Sally Beauty is doubling down on its bet on the fragrance category. In November, the beauty retailer best known for its value-conscious hair and nail products, launched fragrance at its top-performing 1,000 stores. By the end of this year’s second quarter, Sally Beauty aims to expand the category to more than 2,000 stores.
But Sally Beauty is promising its consumers a discount on traditionally high-priced fragrances. Anchoring the category at Sally Beauty is Alt., a dupe fragrance brand known for its interpretations of luxury scents like Maison Francis Kurkdjian Baccarat Rouge 540 and Prada Paradoxe.
“We’re doing [fragrance] in our unique way, which continues to be a value play,” Sally Beauty CEO Denise Paulonis told Glossy. “At $25 to $35, you’re getting the equivalent of a $300 fragrance, which fits perfectly with who our customers are.”
The retailer’s other perfume offerings include Sabrina Carpenter’s Sweet Tooth line and French mass brand Solinotes. Sabrina Carpenter’s scents represent Sally Beauty’s most expensive fragrance offerings, at $55 for a full-sized bottle.
Even with new fragrance arrivals selling out, overall growth at Sally Beauty remained modest at the start of 2026. On Monday, the company reported a 1.2% increase in net sales for the first quarter of fiscal year 2026 compared to the same period a year prior. The company maintains its full-year 2026 guidance, anticipating net sales of $3.71 billion to $3.77 billion.
But introducing fragrance is not the only way the mass beauty retailer is evolving to meet consumer taste. Sally Beauty is also growing its use of artificial intelligence to tailor emails to consumers and delivery services to meet demand for instant gratification. The latter has proven especially useful in driving new customers, according to Paulonis.
“We were one of the first, and I think still one of the largest participants in the delivery marketplace space,” said Paulonis. Sally Beauty first entered the delivery market with DoorDash in 2024 before expanding to Uber Eats in 2025. “About 75% of the transactions are from new customers to us that are going through those marketplaces.”
“We didn’t know how beauty would really play on a [delivery] marketplace. Like, is it really that urgent to have something?” she said. “But we’ve discovered that people have lash emergencies at five o’clock on a Saturday before a party, and they want that. … For Gen Z and millennial consumers, that’s their new Amazon in the way that they shop.”
Expanding into AI and instant delivery does not mean Sally is ignoring its brick-and-mortar stores. Sally Beauty unveiled a new store format in late 2025 as part of its Sally Ignited plan. According to its second-quarter earnings report, Sally has completed 38 store redesigns with plans to reach 80 by the end of the year.
With the new design, Sally Beauty aims to position its stores as destinations, akin to Ulta Beauty or Sephora stores, rather than drugstore-like environments. That means giving consumers more room to experiment with trial and sample sizes and expanding more into color cosmetics.
“The look and feel of our stores has always been quite utilitarian,” said Paulonis. “We are so excited about what that [new design] can bring to our customer — to cross-shop and engage more in things like fragrance and cosmetics — and just to modernize the experience.”
Value remains top of mind for Sally consumers. But how consumers are defining value is constantly shifting, Paulonis said.
“If we looked a year ago, a consumer loved to stock up, because they were worried about inflation. So the best things we could do or offer them was: You get four if you spend a certain amount of money,” said Paulonis. “We’ve watched them transform right now to, ‘I want that one perfect item at a great price.’ So this pace of consumer change and what’s interesting to them is certainly something that keeps us on our toes every day.”
Additional reporting by Jill Manoff.
