Disclaimer: This interview is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. In Practise is an independent publisher and all opinions expressed by guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of In Practise.

{audio:0:03:22} I would love to hear about your background and what you did during your time at Ulta.

{audio:0:03:30} I was at Ulta for five years. It was an amazing five years to be there because it was probably at the peak of explosive growth. From a store count perspective, at that point, there weren't many retailers growing their brick-and-mortar store base as aggressively as we were, as well as kind of crazy ecommerce growth in the business. I had the opportunity to do a lot of different things while I was there; because we were growing like crazy, the opportunity and the need for different people to lead different aspects of the supply chain was great. In my first few years, I led a team building out the distribution center network. All of our sites did ecommerce and brick-and-mortar stores, so we were incredibly focused on where they should be, what they should look like, and how to give the right experience to our customers both in-store and through ecommerce. Also, how do we start to roll out additional value and programs.

{audio:0:04:54} I did that role, essentially standing up three buildings in three years, which was quite an undertaking. For the last couple of years, I was in incredibly cross-functional roles, focused on overall supply chain strategy and how we were thinking about technology advancements and analytics. I led our supplier operations team, which was incredibly merchant-focused in terms of how we drive accountability with our vendors, how we support them through training, and how we help some of our up-and-coming brands be successful and launch successfully. I came at it from a supply chain lens, but often, the supply chain is what people can't figure out how to execute. I was involved in some of our really cross-functional initiatives like buy online, pick up in-store, and how we would set that up. I had the chance to do many different things during my last few years there.

{audio:0:06:08} That’s very interesting. I want to come back to the warehouse construction in a bit. When you found the job at Ulta and accepted the role, what attracted Ulta to you? How did your experience differ, good and bad, from your original expectation?

{audio:0:06:38} Overall, I loved Ulta. You’re probably wondering why I left. We didn't want to be in Chicago for the long term. We'd moved around a lot, and my only reason for leaving was to return to the East Coast. Ulta was an amazing experience; before that, I'd only worked for one company, Target. I've been to some pretty amazing cultural and successful companies. My story of how I got to Ulta was a bit different in that a whole bunch of Target people went to Ulta at the same time. Target Canada was blowing up, and they had a credit card breach; a bunch of Amazon leadership was coming in. They had some turmoil; it was right before they did some massive layoffs at headquarters. I was looking to do something different, I was thinking about going back to Minnesota, and at the same time, a handful of headquarters folks for Target had gone over to Ulta beauty. It was an easy transition because I knew for whom I was working; I had worked for them before. 

{audio:0:07:53} The sell for it was that I had spent most of my career working in distribution centers, so it was getting back to a headquarters environment, and it was extremely exciting to be part of the growth. I knew distribution centers, I'd worked in operations, but I got to be on the other side of how you design them. There was a whole facilities real estate element, and I was exposed to many things I would never have been exposed to at a bigger company like Target. Even though Ulta is big, the culture was more entrepreneurial. We moved a heck of a lot faster on things. In the early days when I got there, the three of us were figuring things out in a conference room with a whiteboard and shaping how the supply chain should look. That was incredibly exciting to be a part of, and then to see the evolution and growth over the five years of what it looked like when I left compared to what it looked like when I got there was a night and day difference. I'm incredibly grateful for the opportunity that I had there.

{audio:0:09:05} Had I been just fine living in Chicago, I would probably still be at Ulta because of the opportunities for progression. Also, from a financial perspective, it was a really rich time to be at the company and continues to be. Every company has its ups and downs, but how they've rebounded coming out of Covid has been impressive. And Mary Dillon was just a top-class leader. I had an incredible amount of admiration for her. I know one of your questions was on Dave Kimball; I did work with him when he was the leader at the merchant organization, another great leader. But I think specifically having that strong female CEO leadership, Mary Dillon was incredibly authentic and genuine, and that permeated every part of the company. 

