Ulta Beauty is pausing its expansion plans at Target, CEO Kecia Steelman announced at J.P. Morgan’s annual Retail Round-Up Conference.
The beauty retailer, which currently operates around 610 shop-in-shops within Target stores, will not move forward with further rollouts for now.
Steelman said in a recording transcribed by Seeking Alpha: “In a joint partnership with Target, we’ve made the decision to really lean into the 600-plus stores that are open this next year and really look at how do we continue to drive efficiencies and leverage the learnings that we’ve had to really unlock value for both of us collectively together.”
No further information on the reason behind the decision and Ulta’s plans was disclosed.
Steelman added: “We’ve taken a little bit of a pause in opening more stores, but that is really to just make sure that we’re working on all the things that we’ve learned over the last three years collectively together.”
The decision to pause comes amid mixed results for the beauty retailer in most recent financial earnings.
In Q4, the company saw its net sales drop by 1.9% to $3.5 billion, while comparable sales went up by 1.5% and the retailer lost market share in beauty for the first time.
Moving forward, the company projected a modest outlook but plans to leverage partnerships to improve its performance in the upcoming fiscal year.
Kecia Steelman, Ulta Beauty’s CEO president, said: “Fiscal 2025 will be a pivotal year as we make purposeful investments to fuel our future growth and move quickly to optimize our business.”
The beauty giant also made some C-suite appointments recently as part of its turnaround strategy.
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