This is a new year, but for Ulta Beauty president and chief executive officer Kecia Steelman, it’s a continuation of her vision for the retailer’s future.
Steelman, who just completed her first year helming Ulta, said in an NRF Big Show keynote in Manhattan Monday that the seedlings of her Ulta Beauty Unleashed plan are already bearing fruit.
“It’s not just a strategy, it’s a way of being and you can feel it through the entire organization,” Steelman said in conversation with Deloitte Digital’s head of U.S. retail and consumer products Bobby Stephens. “There’s three core areas we’re focused on: driving our core business, making sure that what we’re really doing is driving the U.S. business forward. The second is focusing on new businesses and margin-creating businesses, and the third is realigning our foundation for growth.”
Steelman started her retail career on the front lines in stores, and moved over to Ulta Beauty after stints at Home Depot and Family Dollar. “It makes me in a really unique position as a CEO, when you walk a mile in someone else’s footprint. You have a true appreciation for the job they do,” she said.
It’s a big part of what’s formed the three-pronged strategy, which Steelman explained “needs to be understood from the background of the store all the way to the boardroom. The more everyone understands what it is they’re trying to do and the role they have and how they play in it, we celebrate those wins along the way.”
She’s a firm believer in keeping both the sales associates and the shoppers they interface with at the center of business decisions. After her keynote, she told WWD, “Consumers are just as engaged with beauty and continue to be more intentional with their choices, and that’s exactly the environment Ulta Beauty Unleashed was built for. As we look to 2026, we’re executing with focus — delivering innovation that earns its place, value that feels meaningful, and experiences that keep beauty joyful and accessible. In moments of uncertainty, clarity and consistency matter, and our strategy is designed to meet guests where they are while continuing to move the business forward.”
Onstage, she said that part of that is thinking in omnichannel terms — and finding ways to further eliminate friction.
“To me, it’s about personalization and the old ways of talking to a guest, one to many, is really over. It’s one-to-one, how are we leveraging our data and our knowledge, how that consumer is shopping, engaging with them in a way that they are not only looking for products they’ve been purchasing but being more predictive,” Steelman said. “We can do that with AI and generative AI moving forward. To me, we’re as much of a retailer as we are a data-driven company.”
Despite the company’s growth in e-commerce, 80 percent of sales are still coming from stores. From a brand matrix perspective, Steelman is leaning heavily into wellness, and also trying to build exclusive offerings for her clientele. “Wellness is actually growing faster than the beauty category itself, so it’s a great place to lean into for our business,” she said. “It’s not like you’re going to have a trade-off. It’s not like, if you’re buying the ingestible, you aren’t going to buy the hairspray. It’s a nice, complementary assortment add-on,” she said.
Ulta’s new marketplace model is also performing well, she said, and has been a sounding board to test the appetites of consumers across segments of wellness. From an eventing perspective, Steelman noted Ulta’s traction and engagement with shoppers, emphasizing intersections beyond beauty. “We partnered with Beyoncé and the Cowboy Carter Tour. It wasn’t about just putting our name in the stadium, it was about activations,” she said. “Beyoncé actually helped curate the looks we were showing. How do you get the look to be like Beyoncé? Everybody wants to be like Beyoncé. Even Lollapalooza, Coachella and the Super Bowl.”
Beyond the parameters of the U.S., Steelman noted the retailer’s varied expansions abroad, including the acquisition of Space NK in the U.K., its joint venture taking Ulta to Mexico, and its licensing deal for store openings in the Middle East. “When we started to look at what markets we were going to go into next, I was very surprised at the awareness levels that were in these markets that we didn’t have stores in, or that we didn’t even ship products to,” Steelman said. “We feel there’s an opportunity to grow even more in the U.S.; however, it was time to take it to the next level. That’s part of our growing margin-creating businesses.”
Four markets are enough for Steelman to maintain, but she didn’t rule out future expansions either. “I’ve seen a lot of companies make the mistake of taking their eye off the core business, and it becomes a distraction. I do not want that to happen,” she said. However, “I want to continue to grow. So, I have a feeling that there could be potentially more announcements in the future of where we’re going next.”