{audio:0:10:08} I was going to ask about the transition, and I'm glad to hear you say that about both Mary and Dave. One of the thoughts we had as outsiders was that Ulta seems like it's in a period of transition from the high, rapid store growth period; you discussed in your experience to more of a slower, standalone store growth pace. It seems like the growth is tied more to its success with its Target partnerships, which we can discuss now or later. Do you think there is a feeling within the company that things have slowed down, and Ulta is now more focused on executing the blueprint versus creating the blueprint?

{audio:0:11:03} I would say yes, and some of that is incredibly expected. With the growth of opening 100 plus brick-and-mortar stores a year, you run out of real estate. As you continue to grow aggressively, you run the risk of cannibalizing your current stores by continuing to focus on that type of growth. I do think Ulta is on what I would call a more creative path of how to continue to get growth, and I would put the Target partnership there. This will kind of hit on some of your other questions.

{audio:0:11:49} There is immense opportunity for them to think about how they continue to engage differently with their current base of customers. To answer one of your questions, old people go to Ulta because they want to try new things, experiment, see, touch, and feel. That's true, which is why I think the brick-and-mortar stores have continued to prosper in the age of other retailers, ecommerce dominating. But when it comes to replenishment, they're looking for the best deal. There are tremendous opportunities that I don't believe Ulta has launched yet, but there were things we thought about when I was there in terms of subscription programs or subscribe and save. We see many retailers leveraging that as a way to get repeat purchases where you're basically replenishing things on a frequent basis. That's a unique opportunity to save on supply chain costs and hook people in further than they have today. 

{audio:0:12:56} There was much discussion on tween and teen programs rather than the middle-aged woman, who, as they're getting older, are kind of your core consumer base. How do you continue to reach the younger generation? And not just because they're on their mom's card, but they are standalone segments. I think the Target partnership and the Kohl's partnership for Sephora make incredible sense for both of them.

{audio:0:13:33} The primary justification is that beauty competition has gotten much tougher, specifically, over the last few years. It's a high-margin category, and as the department stores demised, you started to see a whole host of retailers more aggressively go after beauty. Target is a steep competitor there; most people go into Target way more often than they go to Ulta beauty. They may go to Ulta once a month for big purchases, but they're probably in Target once a week, a few times a week. So by putting an additional footprint in the Target stores, they're getting that unplanned traffic of I may not be going to Target for Ulta, but I'm there. While I'm there, I'm going to look, and while I'm looking, I'm probably going to purchase because I’ve got a whole host of things in my cart already, so what's one or two more? It makes a ton of sense in terms of how they’re continuing to find creative ways to grow. 

{audio:0:14:45} A long answer, but it comes back to yes, they're not in the aggressive straightforward growth they used to be in where the plan was very clearly outlined: grow more stores, get more people to shop online. They're in the period of how we have more targeted growth in some of the areas that they may not fully leverage today.

{audio:0:15:09} Pulling on that string a little bit with Ulta and Sephora partnering with Target and Kohl’s, respectively, do you think that contributes to their efforts to get repeat purchases? If you go to Ulta for the experience or Sephora for the experience and you find things that you like and everything works together, because as you mentioned, you go to Target more frequently, you'll replenish there rather than perhaps going to the store. So they're not losing 100% of the sale; they're benefiting from those repeat purchases. I don’t know what the margin structure looks like for Ulta sales inside Target and how that differs from the standalone stores, but at least they’re getting incremental revenue that they wouldn’t have had otherwise.

{audio:0:16:05} Absolutely, and it’s market share. To your point, I don't know what the financial makeup of that deal is around the partnership, but if not for that partnership, that sale would happen, and they likely wouldn't have captured it. So they're still getting that market share, and I agree with your thought. Sometimes it's just convenience. People order on Amazon, partly because of cost and because it's incredibly easy. There's a very low threshold for having to get a separate shipment. I’ve already got other things in an Amazon cart; I'm already going there to look for something, so adding my favorite beauty product is very easy. I would say that's very similar to shopping in Target; I'm already here and getting eight other things. It's easy, I know my favorite brand is right there, and I'm going to throw it in my cart. I think that's a piece of it.

