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October 16, 2025
Will Ulta Beauty’s Online Marketplace Entice Beauty Enthusiasts?
Ulta Beauty recently launched UB Marketplace, an online marketplace promising a “broader, complementary assortment across beauty, wellness and adjacent lifestyle categories.”
The marketplace, built on the Miraki platform, will initially add more than 100 new brands on the Ulta.com platform across beauty, wellness, and adjacent lifestyle categories.
Unlike open marketplaces such as Amazon, participation in UB Marketplace is by invitation only and limited to brands, prioritizing authenticity and avoiding resellers.
Josh Friedman, SVP of digital and e-commerce at Ulta, told Business of Fashion, “We’ve heard that loud and clear from our [customers], that they expect us to make sure that they’re getting first-class quality and first-class sellers, and not someone else trying to sell other people’s stuff. We take that obligation very seriously,” said Friedman.
Ulta listed a number of benefits of UB Marketplace:
- A curated selection of brands across beauty and wellness, selected and vetted by Ulta Beauty, that supplements and “strengthens Ulta’s category leadership across makeup, skincare, haircare, fragrance and wellness” while tapping emerging sub-categories and trends.
- An integrated shopping experience linking UB Marketplace to the Ulta Beauty retail and online experience, with unified search, cart and checkout; Ulta Beauty Rewards on eligible purchases; and in-store returns.
- Speed to newness with an extended aisle of brands enabling rapid test-and-learn across emerging categories and trends while giving newer brands visibility to more than 45 million Ulta Beauty Rewards members.
“UB Marketplace allows us to deliver more newness, faster entry into emerging subcategories and trends, and deeper category authority – while keeping the guest experience unmistakably Ulta Beauty,” said Lauren Brindley, chief merchandising and digital officer at Ulta Beauty. “This thoughtfully curated model scales discovery and brand building for our partners.”
Third-Party Marketplaces and Ulta’s Greater Gamble
Josh Friedman, senior vice president of digital and e-commerce at Ulta, stressed that the focus isn’t about finding brands that could be sold directly to Ulta Beauty. He told WWD, “While that’s a great goal, and I’m sure the aspiration for many of these brands, that’s not the only measure of success. We are not here to test brands and say, ‘Well, you’re not going to make it to the shelf, so we’re going to let you go.’ There’s a very successful marketplace only business.”
Some differences from the traditional Ulta.com experience is that products are drop-shipped directly to the consumer from the brand, arriving in separate boxes from the rest of their online order. Marketplace items also can’t be picked up in store.
Ulta becomes the first major beauty chain to open a third-party marketplace. Walmart in 2009 became the first major retailer to introduce a third-party marketplace to better compete with Amazon. Other retailers launching curated online marketplaces in recent years include Target, Best Buy, Lowe’s, Kroger, Macy’s, Nordstrom, Saks, Victoria’s Secret, Urban Outfitters, Madewell, and Michaels.
Discussion Questions
What do you think of the potential of a third-party marketplace supported by Ulta Beauty?
Do you see more benefits than drawbacks for niche retailers launching online marketplaces?
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The marketplace is a way for Ulta to expand the selection of brands it offers without tying up capital in excess inventory or crowding its more curated core offer. It needs to pull in more shoppers or enlarge share of wallet from existing customers to ensure it doesn’t just cannibalize sales from the retail business. But the bigger play here is a competitive hedge against the rise of Amazon – which has been doing phenomenally well in the beauty category, including the premium tier – and against Sephora.
Ulta’s decision to launch a third-party marketplace later in 2025 is a strategic and timely move. Faced with slowing comp growth and a loss of market share, the company is opening its platform to external brands via a curated Marketplace built on Mirakl technology, opening up reach to its 44 million loyalty-members and established online infrastructure. In doing so, Ulta is acknowledging that consumer expectations around “everything in beauty + wellness” require deeper assortments and faster access than its own four-walls model alone can deliver.
For niche and emerging brands, this Marketplace model presents a definite benefit. It lowers the barrier to entry for smaller players, gives them access to Ulta’s loyal base, and offers scale without the full burden of physical store rollout. For Ulta, it’s a smart way to experiment with new brands, test growth potential, and harvest retail-media value—all without needing to carry full inventory risk. At the same time, the move is competitively necessary: rivals like Sephora and broader e-commerce players have been expanding their beauty-marketplace or open-platform models, making this step critical for Ulta to stay relevant.
That said, it’s not without risks or drawbacks. Curating the right mix of third-party sellers, ensuring brand control, protecting margin, and safeguarding the customer experience are all operationally complex. But on balance, the benefits—increased assortment, brand-partner scale, loyalty ecosystem leverage, and ability to surface “next-gen” brands—outweigh the obstacles. In that light, Ulta’s Marketplace represents more than a tactical tweak—it reflects a wholesale shift in how beauty retail will operate in a digital-first, brand-rich age.
Are we witnessing retail unbundling with Ulta offering “discovery as a service?” This is a smart, measured bet on three trends: beauty consumers want more choice and faster access to emerging brands, digital marketplaces are now table stakes for major retailers, and Ulta’s curation authority has real value in a crowded, confusing beauty landscape. What’s noteworthy is how Ulta has woven this marketplace into its ecosystem. The integration details—unified cart, loyalty points, in-store returns—represent strategic moat deepening, not just revenue diversification. Separate shipping is a friction point, yes, but it signals authenticity rather than inconsistency.
Here’s the rub: this marketplace is necessary but not sufficient. It keeps Ulta competitive in the short term while buying time to figure out longer-term positioning in an increasingly digital, agent-mediated commerce world. The real question is whether Ulta’s marketplace becomes where AI agents route beauty enthusiasts, optimizing for discovery and trust.
Ulta’s UB Marketplace is a smart way to expand choice while maintaining quality and trust. By carefully curating invitation-only brands, Ulta can introduce emerging categories and new products without diluting the core experience.
Operationally, drop-shipping directly from brands reduces inventory risk, but consistency in fulfillment, packaging, and service is essential to avoid customer friction. Retailers that get this balance right can give niche brands a platform to grow while strengthening their own reputation as a trusted, high-quality retailer. The success will depend on delivering discovery and convenience in a seamless experience.
Marketplaces are risky. You’re exposing your customers to a level of service you cannot directly control. Yet the customers will attribute failures to your brand not the 3rd party seller. I’ve had both Walmart and Best Buy associates share they will only buy from their retailer, not a third party on their marketplaces.