As Other Retailers Retreat, Ulta Beauty Doubles Down On Wellness With In-Store Boutiques

As other retailers walk away from wellness, Ulta Beauty is giving the category a more prominent, dedicated space and visual identity inside stores with Wellness by Ulta Beauty shop-in-shop boutiques.

Housing 58 brands, the 450-square-foot boutiques launch in three locations next Monday: Columbus, Ohio; Short Pump, Va.; and Peabody, Mass. In April, the concept will arrive at a store in Naperville, Ill., as well. While the boutiques will begin in only a small number of Ulta’s more than 1,450 stores in the United States, they reinforce the retailer’s push to position itself as a wellness destination. Ulta’s wellness expansion stands in contrast to Sephora, which has stepped back from the category.

Arrae, The Nue Co., Stripes and Playground are entering Ulta with the introduction of the boutiques, which are about half the size of salons within Ulta stores. About six additional brands are expected to join the boutiques by the end of the first quarter. Wellness by Ulta Beauty products in stores and online will be categorized under Ulta’s refreshed and simplified four—down from six—wellness pillars: Nutrition & Supplements, Intimate Care, Rest & Reset and Essential Routines.

Ulta drew from learnings about how wellness is similar to and distinct from beauty in its development of the boutiques. “We know this category is truly experiential. We know it is based on human connection in some ways, just like beauty,” says Laura Beres, VP of wellness at Ulta. “We wanted to provide the guest a more immersive, education-led platform.”

The experiential boutiques will be distinguished from the surrounding store by a feature wall with Wellness by Ulta Beauty branding, including the updated product pillars, two gondolas and back-to-back endcaps spotlighting the brands and an interactive education table where guests can try products. The increased focus on education extends to employees. Each boutique will be staffed with two dedicated wellness advisors who’ve been trained to support wellness shoppers.

“[Wellness] is such an incredibly personal journey,” says Beres. “We felt like it is really time for us to start to lean into this space in a more hands-on way.”

Last year, Ulta piloted a more extensive wellness certification for its associates that the Wellness by Ulta Beauty advisors completed. Brands in the boutiques provided video and in-person virtual training that covered hero products, product benefits and consumer need states to help them serve shoppers comprehensively. Beres mentions that the wellness curriculum will be made available to all Ulta associates.

Wellness has been a challenging category for beauty retailers in part because staff in beauty retail environments aren’t as knowledgeable about it as staff in retail environments with a greater emphasis on wellness products. Ulta is attempting to remedy those issues with training and by encouraging interaction between its shoppers and the wellness offerings. Brands participating in the Wellness by Ulta Beauty boutiques are encouraged by Ulta’s approach.

Jules Miller, founder of The Nue Co., which is bringing a trio of gourmand functional fragrances to Ulta, says, “Ulta Beauty’s new boutique concept, supported by highly educated associates who can speak confidently and thoughtfully about mood, stress, endocrine disruptors and daily rituals, creates the right environment to bring functional fragrance to life. This level of care and expertise is what’s required to truly unlock the potential of this incredibly powerful category.”

The lion’s share of the products carried in the boutiques are from existing Ulta partners and are already sold in The Wellness Shop. Still, their inclusion in this reimagined, dedicated retail environment is a boon for these brands, providing consumers with an opportunity to explore and experience nuanced and multi-use wellness items that may get overlooked in a crowded beauty store.

“With Ulta Beauty’s growing strategic focus on wellness, this partnership brings together Neom’s wellbeing expertise and Ulta’s trusted in-store teams to help educate and inspire customers across key wellbeing need states, including Sleep and De-Stress,” shares Neom CEO Isabel Malbois. “The curated range supports the Ulta Beauty guest at every stage of their wellness journey, grounded in our belief that small, daily micro-moments of wellbeing can transform everyday routines into feel-good experiences that truly work.”

Sexual wellness has been particularly tough for beauty retailers as they face the double barrier of it being a taboo category and one in which they aren’t known to tread. However, Ulta isn’t backing away from it, as signified by intimate wellness being among its four wellness pillars. Catherine Magee, co-founder and CEO of  intimate wellness brand Playground, is thrilled by Ulta’s dedication to the space, as getting products such as U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved lubricants and vaginal suppositories in front of mainstream shoppers has been a high hurdle for it. Beyond Ulta, Playground is available at Target and on Amazon.

Magee commends Ulta for taking “the most thoughtful, intentional approach to this space that I’ve seen to date.” She says, “For years, we’ve said sexual health and wellness is going mainstream, but it isn’t truly mainstream until a flagship retailer treats it as the health and wellness category it is and positions it accordingly.”

Beauty Independent first chronicled Ulta’s wellness efforts in 2019, when the retailer launched a wellness section as part of its bath and body category online and in 350 stores. The pandemic kicked the initiative into high gear, and that section morphed into Ulta’s The Wellness Shop assortment in 2021. By the end of 2023, The Wellness Shop was in nearly every Ulta door nationwide, and last year, the assortments ballooned from under 10 feet of space to 30 to 45 square feet of space in a third of its fleet of stores, with 30 new brands integrated into it, including premium players like Sakara and Apothekary. 

Since becoming CEO last year, Kecia Steelman has been outspoken about wellness being a billion-dollar opportunity for Ulta. Valued at nearly $6.8 trillion in 2024 and projected to reach about $9.8 trillion by 2029, according to the Global Wellness Institute, the global wellness economy far exceeds the global beauty industry, which Statista estimates at roughly $677 billion to $703 billion worldwide.

On recent earnings calls, Ulta has pointed to high single-digit sales growth in wellness alongside skincare and fragrance. In the third quarter of fiscal 2025, the most recent period for which it has released results, Ulta’s net sales rose about 12.9% to $2.9 billion, with comparable sales up 6.3%, beating expectations and prompting management to raise its full-year outlook.

Beres asserts Ulta’s 46 million loyalty members, a cohort that accounts for 97% of the chain’s sales, have made it clear that they want to buy wellness merchandise at Ulta. She says, “Our consumers have increasingly said, ‘We want more, and we want more from you, Ulta, because you’re a retailer that we trust to actually be the destination for these products for us,’ an incredibly flattering place to be, obviously.”