{"id":776640,"date":"2026-07-21T22:10:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T22:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/776640\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T22:10:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T22:10:09","slug":"as-sephora-seeks-active-beautys-next-stars-wnba-player-lexie-hulls-forta-bounces-into-accelerate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/776640\/","title":{"rendered":"As Sephora Seeks Active Beauty’s Next Stars, WNBA Player Lexie Hull’s Forta Bounces Into Accelerate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Indiana Fever guard Lexie Hull\u2019s day job is competing in front of thousands of fans. One of her biggest frustrations with it, however, has nothing to do with the demands of a high-intensity sport. It\u2019s makeup that can\u2019t keep up.<\/p>\n

Hull brought the problem to former Stanford roommate Sarah Guller, who had spent several years evaluating consumer brands while working in private equity at Summit Partners and The Chernin Group, firms whose investments have included Oura, Dr. Squatch, Philz Coffee and Brooklinen. She wanted to know whether solutions already existed on the market.<\/p>\n

Hull recounts, \u201cI would put on a full face of makeup or less than a full face and it be on my jersey or towel and no longer on my face during practice or games. That\u2019s when we were like, \u2018OK, it\u2019s not out there, let\u2019s just do it ourselves.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Hull and Guller launched Forta Cosmetics<\/a> in March with a single $26 product, sweat-resistant Lock & Go Setting Spray. The brand is targeting active women who need makeup that can move seamlessly from the boardroom to the gym, pickleball court, marathon finish line or dinner date without requiring constant touchups. The product generated more than $10,000 in sales within 24 hours of launch.<\/p>\n

Now, Forta, a play on \u201cfor the active,\u201d has been accepted to Sephora Accelerate, joining Mowe Beauty, another brand in the cohort targeting active consumers. The presence of both brands suggests Sephora sees growing potential in performance-oriented beauty products designed for active lifestyles. Sephora previously carried Lululemon\u2019s beauty line as well as Sweat Cosmetics<\/a>, a soccer player-founded brand centered on the concept of \u201cactivewear for your face\u201d that later rebranded as Hustle Beauty<\/a> and eventually shut down.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Indiana Fever guard Lexie Hull and former private equity investor Sarah Guller founded Forta Cosmetics after struggling to find makeup that could withstand long, active days. Flow State Creative<\/p>\n

\u201cLexie and I joke that we manifested Sephora in that I think pretty much from day zero, the dream has always been to eventually be in Sephora. It was definitely an exciting north star for us,\u201d says Guller. \u201cWhen we saw that they had an accelerator program, we felt like it made a lot of sense to build the brand early on with Sephora\u2019s guidance so that we can be retail ready and positioned for success in that retailer if that\u2019s a route we go.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Beauty Independent reported<\/a> in May, Sephora recently revamped Accelerate to focus less on retail access and more on operational readiness and long-term viability. The six-month program covers areas including operations, finance, media training, team building and strategic planning.<\/p>\n

Forta\u2019s selection for Accelerate comes as women\u2019s sports are booming and younger consumers are embracing athletic participation and viewership. Gen Z participates in sports at greater rates than previous generations, and athletics are increasingly viewed as a way to reduce screen time in the artificial intelligence age.<\/p>\n

The WNBA\u2019s audience, for example, keeps expanding: viewers logged 220 million hours of games last season, up 16% year over year, and Nielsen estimates the league now reaches 46.9 million American fans, a 31% jump in just two years. WNBA stars such as Angel Reese, Sabrina Ionescu, Paige Bueckers, A\u2019ja Wilson and Cameron Brink have landed beauty sponsorships, and beauty brands including Glossier, Fenty Beauty and CoverGirl have formed partnerships with WNBA teams.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to show up where the active woman is to show that beauty and performance can and should coexist in the same space.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Forta was inspired by Hull\u2019s experience as a professional athlete, its appeal extends beyond competitive sports.\u00a0\u201cWe\u2019ve had nurses reach out that have said, \u2018Oh my gosh, it lasted through my whole shift,\u2019\u201d says Hull. \u201cWe\u2019ve had performers and people who are like, \u2018I wore it to an outdoor wedding, and I didn\u2019t have to retouch my makeup.\u2019 That\u2019s another person that this is perfect for.\u201d<\/p>\n

To fund Forta\u2019s initial purchase order of around 10,000 units, Hull and Guller invested about $17,000 from their personal savings. They went on to raise an undisclosed friends and family round to help finance the brand\u2019s growth. Lip and eye products are in the pipeline. Hull says Forta intends to expand across face categories to help consumers create complete looks.<\/p>\n

To raise awareness, Forta is meeting consumers where they exercise and compete. It\u2019s held three to four monthly pop-ups at pilates classes, tennis and pickleball tournaments, local races and marathons. In addition to an eventual retail partnership with Sephora, Guller envisions the brand in locker rooms and sporting events across the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen people think of makeup, they think of Sephora, they think of a very kind of traditional sense of beauty,\u201d says Guller. \u201cAnd for us, we want to show up where the active woman is to show that beauty and performance can and should coexist in the same space.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Forta Cosmetics generated more than $10,000 in sales within 24 hours of launching Lock & Go Setting Spray, its debut product.<\/p>\n

Hull\u2019s WNBA status\u2014along with her nearly 500,000 followers on Instagram and another 300,000 on TikTok\u2014has been a boon for Forta. Among the brand\u2019s strongest-performing content are before-and-after posts showing Hull\u2019s makeup intact before, during and after games. Seeding professional athletes is also part of the marketing strategy. Sophie Cunningham, Eugenie Bouchard and Caitlin Clark have posted about the brand organically. Forta pledges 1% of proceeds to organizations aimed at sports access for underprivileged children.<\/p>\n

Guller says, \u201cObviously Lexi\u2019s a huge name in women\u2019s sports, but it\u2019s been awesome to see just how many other women out there are happy to promote the brand on their socials just because they identify with it.\u201d She adds, \u201cFemale athletes are role models for young girls and as we lean into that movement where it\u2019s cool to be strong and it\u2019s beautiful to be active, we want to have Forta be the brand that you think about.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Indiana Fever guard Lexie Hull\u2019s day job is competing in front of thousands of fans. One of her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":776641,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[331101,2839,5621,30173,331102,331103,331104,331105,99,434,43183,1765],"class_list":["post-776640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-forta-cosmetics","tag-indiana-fever","tag-lexie-hull","tag-makeup","tag-sephora","tag-sephora-accelerate","tag-sephora-accelerate-2026-cohort","tag-sephora-accelerate-program","tag-sports","tag-wnba","tag-wnba-player","tag-womens-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=776640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776640\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/776641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}