{audio:0:17:17} You might have some bias given your background, but which of the two partnerships makes the most sense? Sephora had tried to partner with JCPenney, I believe, before and switched goals versus Ulta and Target. From my perspective, it seems like the Ulta and Target partnership is the better match based on the shoppers' demographics, but I don't know if that's the right way to think about it or if Sephora was partnering with Kohl’s for a different reason. It's unclear to me from my current knowledge. 

{audio:0:17:58} I might be slightly biased, but I'm answering this more as a consumer myself. I feel like the frequency at which people visit a Target is much higher than that of visiting Kohl’s. I know some people are avid Kohl's shoppers and will go there multiple times a week, but I don’t think it’s at the same frequency that people go to Target because, once again, Target's got more of your staples. They've driven more of that consumer product; laundry detergent, food, you name it. So that's one advantage from a Target perspective.

{audio:0:18:46} The whole Sephora/JCPenney partnership was baffling to me. I think JCPenney is a dying brand and why Sephora would have entertained that makes no sense. From a Kohl's perspective, I'm sure the Amazon tie-in to Kohl’s may be helping the traffic, so that might be a tie-in, but the only thing I can think of is that potentially Sephora and Kohl’s have a more 50/50 relationship. I think it's just as beneficial for Kohl’s to have Sephora as it is Sephora being in Kohl’s because, again, if somebody's not near a Sephora store, they don't feel like trudging through a mall. They want that strip mall shopping experience. Kohl’s real estate strategy has been different from Sephora historically, so I think it's a win-win for both of them. Maybe the terms are a bit more even across the board, but it's hard to say without knowing exactly what that deal is.

{audio:0:20:00} For the Ulta/Target relationship, it’s probably more skewed in favoring Target but still incredibly powerful for Ulta. If I had to pick one relationship over the other in terms of what is perhaps a better strategy, it's the Target/Ulta partnership.

{audio:0:20:21} One of the issues we have on our research team is that we're made up of people who are not Ulta's or Sephora's target demographic, so we need to understand better what the consumer is thinking. We're trying to figure out what makes Ulta special versus other channels for acquiring beauty products.

{audio:0:20:49} I can talk about that. And I’ll compare Ulta and Sephora because they've had quite different strategies historically. Sephora has a huge own-brand following so they are much deeper in terms of manufacturing their own brands and much deeper in terms of the SKU count in their store. I think I heard at one point that 40% to 50% of their SKUs are own-brand, which is a huge advantage to Sephora. It concerns the issue you mentioned in your question about going to Ulta or Sephora for the initial product to see, touch, and buy, then going to Amazon to replenish. Sephora gets around that issue for many of the SKUs in their store because they have ownership over them. That's one benefit that Sephora has that I think Ulta had been talking about, how to grow their own brand. It takes a lot of investment, and you're taking space away from other brands in your store. 

{audio:0:22:08} The nuance I think of how Ulta differs is that Sephora is higher end; only high end. In the beauty industry, they call it prestige. They started to get a bit more into masstige, the middle ground of your mass, like L’Oréal and Maybelline because they began to get these new influencer brands from Instagram, TikTok brands that grew like crazy and were kind of in this middle ground. Good examples are Morphe and ColourPop. Sephora is more high-end with some middle brands and higher in the owned brand category. That's how they compete with a mass because they have an own-brand with a lower price point.

{audio:0:23:05} Ulta’s strategy has been getting every brand. So they compete for exclusives. Exclusives are important. Their margin is not great, but they're essential because they get people in your stores. An example of that is anything the Kardashians do; they're going to compete to be the first to get an exclusive, at least for a certain amount of time. Again, they make little to no money, and sometimes it's a cost to handle them through the supply chain because they're not always sophisticated, but they are huge traffic drivers and huge brands; total retail brand recognition. 

