Ulta’s Quarterly Sales Reach 2 Billion But Hey Sephora, How You Doing?
People are returning back to the land of the living and Ulta reported nearly 2 billion in quarterly sales as consumers returned to stores and went beauty shopping again! It’s been a long and hard journey to the center of the Earth with this pandemic and we’ve learned a lot about ourselves, about each other, and about makeup, beauty, and what it means to us in the long run.
According to Ulta’s Chief executive officer, Ulta consumers have finally returned to stores and foot traffic has improved and continues to increase daily but still does remain lower than 2019 levels. The beauty bubble feels very much broken but many reports not only from Ulta but other sources say that interest in makeup is returning faster than was expected. I’d like to say the interest in beauty is a return to the land of living as we’ve all be in the house for long we’re just eager to break free and shop makeup again. But I do blame it on the fact brands have slowed releases to a point that this in fact has helped build anticipation over new product launches. The fact we aren’t inundated with constant releases has really made us eager for them when they do come.
Obviously, these earnings come on the heels of Ulta opening in Target locations. As of now, there are 58 Target locations that have Ulta stores located right in stores. The exciting thing about their gains is last year they reported 1.2 billion which shows an incredible increase.
An interesting little tidbit is that e-commerce sales are lower than in-store ones and about 20% of online shoppers are choosing to pick orders up. I don’t actually use the buy online and ship-to-store option but they have offered some great coupons when utilizing this feature and that could be why they see such an increase in the option’s use.
With the advent of Tiktok, the industry is abuzz with a makeup renaissance but sales aren’t quite they were before the pandemic but are still improving with time. As always the skincare and self-care movement continues to drive sales forward with double-digit growth compared to previous years.
Moving forward Ulta plans to have a successful third quarter by providing new in-store services like hydrafacials, micro-channeling, and even dermaplaning.
Ulta feels confident enough to project sales between 8.1 to 8.3 billion for the year. Whether they reach the goal remains to be seen but as we can see they are doing a great job reaching that goal already! I’m looking forward to hearing about Sephora’s earnings report which has yet to be released!