
CEO Kecia Steelman’s Early Priorities At The Helm Of Ulta Beauty
In one of her first moves as CEO and president of Ulta Beauty, Kecia Steelman integrated the beauty specialty retailer’s merchandising and digital teams.
The move aligns with her emphasis on online sales, social media agility and omnichannel leadership for Ulta’s path ahead as it contends with beauty consumers’ march to e-commerce. In a report last October on the United States beauty industry, market research firm NielsenIQ declared, “Online sales are getting closer and closer” to in-store levels, with in-store sales reaching $61.1 billion and online sales reaching $43.1 billion. Currently, 80% of Ulta’s sales are generated from its roughly 1,400 stores across the country, and its 44 million loyalty members drive 95% of sales.
Appointed CEO last month to assume the role formerly held by Dave Kimbell, Steelman, most recently COO and president, takes over a company facing fierce competition from Amazon, Sephora and TikTok Shop, which has quickly become a top-five beauty retailer in the U.S., according to NielsenIQ. To draw beauty consumers with a plethora of shopping choices, she’s making sure it’s on top of artificial intelligence, data-driven personalization and the latest beauty trends and brands.
“I am so excited for the future of Ulta Beauty. I have the advantage of being an internal promotion because I was here for 10 years, and I have a pretty good understanding of who the players are and what it is that we need to really do to unlock our future success,” said Steelman, speaking at Beauty Independent’s Beauty Loves LA event last Thursday. “I think the best is still yet to come.”
Joining Steelman on stage at the event, Monica Arnaudo, Ulta’s chief merchandising officer who’s set to retire in the spring, said, “We know that it’s not just stores, and it’s not just shopping online, it’s everything. It’s the whole ecosystem that we’re building.”
Arnaudo also listed internal hires in education and marketing as key areas of investment for Ulta moving forward. From an assortment perspective, she said Ulta is keeping a close watch on inventory management, productivity and funding margin or the measure of how profitable a margin contribution is on each product sold.
Ulta is funneling resources into boosting sell-through, especially for emerging brands in its Sparked program. Introduced in 2019, Sparked facilitates the entrance of primarily smaller brands into Ulta that it hopes will graduate to selling permanently at its stores. All told, the chain carries about 600 brands and 25,000 stockkeeping units. Love Wellness, Divi, Sugardoh, Live Tinted and About-Face are among the brands that have broken into Ulta through Sparked.

Helmed by Jessica Philips, VP of emerging brands and strategic platforms, Ulta’s emerging beauty brand team connects with up to 3,000 brands a year, and their task is to pinpoint brands that have enough support to scale and products that will yield incremental revenue. Arnaudo disclosed that attributes Ulta looks for in emerging brands are a compelling proposition, strong community, increasing social traction and solid financial footing.
“You’re not going to be profitable right out the gate. It takes a few years,” she said, noting it can take up to three years to achieve profitability at Ulta. Steelman chimed in, “It’s never good for us to bring somebody in and blow them out too big and potentially bankrupt them. We want to be very thoughtful strategic partners and help your brand really continue to grow the right way and have big upside long-term success.”
Arnaudo advises brands to lean on Ulta merchants for guidance and heed that guidance to gain momentum at the retailer. She underscored brand partner transparency is crucial in forging a lasting relationship with it. Arnaudo said, “If you’re not transparent, that could catch up with you down the road.”
Steelman mentioned Ulta is leveraging AI to optimize back-end operations like inventory management and for personalization and gaming tools in skin analysis and try-on technology, which it’s implemented with augmented reality. Last year, Ulta struck a partnership with Roblox to appeal to gen alpha.
To tailor the shopping experience to customers, Steelman highlighted Ulta is deploying its vast array of data for personalization. “Data in today’s age is more critical than ever before, especially when you start looking at personalization and how you can market to the consumer,” she said. “It used to be a lot of broad marketing circulars or you’d set a broad discount. That doesn’t really resonate. It’s very expensive as an organization, and you’re giving away unnecessary margin. The consumer wants to feel that you’re talking to them.”
Wellness is a prominent theme at Ulta, too. A historically difficult category for beauty retailers, Ulta unveiled a collection of wellness products it called The Wellness Shop in 2021 in a limited number of doors. It’s since expanded to virtually every Ulta door. As of December 2023, the chain carried more than 700 wellness storekeeping units and 140 wellness brands, including Apothékary, Foria, Moon Juice, Lemme, Olly and The Honey Pot Company. Last November, it rolled out a a new in-store wellness concept to around 70 doors showcasing brands like Neom Wellness and Jolie.
“The wellness industry is a $400 billion industry, and it’s growing faster than beauty. There’s no retailer that really owns this space. It’s quite fragmented,” said Arnaudo. Steelman said, “When we’ve done surveys externally, the consumer is saying that they trust Ulta Beauty to come to get their wellness needs met.”

Steelman’s ascension to CEO follows a tough period for Ulta. In April last year, Kimbell warned of a beauty sales slowdown, sending shockwaves throughout the industry. In the second quarter of 2024, Ulta’s same-store sales dipped .3%, marking the first time in four years it underperformed Wall Street’s expectations.
To combat slowing demand, Ulta initiated a turnaround plan addressing its selection, social relevance, digital experience, loyalty members and promotions. There are signs the plan is working. In the third quarter last year, same-store sales edged up .6%, and they’re anticipated to have climbed modestly in the fourth quarter as well.
“We had a lot of issues last year on the inventory side, but we are over the hump,” said Arnaudo. “We put in some new systems. There was a lot of process change.”
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