{audio:0:23:51} But Ulta is a lot more diversified; they say it's all things beauty all in one place. So they’re going to attract all different price point consumers. They've got their high-end stuff, and they have stuff that's in Target, CVS, Walgreens, Walmart. Many folks cross over from mass to prestige; they may get prestige in skin care and mass in actual makeup or lip. There is a lot of crossover from people trying to make smart decisions in terms of where they find value. 

{audio:0:24:39} I think people are attracted to Ulta's real estate strategy. I don't have to trudge through a mall to get to most Ulta locations. They're often right around other stores that I'm already shopping at, so I'm going to walk by there and pop in, and I can get all brands. Specifically, if people want to see what the newness is, I think Ulta fares a bit better in getting the brands and having those brand relationships, and they have more of them based on the owned brands. The owned brands difference and the mass and prestige difference. Does that make sense?

{audio:0:25:20} It does. Because we're not regular customers, one of our concerns is that we will miss something important regarding trends. For example, people shopped primarily at department stores at one point for beauty products, and fashion and beauty can be fast-moving but also, in some ways, slow-moving. Our concern is that we would miss something important. For example, if a younger generation of teens don't want to shop at Ulta and Sephora because that's where their moms shopped, we want to ensure that we don't miss some of these major trends. How could we monitor that as outsiders, and how do you think Ulta and Sephora can remain relevant to the next generation of customers without alienating their current target?

{audio:0:26:33} I think both Ulta and Sephora, and beauty in general, to your point, run on newness. What's hot changes incredibly quickly, and having dedicated teams focused on staying in touch with what's cool is important. Specifically, the younger generation is much more socially and environmentally conscious, so you've seen a wave into more clean beauty and eco-friendly brands; obviously, diversity is huge. Diversity is incredibly challenging in beauty because who shops in a store is drastically different, and getting the correct data and analytics to support an assortment in a store is incredibly hard. If you think about it, it's a SKU-intensive business, and most SKUs are slow movers. 

{audio:0:27:38} A massive challenge is how to continue bringing in new brands and products. How do you have all the colors, so nobody feels left out? And how do you efficiently do that so you don't have all this obsolete inventory sitting because you're constantly making room for new stuff, and most of your stuff is slow moving? You're likely not going to get it right. There's a huge execution challenge with beauty overall. I think what's come out from a trend perspective is socially conscious, environmentally conscious, largely focused on diversity and diverse brands, who's the brand owner, and how they embrace diversity. Can I see myself in the people that you're advertising? 

{audio:0:28:34} The last thing I would say is social media influence. That's probably one of the hardest to predict because overnight, someone can put their backing behind a brand or talk about it, and you'll see a sales list that you never expected. So trying to stay engaged with that, in front of that, is critical. For many brands, the lead times are long. ColourPop is an excellent example of some brands that focus on fast trends, fast fashion, and quick manufacturing. They manufacture in California. Most of the other products are still coming from Europe, so you have to make bets early to have the right inventory, and you're often wrong.

{audio:0:29:31} Given the speed of these changes, it seems like that could be an opportunity for Ulta and Sephora. Still, it could risk opening up an opportunity for an upstart retailer that doesn't currently exist, either physical, online, or both. To compete with them in a niche, for example. If they're not serving a certain market segment, maybe they focus on that segment and compete from there. Is that a real risk, or is that kind of game already over, given that Sephora and Ulta have built out hundreds, thousands of locations around the country?

{audio:0:30:13} You hit on the risk a little bit. The in-person brick-and-mortar risk is on some of that personalization aspect. We looked at this when I was at Ulta. There is some cool manufacturing ability where I show up at a kiosk; it takes a picture of my face and color matches a color just for me that you can't buy anywhere else. I think those concepts are incredibly neat, and there's a bit of a cool aspect to them, but I don't know if they drive long-term changes in behavior.

