Perhaps the most anticipated panel of the day at BeautyMatter NEXT50 2026 explored the future of beauty retail, as shopping, discovery, entertainment, and community increasingly converge into one integrated system. The room was packed, with Ulta Beauty leaders seated both on stage and in the front row, and questions coming from an audience eager to understand what's next for the US's largest beauty specialty retailer and one of the fastest-growing beauty retailers globally.
Moderated by BeautyMatter founder and CEO Kelly Kovack, "From Cultural Signal to Consumer Cart" brought Lauren Brindley, Ulta Beauty's Chief Merchandising and Digital Officer, and Kelly Mahoney, its Chief Marketing Officer, to discuss the strategic shifts reshaping the business and how Ulta Beauty is positioning itself for its next chapter.
The discussion highlighted the retailer's significant transformation over the past two years: a cultural reset aligned with the Ulta Beauty Unleashed strategy outlined by CEO Kecia Steelman in early 2025. Rethinking everything from marketing and merchandising to digital innovation and international expansion, Ulta Beauty has worked to "reignite the brand's purpose" as an inclusive, welcoming, and approachable beauty destination for consumers across demographics and stages of life.
"Wherever beauty is happening, Ulta Beauty is there with you," Mahoney explained, describing the brand's newer positioning. The retailer is building a larger presence beyond its doors, from the Super Bowl to music festivals to college campuses, while also bringing a more modern expression of the Ulta Beauty experience into its stores.
Beauty discovery no longer happens in just one place. Consumers move between social platforms, agentic personal shoppers, creator content, digital channels, and physical stores, and retailers must be prepared to show up across these touchpoints. For Ulta Beauty, that means ensuring it's part of the broader cultural conversation.
One of the more consequential changes at Ulta Beauty happened internally: reorganizing its structure to evolve alongside its consumers. As Brindley mentioned, merchandising, digital, marketing, and retail once operated separately, with each responsible for different aspects of the consumer experience. But as those lines blurred, Ulta Beauty understood the importance of creating "one seamless, connected experience" for both brand partners and consumers.
Today, merchandising and digital work together, with merchants holding full omnichannel accountability across the physical and virtual shelves, TikTok, AI, and wherever else the brand appears. Brindley, Mahoney, and Chief Retail Officer Amiee Bayer-Thomas operate as the market leadership team, connecting strategy with execution. For brand partners, having these teams aligned from the beginning means clearer communication and faster decisions.
"If we're in the room together, or our teams are, we make decisions in that moment and move forward," Mahoney said. "We have a responsibility to make sure that we understand the strategies associated with each brand that we're making big bets on. And you can only do that when you're face to face with a brand," she said.
The shift reflects Ulta Beauty's growing role as an active partner in helping build brands.
For emerging brands, one of the most significant messages of the discussion was that the traditional path into Ulta Beauty has changed. While the retailer has historically been a place to scale established businesses, it's not necessarily about having the greatest resources to launch. Ulta Beauty is strongly focused on building its portfolio of emerging brands.
"We're no longer the second stop," Brindley said. "And that's really important for people to understand." The team actively looks for whitespace across the industry, particularly in its growing wellness category, that can create an experience for its consumers that drives the future of the industry forward.
“It's not just about curating what is out there," Brindley emphasized.
Ulta Beauty is increasingly willing to invest in brands at their earliest stages, even while they’re still developing their first products. Partnerships don't have to begin with large-scale distribution commitments, whether that means launching in 10 stores, selling exclusively online, or entering through TikTok Shop.
"There are lots of different places where we can start working together," Brindley said. "There is not one standard playbook, and that's really important." Ulta Beauty customizes its approach based on a brand's stage, support needs, resources, team, and ambitions. "If we believe that there is a future in what you're doing, we can partner from the very beginning. Whether you've made a product or not, all the way up to brands that might be somewhere globally turning over tens of millions," she continued.
Her advice to the audience? Don't wait to start a conversation. If there's something differentiating about your brand, Ulta Beauty is ready to hear about it.
Appealing to multiple generations is both a defining strength of Ulta Beauty and an inherent challenge. The retailer aims to reach guests across demographics, showing up on different channels and using creators and influencers as some of its strongest advocates.
Personalization, however, ultimately comes down to the people on the sales floor. Associates understand guests' needs and guide them through the experience, creating a welcoming environment for exploration and discovery. Those in-person interactions also give Ulta Beauty insight into its guests and help inform the content it creates. Even the term "guest" is an important distinction for the retailer, as consumers are not simply shoppers, but people Ulta Beauty values.
Alongside the value of in-store connection, Ulta Beauty is leveraging technology to get ahead of the industry, building on early innovations and investments in AI, generative engine optimization (GEO), and agentic commerce.
"We are currently the most visible beauty retailer on all the LLMs [large language models] and the AI platforms," Brindley said, crediting Ulta Beauty’s data and content ecosystem for helping it stand out. The retailer also shares what it learns with brand partners as AI increasingly shapes product discovery.
These new platforms are not a threat to traditional retail, but another way to reach consumers and introduce them to brands and categories they might not otherwise discover in stores.
Brindley shared her guiding principle with AI with the audience: "Instead of just designing for the system, design for the guest and allow your systems to deliver."
The conversation naturally turned to Ulta Beauty's rapid international expansion. With audience members eager to know whether the retailer is coming to their regions next, the panelists highlighted its acquisition of SpaceNK and launches in Mexico and the Middle East.
But while bringing established global brands into new markets is an important part of the strategy, Ulta is equally focused on understanding the local beauty communities it has entered.
"We want this to very much feel like we're part of the community,” said Brindley. “We are adapting. We're tailoring. We're localizing.”
The retailer is inviting local brands into its stores and learning from the markets themselves, creating opportunities both in the US and abroad. For US brands, Ulta Beauty can now provide a pathway to international markets. For international brands, the US becomes an opportunity to introduce American consumers to innovations from around the world.
To close on the conversation's positive, optimistic note, Mahoney and Brindley gave the audience a glimpse of what's next for Ulta Beauty.
The retailer is currently planning its first flagship location at Times Square in New York City. The four-level, 27,000-square-foot megastore brings together many of the themes discussed throughout the conversation: a business connected across channels, intentional about its brand partnerships, understanding of local and global consumer needs, and committed to making beauty discovery an inclusive experience.
Brindley described it as "the ultimate brand expression in one store," an immersive destination for consumers and tourists alike and a physical showcase of everything Ulta Beauty has to offer.