Image Courtesy of Target
Target is introducing more than 2,000 beauty products, including nearly 50 new brands, in a significant ramp-up of its beauty assortments.
The new offerings range from skin care to makeup, fragrance, and hair care, including viral brands like Bubble, Clean Skin Club, and DAISE making their debut on the store’s shelves as well as expanded assortments from brands like fine’ry, ColourPop, Being Frenshe, and Olive & June.
Affordability is being emphasized, with 90% of new arrivals priced under $20.
Target also offers “even more beauty brands” through its partnership with Ulta Beauty formed in 2020, which has led to the opening of over 500 Ulta Beauty at Target in-store shops as well as an online component.
“We know consumers love shopping beauty at Target because it’s Tarzhay at its best: the combination of amazing products and prices you can’t find anywhere else,” said Amanda Nusz, Target’s SVP of essentials and beauty, in a statement.
The expansion appears to align with Target’s fashion-forward reputation — cemented by its numerous designer collaborations over the years — along with the fact that beauty strongly outperformed other categories at Target over the last year. Same-store sales in beauty grew 6% in the third quarter, 9% in the second quarter, and low-single digits in the first quarter. Target’s overall comps were down 0.5% in the nine months.
Target is also outperforming the mass channel, where beauty sales grew by 3% in 2024, according to Circana.
“Beauty at Target has been a booming business for us,” Rick Gomez, Target’s EVP and chief commercial officer, said in an interview with WWD last October. “We have had growth every year for the last five years, and that has made our beauty business actually double in size since 2019.”
He credits Ulta with helping Target extend its price points and increase available offerings in the category, but also the chain’s commitment to newness. Successful launches include L’Oréal’s Colorsonic (a Target exclusive) as well as three celebrity hair care ranges: Blake Lively's Blake Brown, Tabitha Brown’s Donna’s Recipe, and Jennifer Aniston’s LolaVie — the last available through the Ulta partnership.
“We’re not a catalog and we’re very thoughtful about which brands we carry,” Gomez said. “We look to prestige brands, emerging brands, digitally native brands and, of course our owned brand. That’s the magic mix.”
Target’s largest competitor, Walmart, is also investing in beauty, such as by forming a shop-in-shop partnership with Space NK to bring prestige beauty to its aisles, including a co-incubated brand called BeautySpace. Similar to Target, Walmart is focusing on bringing indie and emerging beauty brands into the mix alongside legacy players, such as Madison Reed, Current State, and, recently, the inclusive hair care brand Being, which was founded by MONDAY Haircare co-founder Jaimee Lupton.
Amazon scored a coup in beauty when L’Oréal began selling Lancôme on the platform in late 2023, followed by Estée Lauder’s Clinique arriving in May 2024, with several other L’Oréal and Lauder brands since opening on Amazon. Morgan Stanley has predicted that Amazon will overtake Walmart as the biggest U.S. beauty retailer in 2025.
Also seeking growth in beauty within the mass channel is Dollar General, which reached an agreement last November to start distributing e.l.f. Beauty, the popular Gen Z brand. The store closings and challenges facing major drug store chains CVS and Walgreens may nonetheless open up opportunities to gain market share in beauty within the mass channel.