{audio:0:31:03} From a brick-and-mortar perspective, you still have to invest in a real estate strategy to reach a good amount of people to get brand recognition and get that going. You could do that in pockets, maybe in big cities, and it's cool, but I don't know if it ever really steals meaningful market share from an Ulta or Sephora. From an online perspective, there is probably a lower cost of entry to do something disruptive there, but with that being said, you still need to have a meaningful enough change in what you're offering to get people to pull away. Even brands that do incredibly well online end up partnering with Ulta or Sephora to continue growing because they realize they won't have the same growth on their own. 

{audio:0:32:09} It comes back to the whole Amazon effect where I don't want to shop eight different websites to get the products I like. I want to go to a one-stop shop, I want to put them all in a cart, and I want them to show up in one package; most people are like that. So the convenience factor makes it incredibly difficult for competition at this point. 

{audio:0:32:37} We heard about the use of filters, and you touched on it a bit with the device that takes a picture of your face and tells you what works best on you. Could it be that Facebook through Instagram or TikTok – I'm thinking out loud here – finds a way to have filters that show you different looks? Then you can say I want to buy that product or that product, and it gets fulfilled by a third party like Amazon or somebody else.

{audio:0:33:12} Yes. I think it's a risk. I'm pretty sure Ulta has something like that on their app, where you can pick a shade and see it on your face. I think there's a place for that type of technology, but at the same time, who knows if this trend will change, there is a core consumer of people who like to see the product in person and touch and feel and explore. They want to see all the new brands, and it is that newness of being excited to go to Ulta and see what's new there. It's a very different shopping experience than being on a website and scrolling through different products. There's a factor there that's hard to say if, at some point, it will change. 

{audio:0:34:14} I spent time in off-price right after Ulta, and off-price is very similar in that people enjoy wandering around in the home goods to see what they have. It's similar in the beauty industry. Some people will buy the same brand repeatedly, and they're likely not heading into a store; they're probably complete online shoppers. But many beauty enthusiasts, whom Ulta caters to, are the ones that find joy in walking through the store and seeing what's new. They don't necessarily want to rely on an app to show them a product on their face.

{audio:0:34:58} One of the advantages we read and talked about is the sort of chicken or egg issue getting started in beauty specialty retail. You need the brands in your stores, but you won’t bring people in unless you have the brands.

{audio:0:35:18} To what extent is that true? Does that prohibit someone from entering the market as a third player in the space within a four or five-year time frame? Or is that something that Ulta and Sephora have already dominated, and any newcomer would have to find a different angle, digital only, or something like that?

{audio:0:35:44} I think there would have to be a reason why brands would go. You're right; it's the chicken or the egg. When I started with Ulta, they were still in that camp a bit in that some brands refused to be in Ulta stores because they saw themselves as department store-only brands, and Ulta didn't have the right people coming in and didn’t have the right reputation built yet. It wasn't until they reached a massive scale that the brands realized that to compete, we must be in Ulta. Amazon went through something similar where many brands wouldn't be on Amazon, and I think there are very few who don't sell through that channel now. There is a bit of the chicken and egg; there has to be a compelling reason for why a brand would want to explore additional channels. 

{audio:0:36:45} One compelling reason might be the margin that they get. Ulta very much had to evolve to be more competitive. When they first started, to attract these brands, they basically had to give them the house. The contract was incredibly favorable to these brands, but it was important for Ulta because, again, if you don't have these brands, you don't have the foot traffic, so you'll do anything to get that brands to give you the deal. I think at some point, for new brands, Sephora and Ulta still have that. Who will give the better exclusivity deal is still a part of it. A new retailer or a new channel would have to have extremely favorable terms to get those brands to want to play, and I think they'd have to have a way to pull people in, like offering something else of value. Some of the unique business models we were always watching were those subscriber models where you get surprises every month, like a box of beauty.

