Welcome back to Ulta Beauty Strategies, Glossy’s series breaking down the latest strategies of the retailer and its most popular brands.
Ulta Beauty is leaning deeper into the wellness category with a first-of-its-kind launch: Wellness by Ulta Beauty shop-in-shop boutiques piloted in four U.S. stores starting next week.
“It’s a more immersive experience, it’s very education-led, and it really is going to be a unique opportunity for guests to walk in and see a highly-curated, approachable assortment in one place,” Laura Beres, vp of wellness at Ulta Beauty, told Glossy.
The new concept will more than double the wellness section’s existing in-store footprint, with a 40-foot gondola and dedicated section with a sampling table, education-focused wall, gondolas, end caps and specialty-trained wellness advisors.
The first four shop-in-shops will be 475 square feet each, Beres told Glossy, with future locations ranging from 300 to 600 square feet.
“We know wellness is really personal. We also know that [customers] are looking for unique things in the assortment,” Beres said. “The interactive table [in the center of the section is] where they’re able to test and try products, led by our dedicated wellness associates, who will be staffing this space and are really well educated in wellness — both the products we carry, but also more broadly, trends in the market.”
Beres and her team hired a fleet of wellness experts to man the sections, which are being piloted in locations in Columbus, Ohio; Short Pump, Virginia; and Peabody, Massachusetts, next week. A fourth pilot will open in April in Naperville, Illinois, about an hour away from of Ulta’s Chicago HQ.
Ulta Beauty launched its wellness category in 2021 and has spent the last five years testing new brands, categories and products. “This is really an evolution of [Ulta Beauty’s] ‘wellness shop,’” Beres said. This includes a flurry of new brands launched in 2025, including HeLight, Therabody, Vital Proteins, Saje, Armra and more, which was possible thanks to the launch of Ulta’s UB Marketplace, a drop-ship-powered addition to its e-commerce platform powered by the French tech company Mirakl.
“Last year, we made a significant investment in about a third of our fleet, expanding space from four-to-eight feet to 30-45 feet,” Beres said. “This is another really big step for us to test an even bigger footprint in a more dedicated way.”
The new Wellness by Ulta Beauty section will include 58 brands upon pilot launch, organized into refreshed product categories: Nutrition & Supplements, Intimate Care, Rest & Reset, and Essential Routines. The change is a streamlining of existing product categories; nothing was dropped in the refresh, Beres told Glossy.
The wellness section will also receive a new marketing tagline next week: ‘Find your feel-good,’ plus refreshed visuals that will roll out across all stores this spring. Ulta Beauty’s e-commerce site will also be reorganized to reflect these refined categories.
The store refresh will also be punctuated by the launch of new brands, namely Naomi Watts’s menopause-focused line Stripes and Playground, the sexual wellness brand from Christina Aguilera. Functional fragrance brand The Nue Co. is also launching with the refresh.
“Launching with a retail partner that recognizes the importance of wellness allows us to meet women in a moment where discovery and education naturally happen,” Cara Kamenev, Stripes global brand president and CEO, said in a statement. “This collaboration reflects a broader want and need for society to shift towards taking women’s health seriously and addressing it at scale.”
Beres told Glossy that eventing will be a large part of the marketing strategy but didn’t share if or how these famous founders may be included next week. To wit: Ulta Beauty added more than 20,000 events to its strategy in 2025.
Wellness is a hallmark of Ulta Beauty CEO Kecia Steelman’s ‘Ulta unleashed’ comeback plan, revealed in early 2025. In November, Beres told Glossy that Ulta had identified two primary wellness consumers: a beauty-first consumer who dabbles in wellness and a wellness-first purist who is more knowledgeable about their goals and needs. Beres hopes this new dedicated section will help to grow the retailer’s trust and presence as a wellness retailer.
“We’re always learning and trying new things,” Beres said. “We are going to learn from what we’re launching, and we’re going to continue to refine it, and we’ll see where it goes.”
