Ulta Beauty will be opening mini-stores within Target stores

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In the latest remake of its beauty section, Target will open Ulta Beauty shops within its stores, bringing the cosmetics chain to more than 100 Target locations in the second half of next year.

The plan is to then expand to hundreds of more Target locations.

Ulta will offer the makeup, skin-care and hair products typically found within Ulta's large stores in a condensed, 1,000-square-foot "shop-in-shop" next to Target's existing beauty section.


The Ulta sections will be staffed by Ulta-trained Target beauty experts to consult with customers on products. They also will feature digital tools such as Ulta's GLAMLab, which allows customers to experiment with different beauty products without physically trying them on.

"It's been a high growth category for us for a number of years," said Target CEO Brian Cornell in an interview. "We are now doubling down on beauty and look at this as a way for us to accelerate our mutual growth in the category, drive incremental marketshare gains for both of our brands and continue to delight millions of guests across the country each and every week."

Target provides a new platform to reach millions of new customers, said Mary Dillon, chief executive of Ulta Beauty.

"It's a very clear opportunity for us in that we'll have hundreds of new points of distribution, ways to reach new guests whether it's in stores or online," Dillon said. "The Target guest is pretty similar to the Ulta guest in many ways. They just go there a lot more often."

Target in 2018 gave its beauty sections a top-to-bottom makeover with displays and customer service more like standalone beauty specialty stores. Target also added more new up-and-coming brands and gave specialized training to employees to offer more hands-on service and offer a product sampling program.

Even during the pandemic, Target's beauty sales have continued to grow. In Target's second fiscal quarter, the retailer reported a 20% growth in sales in beauty products.

Cornell said Target will continue to invest in physical stores and experiential shopping options as physical stores still matter and drive sales even while Target and other retailers have seen an explosion in digital sales.

"Stores still matter," Cornell said. "Guests are looking for a great in-store experience."
 
Ours is doing a remodel early next year and I'm really hoping an ULTA Beauty is part of the plan.

and, yes, if we could get rid of the AT&T people that would be SO WONDERFUL. They're the worst.
 
Yup we are getting one. The remodel already started and it’s driving me crazy that a style department gets moved everyday.
 
My store is getting one and contractors been in the process of building it overnights with an overnight style/beauty team. It seems to be coming along pretty quickly honestly.
 
My Target is getting it. It's taking over Girls instead of intimates which is behind beauty but whatever
 
What sucks about it? Is anything positive for the addition?
Mountains of price change for the past month as Target consolidates our cosmetics to make space and gets rid of like 1/3rd of the department, particularly the darker shades of face products so we'll have less diverse options, everything moving around halfway across the store to Girls and then somewhere new every day, putting things on racks out of order or without shelf labels, the lack of communication, leaving things tied that don't exist anymore, tying things they haven't built yet and messing up my 141s, having people set Transcend who don't know how/aren't cleaning as they go... that all I expect, but the stuff that's really driving me nuts is that they're having us backstock all the Ulta freight that's coming in when it's all gonna come back out anyway when they set - we've run out of wacos - and at first it came in those charcoal repacks, tons of stuff thrown in, boxes of expensive product getting dented. I get why we're backstocking it, but our backroom is hot and humid and I'm back there for full eight hour shifts for days on end. And the real kicker - the Ulta fixtures are going to have basedecks that are drawers so they can backstock cosmetics out on the floor, but the "Core Beauty" side just gets regular basedecks. We used to backstock as much as we could in the drawers under the Blowout 2.0 fixtures. But nope, now we have to cram all of it into the little backroom space we have, when we COULD have the same basedecks, but nooo, that would be too convenient.

edit: I should add, we don't have a Beauty TL, only a SS ETL who has only lately begun to communicate with us, so we only know some things because I went on workbench and read up on everything. OH, and they're hiring new people for Beauty, and they claim they're for Ulta, but one is a student who is only here for the summer, and it's been so difficult trying to train the other two while there's so much to do and everything is in chaos. They'd schedule me with a girl to train and then tell me to go backstock Ulta for my whole shift. Ugggh. I know most of this is my store specifically sucking, it's the backstocking when we could just be staging the product somewhere (I know, Target wants to know we have it and keep track of it) and the basedeck thing that I'm mad at Target corporate for.
 
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Mountains of price change for the past month as Target consolidates our cosmetics to make space and gets rid of like 1/3rd of the department, particularly the darker shades of face products so we'll have less diverse options, everything moving around halfway across the store to Girls and then somewhere new every day, putting things on racks out of order or without shelf labels, the lack of communication, leaving things tied that don't exist anymore, tying things they haven't built yet and messing up my 141s, having people set Transcend who don't know how/aren't cleaning as they go... that all I expect, but the stuff that's really driving me nuts is that they're having us backstock all the Ulta freight that's coming in when it's all gonna come back out anyway when they set - we've run out of wacos - and at first it came in those charcoal repacks, tons of stuff thrown in, boxes of expensive product getting dented. I get why we're backstocking it, but our backroom is hot and humid and I'm back there for full eight hour shifts for days on end. And the real kicker - the Ulta fixtures are going to have basedecks that are drawers so they can backstock cosmetics out on the floor, but the "Core Beauty" side just gets regular basedecks. We used to backstock as much as we could in the drawers under the Blowout 2.0 fixtures. But nope, now we have to cram all of it into the little backroom space we have, when we COULD have the same basedecks, but nooo, that would be too convenient.

edit: I should add, we don't have a Beauty TL, only a SS ETL who has only lately begun to communicate with us, so we only know some things because I went on workbench and read up on everything. OH, and they're hiring new people for Beauty, and they claim they're for Ulta, but one is a student who is only here for the summer, and it's been so difficult trying to train the other two while there's so much to do and everything is in chaos. They'd schedule me with a girl to train and then tell me to go backstock Ulta for my whole shift. Ugggh. I know most of this is my store specifically sucking, it's the backstocking when we could just be staging the product somewhere (I know, Target wants to know we have it and keep track of it) and the basedeck thing that I'm mad at Target corporate for.
Why is being backstocked? With the remodel beauty now longer gets backstock in the back it all goes in the drawers on the floor.
 
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