People shopped everywhere for beauty in 2025. The buzzword is “omnichannel,” spanning a wide variety of touchpoints, another buzzword meaning checkouts. They shopped, as ever, on their phones; they shopped in big box stores and at specialty retailers; they shopped at specialty retailers inside big box stores in the case of Sephora at Kohl’s, but perhaps less so in the case of Ulta Beauty at Target.
This year, the ongoing battle for beauty dominion between Sephora and Ulta Beauty became a world war. While the former continued to make international inroads, the latter became a global retailer with its acquisition of the UK’s Space NK, its franchise in the Middle East with the Alshaya Group and its push into Mexico with Groupo Axo. New challengers have also emerged, like Olive Young from South Korea, which arrives on US shores in 2026.
Multi-category retailers, too, fought amongst themselves for a dwindling share of beauty sales — and up against Amazon, the world’s largest beauty retailer — prompting Walmart and Ulta Beauty to launch marketplaces of their own. Drugstore sales grew in markets like the UK, Korea and anywhere that wasn’t the US; department stores revamped their beauty floors in the hopes of winning shoppers back at last. Consumer sentiment may be dampened, but retailer optimism soared, as just about everybody muscled in on the beauty business — Gap Inc, Victoria’s Secret (again), even Quince.
Though the majority of people are still shopping for beauty products in store, e-commerce’s share of the category’s sales continued to grow — aided, as I’m sure you’ve heard, by AI tools. Large language models are not only becoming popular recommendation engines, but AI agents are becoming capable of purchasing on a user’s behalf.This is to say nothing about the other back-end AI capabilities helping generate and serve up ads and content more effectively: if you haven’t already unknowingly made an AI-assisted purchase, it might just be a matter of time.
A historic event in the annals of live selling occurred in March, when QVC launched its 24/7 stream on TikTok Shop; the infomercial mode of commerce is poised to continue growing in 2026, though at a slower rate in the US and Europe than in China. But even the live-selling success stories still want big, splashy retail launches — and most of them still wantSephora.
Top Stories
1. Exclusive: Gap Taps Beauty Label Summer Fridays for Collaboration. For the first time, the retailer is partnering with a beauty brand for an apparel collaboration, as it prepares to launch fragrance next year.
2. Olive Young Beat Sephora in Korea. Now It’s Coming to the US. South Korea’s largest beauty retailer cements its plans for the US as Sephora and Ulta Beauty expand their own selection of Korean imports.
3. Full Coverage: Can Target Win Back Beauty Shoppers? The Midwestern retailer’s wider struggles are well documented; below, I offer an inside look of what’s really working (and not) in beauty and wellness.
4. Why Are There So Many Aesop Stores? The Australian label has a location on seemingly every trendy street corner in major cities from New York to London to Tokyo, part of a global strategy to become the world’s neighbourhood apothecary.
5. Exclusive: Aritzia’s Shiny New Beauty Partner. The Canadian retailer is collaborating with body care label Salt & Stone to launch an exclusive collection — and apply its accessible, quiet luxury proposition to a whole new category.
6. Why Ulta Beauty Bought Space NK. The US retailer’s surprise buyout of the London-based upmarket chain is in line with its recent business overall, which puts global expansion at the core of future growth.
7. What It Takes to Get Into Sephora. Beauty experts like Mary Phillips, Chris McMillan and Alli Webb have specific qualifications that not all new brand founders possess, making the retailer more willing to bet big on their success.
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