Each receives $50,000. Ulta and the Fifteen Percent Pledge will also award one participating company an additional $10,000 based on factors including growth and community impact.
The program covers the less glamorous but absolutely necessary side of turning a beloved small brand into a national one: positioning, retail fundamentals, supply chain, pitching buyers and scaling operations.
Basically, all the things nobody tells you about while Instagram is yelling “just start!”
MoKnowsHair belongs in this conversation
Monica Stevens built credibility the old-fashioned way. She knew hair. Her education-first approach made her one of the recognizable voices of the natural-hair digital era, and her product collection is formulated around curls and textures rather than treating textured hair as an extension of a general-market assortment.
Ulta describes MoKnowsHair as a salon-quality collection for curl types and textures created by a master cosmetologist.
There is something satisfying about watching a creator whose authority came from doing and teaching hair enter a program designed around national retail scale. We have watched this industry change. Sometimes for the better. Sometimes in ways that make you wonder whether anybody remembers who built the natural-hair market everybody is now fighting to monetize. Brands rooted in actual texture expertise getting access to larger distribution? We are certainly blessed to see it, and will have more, please.
Could MoKnowsHair eventually launch at Ulta?
It’s absolutely possible, but there’s a line on their site that reminds us,
Being selected for MUSE does not mean Ulta will carry it.
The accelerator is designed partly to prepare companies for retail distribution, and participants get the opportunity to pitch Ulta merchants. Some alumni have later made the jump. Ulta says four former MUSE brands have entered its retail ecosystem. One particularly relevant example is Dominican hair-care company OCOA, a 2024 participant that launched in more than 460 Ulta stores in August 2025.
So MUSE can absolutely become a runway to Ulta. It’s at the table. In the door… it’s just not a guarantee, yet. We can claim it for her, tho!
Hair care is unusually prominent in this year’s class
This year’s group also tells us something about where beauty retail is looking. Three of the eight companies are directly tied to hair or scalp care:
MoKnowsHair, centered on curls and texture.
AWARE Hair, focused on scalp wellness.
And MIA Outdoor Hair, which makes products designed around sun, salt water and chlorine exposure.
Those are three very current hair categories:
- Texture.
- Scalp.
- Environmental protection.
PURPOSE. Intention. Consumers have graduated beyond shopping for shampoo and conditioner according to a broad hair type. We are increasingly buying against specific problems and situations.
The mentors are worth noticing too
Ulta stacked the program with people who know what it takes to build modern beauty businesses.
Speakers include Cécred CEO Grace Ray, Briogeo founder Nancy Twine and Allure editor in chief Jessica Cruel.
Mentors include Black Girl Sunscreen founder Shontay Lundy, Donna’s Recipe cofounder Gina Woods and Rizos Curls founders Julissa and Tony Prado.
For a growing natural-hair brand, that network could be as valuable as the check itself. You cannot Google your way through every scaling problem. Sometimes you need somebody who has already survived it… and is running back in with a torch to guide you out!
Why we’re watching MoKnowsHair
One of the strangest parts of watching the natural-hair industry mature has been seeing concepts the community created become mainstream while some of the people who built the culture struggled for equivalent shelf space.
We watched video tutorials turn into billion-dollar product categories.
We watched language once used almost exclusively by Black women (co-wash, protective styling, curl definition, edges), become normal beauty-industry vocabulary. That evolution is not inherently bad. Growth is good. Access is good. Better formulas, good. But only if the market promotes the pioneers, the founders. The Mos of the industry! She will continue to grow the market and be a voice and product we can trust!
We are watching and rooting! CONGRATULATIONS!
