Janell Stephens’ haircare brand grew from kitchen experiments into a retail shelf presence at Target, Ulta and CVS

The founder of a haircare brand described as reaching nine-figure scale is Janell Stephens, according to a recent Entrepreneur profile. The story frames Stephens’ path as a pivot away from healthcare and toward product creation rooted in her own kitchen, eventually turning those early experiments into a consumer brand sold through large, mainstream retailers.

Before launching the brand, Stephens worked as a speech language pathologist, the profile says, and the article positions her haircare focus as a personal passion that gradually became a business. It describes a start that was hands-on and informal, emphasizing product development at home before evolving into a company with wider distribution.

As the business grew, the profile says Stephens’ products began reaching shoppers through major department and pharmacy channels. The article specifically points to Target, Ulta and CVS as retailers carrying the brand’s haircare products, underscoring the move from a niche creator profile into the inventory mix of retailers with high consumer traffic.

While the Entrepreneur piece highlights retail presence and scale, it does not provide detailed financial disclosures in the excerpted information available here. It also does not spell out the brand’s current product lineup, manufacturing footprint, or the specific timelines for retail partnerships, leaving readers to treat the “nine-figure” description as a broad outcome rather than a breakdown of revenue, margins, or funding.

The retailers mentioned in the profile matter because they sit at different points of the consumer buying journey. Target is a general merchandise chain with a strong beauty and household assortment, Ulta is centered on prestige and mass beauty, and CVS is a pharmacy format where consumers often purchase personal care alongside everyday prescriptions and essentials. A brand appearing across all three suggests it has, at minimum, cleared the operational and marketing thresholds required to meet each retailer’s merchandising standards.

In sector terms, the story fits a continued pattern in consumer packaged goods and beauty, where smaller founders seek distribution leverage to scale demand faster than direct-to-consumer alone. Placement in large retail channels can also change the economics of a brand by shifting acquisition from mostly owned channels to retailer-driven discovery, with brand teams typically balancing promo calendars, assortment resets, and category competition.

Still, several key questions remain unanswered in what is available from the profile. The article does not provide specific milestones such as launch year, exact revenue figures behind the nine-figure characterization, the number of SKUs on shelves, or whether the brand sells primarily through retail, online, or both. It also does not disclose whether any acquisitions, licensing arrangements, or contract manufacturing partnerships were part of the growth story.

Going forward, the business takeaway to watch is whether the brand continues expanding its shelf footprint, deepens relationships within beauty and haircare categories, and sustains growth as retail buyers demand consistent sell-through. For Stephens and her team, the early sign of traction is already visible in the retailers named by the profile, but the next indicators would be repeat placement, growing category share, and clarity on performance metrics that support ongoing distribution.