The ever-growing U.S. sun care category is soon to have a new international player.
Australia-based SPF brand Ultra Violette will launch direct-to-consumer and in 592 Sephora U.S. stores this March, marking the brand’s 30th international market since its founding in 2018. The brand, which has gained global buzz in recent years thanks to increased consumer adoption of SPF and interest in heavier-duty chemical UV filters, will debut with five facial, lip and body SPF products.
Prices range from $22 for its Sheen Screen SPF 50 lip balms to $40 for its Future Screen face SPF, and the line will include a U.S.-exclusive, “sweat-safe” Vibrant Screen for the face and body for $30.
“Sephora waited for us to find the right time, and to have the right range, to launch in the U.S. and once we said we were ready, we got a lot of support for it,” said Bec Jefferd, who met cofounder Ava Matthews during their time at Mecca Beauty heading up the Australian beauty retailer’s private label range.
“[At Mecca] we had a front row seat to what was happening in every category, and we saw a gap in the beauty landscape — particularly in the prestige market — when it came to sun care that was skin care plus sunscreen,” she continued.
Ava Matthews and Bec Jefferd
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When Ultra Violette debuted in Australia in December 2018, it featured five mineral and chemical SPF offerings infused with skin-boosting ingredients like squalane, pentavitin and vitamins B5, C, E and F.
“We felt that, from a formulation point of view, SPF was very utilitarian — it was kind of an afterthought,” said Matthews, adding that Ultra Violette sought not only to do SPF effectively, but “to do it beautifully.”
The timing was right — the movement toward SPF as a core facial skin care step has risen to new heights since then, particularly as international brands like Ultra Violette and K-beauty’s Beauty of Joseon and Round Lab emerged in front of a global audience.
Ultra Violette’s trajectory reflects this boom: Sources estimate the brand is on track to do $33 million in net sales in 2025, with the U.S. accounting for up to $8.5 million of that total. In 2024, the brand closed a 15 million Australian-dollar minority investment from Aria Growth Partners, a U.S. growth equity firm which also invests in The Inkey List.
“We had a big assumption for many years that we couldn’t do FDA-approved [chemical UV filters] well, and it became a real limiting belief of ours,” said Jefferd, adding that she and Matthews previously held out on entering the U.S. in hopes that the FDA would approve new filters — like the ones Ultra Violette was already using in other markets — for use, though the agency has yet to approve a new filter for sunscreen use since 1999.
“We got to the point where it was like, ‘OK — we have to do this, or someone else will,’” Matthews said.
“We had to spend a bit of money, a bit of time to formulate, and we were pleasantly surprised that we could innovate within FDA guidelines,” said Jefferd, adding the result is “a strong lineup of chemical and mineral products that we feel cover all skin types, has some of our heroes, and a little something for everyone.”
Ultra Violette’s hero Supreme Screen, Future Screen, Velvet Screen and U.S.-exclusive Vibrant Screen.
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The brand’s official relationship with Sephora dates back to 2020, when Ultra Violette made its first major retail expansion with Sephora Australia. The move was a strategic one, made with an eye on global growth.
“We saw that retailers were seeing this as a white space — one they didn’t have anything on their shelves yet to address. Seeing that category opportunity in retail opened our eyes to the fact that this was a much bigger opportunity than Australia,” Jefferd said.
Ultra Violette entered its first international market in 2021, launching at SpaceNK in the U.K. where — despite the founders’ concerns that consumer interest in SPF wasn’t yet great enough in the region (“it’s gray over there; they still used tanning beds, which are for the most part banned in Australia,” Matthews said) — Ultra Violette took off.
“Our first summer, we had the number-one stock keeping unit in SpaceNK’s total business for a number of weeks,” said Jefferd. Still, though, the sun care landscape then was so markedly different than it is today that the retailer “would only have sunscreen offerings on its shelves for the summer months — so we were like, ‘OK — we’ve got a big task ahead of us.’”
But as SPF norms have evolved among consumers in recent years, so have they begun to at retail. Case in point: Sephora U.S.’ inauguration of its first Australian SPF brand.
“We feel like it makes sense for an Australian sunscreen brand to be the number-one global prestige sunscreen brand,” said Matthews, adding that, 18 months ago, the brand’s international business began outpacing its Australian business.
“What launching in 29 markets thus far has taught us is that the job’s not done when you get onto shelves,” said Jefferd. “Our big strategic priority for 2025 is to invest in the U.S., to build a team on the ground, to educate Sephora store associates on our filters and what they do; to execute our product pipeline for 2026 and onward — you don’t win the race in Year One — we’re building a plan to be successful three, five, 10 years out,” Jefferd said.
