Walmart Is Drawing Affluent Shoppers—And Elevating Beauty To Keep Them

In an uncertain economy, higher-income consumers are giving Walmart a fresh look, and the big-box giant is orchestrating a beauty reinvention to make sure they like what they see.

Over the last year, Walmart has introduced 72 new beauty brands, including Dabble & Dollop, Liva, Nude by Nature, California Naturals, Pacifica, Gem, Bali Body, Blvd & Co and Odele. Brands pursue the retailer for scale—150 million customers shop weekly at its 4,600-plus stores and its $150 billion e-commerce platform has grown at a double-digit pace for eight consecutive quarters—and Walmart pursues beauty brands to attract a high-value beauty shopper who is 71% female and disproportionately younger, digitally engaged and higher income.

Data from consumer intelligence firm NielsenIQ reveals the number of Walmart beauty shoppers from households earning more than $150,000 rising 13.6% and the number of shoppers aged 30 to 34 increasing 12.9% year over year. NIQ estimates that 76% of beauty buyers in the United States have purchased from Walmart. Although Walmart is known for value, its beauty customers aren’t just value shoppers. NIQ finds that premium beauty at Walmart is driving double-digit growth, with 12% buyer growth and 13% trip growth year-over-year.

“Shoppers are responding to elevated offerings in haircare and fragrance, and brands are proving that Walmart can scale premium just as powerfully as it scales mass,” said Jacqueline Flam Stokes, managing director of beauty and healthy at discussion hosted by Cosmetics Executive Women in New York City last week. She was joined by Vinima Shekhar, VP of beauty at Walmart, Liz Feeney, industry manager for beauty at Walmart Connect, and Stephanie Pankuch, GM of consumables for Walmart Marketplace, in the discussion.

On Walmart’s Feb. 19 earnings call reporting fiscal fourth-quarter results, executives said the retailer has been gaining market share, with a majority of those gains coming from households earning more than $100,000. For the quarter, Walmart reported revenue of $190.7 billion, up 5.6% year over year, with U.S. comparable sales increasing 4.6% and global e-commerce sales climbing 24%. The company has surpassed a $1 trillion market cap.

According to a 2025 analysis by investment bank TD Cowen, Walmart commands an estimated 20% market share of U.S. beauty sales, a percentage it expects to moderate slightly in the years ahead as the retailer faces pressure from Amazon and professional beauty outlets. Expanding its premium beauty assortment could bolster Walmart’s ability to retain higher-value shoppers as competition for their beauty spending intensifies. However, it isn’t alone in pushing upmarket. Target plans to open prestige-oriented Beauty Studio shop-in-shops in 600 locations this fall, replacing space occupied by Ulta Beauty shop-in-shops.

Realizing the importance of beauty shoppers, Walmart is moving beauty to the front of its stores adjacent to home and fashion in a shift that will roll out across its fleet over the next few years. This spring, the retailer is planting its Beauty Bar activation in 450 locations. Last fall, it enlarged the Beauty Bar footprint to about 100 doors from 35 the preceding spring.

The concept, which enables shoppers to sample products and consult with staff, was conceived in response to the underperformance of Walmart’s twice-yearly beauty sales event. Brands featured in it include La Roche-Posay, Bubble, Olaplex, Dyson and Color Wow. After the debut of Beauty Bar, stores with it saw beauty sales double. The brands are only in stores for the duration of the Beauty Bar. This month, that’s through Mar. 19.

Walmart is layering in artificial intelligence across its channels, and it’s evolving from a search-based journey to a predictive model. This week, the retailer gave 1.6 million store associates access to AI as a tool in the hope it will free up their time to focus on customers and drive deeper loyalty. About half of Walmart’s online shoppers use its embedded AI agent Sparky. The baskets of shoppers using the voice-activated tool are 30% to 35% bigger than those from shoppers not using it.

For beauty brands, Shekhar laid out three keys to success at Walmart. The first is a strong value proposition. Shekhar explains that brands should ask themselves whether they’re actually solving a problem or are just in love with their own idea. She said, “Many newer, entrepreneur-led brands are more grounded in a true white space.”

The second key to success is operational rigor. Brands of any size can leverage Walmart’s retail media network Walmart Connect, but Shekhar said, “What’s the point of driving that to the media and marketing and the product is not available?” The third key to success is an omnichannel approach. Shekhar advises brands to think about growth from a platform perspective as Walmart does rather than stores and e-commerce being siloed.

She said, “We’re building platforms that are integrated across channels, and, if you focus on that, the success will come from meeting the customer where they are.”

Shekhar believes Walmart Marketplace should be automatic for brands large and small. Compared to stores, it’s low risk, and it can provide a brand with demand signals that can be acted upon quickly to, for example, speed up the fulfillment process. If a store rollout is in order, Walmart can lower the risk of it by putting brands in a limited number like 200, 500 or 1,000 stores at launch. Mario Badescu, for example, started in 250 stores plus Marketplace when it entered Walmart as part of its partnership with Space NK in 2022 and has since expanded to 3,000 stores.

Like most beauty retailers, Walmart is keen on an exclusive, and it recently launched Nude by Nature, a 15-year-old Australian clean makeup brand acquired by MCoBeauty parent company Vidacorp in 2024, as an exclusive in the United States. The brand offers nearly 50 products priced under $14. Shekhar highlights the brand’s clean ingredient profile, social media prowess, accessibility and elevated packages as factors in its decision to bring it in.

Over the next two weeks, L’Oréal owned skincare brand La Roche-Posay is arriving at 1,500 Walmart stores. Shekhar views it as merging Walmart’s beauty and pharmacy propositions and speaking to beauty consumers’ greater attention to skincare with a clinical lens.

Once a brand matriculates into the Walmart ecosystem, it works with Feeney to build a pay-for-play digital and experiential package as part of the retailer’s media network program. The levers the program can pull include connected tv, social, search, onsite display and in-store experiential.

“At the fundamental level, if you had a hundred dollars to spend, we would tell you to put it in search. That said, the more touchpoints that a brand works with to communicate with the Walmart customer, the more they will sell,” said Feeney. She added, “If you want to specifically drive sales at Walmart, we layer on the data Walmart has to build a very niche audience. Beauty’s personal. What my hair needs is very different than what Vinima’s needs. We can make sure that that ad is really precise in the targeting.”