Ulta's Marketing Strategy

In our society today most millennials have conformed to healthy lifestyles and would prefer to use natural and eco-friendly products. This includes beauty and self-care products free from harsh chemicals. Ulta Beauty stores have become more attractive to these millennials with several of these types of products in store. Ulta has become a ‘one-stop shop’ for salon and beauty products are varying prices from different budgets. Starting this month, they will be adding another line of natural makeup and skincare products. Honest Beauty will be launching in select stores.
Honest Beauty products will be launching in about 250 stores, making up about 29% of Ulta’s store base. The products will be available for purchase on Ulta’s website as well.

The beauty line, created by Jessica Alba and healthy lifestyle brand The Honest Company, is marketed as “safe, high-performance” using natural ingredients such as chamomile, calendula, ale vera, and barbary fig.
“We like Ulta’s announcement to carry Honest Beauty in select stores and online.

Honest is a growing brand (with) a unique, healthy lifestyle proposition. We believe Honest is a well-known brand with broad appeal to millennials, given the strong brand proposition (and) emphasis on transparency, responsibility and effectiveness. This likely will resonate with both the millennial and post-millennial’s personalized, authentic lifestyle,” notes Oliver Chen, co analyst of a report this week on Ulta.
Chen predicts that Honest Beauty will likely be less than 1% of Ulta’s sales. Given, Ulta carries over 500 brands and more than 20,000 beauty and salon products. Honest Beauty has about an 80-piece collection. “We believe Honest will be a positive traffic driver and underscores Ulta’s commitment to carrying the most compelling brands,” states Chen. Previous to the launch in Ulta store, Honest beauty was only available at honestbeauty.com and in one retail outlet in California.
“We believe Honest Beauty and The Honest Company could take share from bigger players, as their niche brand proposition continues to gain loyal customers,” adds Chen. The ‘bigger players’ Chen refers to, he later cites as Proctor & Gamble (PG) and Kimberly-Clark

(KMB).
Ulta offers prestige products, which are higher-priced items typically found in department stores and specialty stores. As well, they offer lower-priced ‘drugstore’ products found in pharmacies and grocery stores. “Securing the initial distribution of Honest Beauty is one more way we believe Ulta can gain market share through their unique balance of prestige, mass and private-label brands,” states Chen.