{audio:0:38:12} I can't remember what it's called, but companies were sprouting off doing more of a pay a membership fee, and we'll send you a box of stuff every month that's new and inviting. We were keeping our eye on that and looking at that. Or just some of the value, like a Zulily with deals of the day. Off-price overall was getting very much into beauty, so many of these other channels that weren't historically beauty suppliers have started to offer a lot more beauty. So those in and of themselves could be competitive in terms of stealing market share.

{audio:0:39:09} Talking about supplier relationships, one thing we like to see is win-win scenarios for both supplier and company. I'm curious about how Ulta manages its supplier relationships and any examples you can give of times where they were accommodating in the short time benefit and the long-term.

{audio:0:39:41} As I was leaving, they made several organizational changes. One of those was to form a merchant team entirely focused on finding and supporting new brands. Obviously, the focus of what kind of brands you're trying to find can change over time. Still, one of the initial focuses was to find diverse brands that were just getting started. Brands that needed the backing of a company like Ulta to make it big, whose model, what they were built off, and their values were ones that Ulta wanted to support to help them continue to get started. So it's a win-win in terms of there being something special about these brands where we felt if we helped cultivate them, we're getting some of the value of these awesome brands growing. And it was huge for the brand because, if not for the financial backing and executional and operational help, they would have difficulty getting started in a meaningful way. 

{audio:0:40:56} That was a significant change. Before that, the merchants were organized by category and separated into mass and prestige. We've found that many of these new brands don't fit the mold of a traditional mass or prestige. They're brand new, and they could be either one; they kind of fit in this middle bucket. I think that was a really good recognition of how we could form some win-win relationships and not treat all brands equally, understanding that the newer brands were a part of our long-term strategy around remaining relevant. 

{audio:0:41:39} Going back to your earlier question on relevancy, that's probably the best example. I spent a few years in supplier operations, and some of the things we were working on were how we make sure the brand's relationships aren't one-sided in favor of the brand. Some of it was stepping back some things we did when we were trying to grow and some things we weren't holding people accountable for that hindered our ability to be operationally sound. Those were tough conversations with the merchants because they always wanted to give brands everything, outside of margin, but everything else. So trying to educate on this is good for them and us because ultimately, doing what they need to do will drive their sales and ours, but those were some tough conversations getting everybody bought into that.

{audio:0:42:46} They've had a very successful rewards program. From the back of the envelope, a strong share of the core demographic has an Ulta rewards program. We've seen many companies with these large pools of customers in rewards programs begin analyzing their data, micro-focusing on individual customers, and tailoring their offers. Ulta is doing that to some extent, especially with this new advertising strategy. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the rewards program, its effectiveness, the sort of non-current business models they could grow from this rewards program, and the data and analytics they have around it.

{audio:0:43:48} Yes, the rewards program is huge. One, it's a huge customer benefit, but the data you get is massive. It was a growing kind of place of, we need to be better resourced around looking at this and understanding it because if you have that much data, it can be overwhelming to get insights from it. I think the biggest opportunity in leveraging the data is just understanding the replenishment habits and sending people proactive reminders like, hey, you bought this three months ago; it's time for a new one. Driving the replenishment and repeat purchases by understanding what people have purchased in the past. 

{audio:0:44:43} I don't think they've done that much with that personally, but there is still a lot of opportunity, whether through an actual subscription program or targeted marketing. You could go as far as putting all these products together and allowing for one button where it's like, okay, I go to the email and add all of them to cart. Anything they can do to leverage the data to make the barrier of shopping as easy as possible is huge. That would be my first and foremost around having that much data. There is targeted marketing in general that comes from it. Also, just understanding when people purchase and how you line up your promotional calendar to help incentivize those purchases at a macro level.

{audio:0:45:55} Ecommerce and omnichannel have become a big focus in the past couple of years. Basically, retailers had to be ecommerce or omnichannel to survive. With your experience in warehouse construction and distribution, to what extent do you feel like Ulta is skilled in those operations? Are they average? Are they above average? Do you think they have the investments in place to fulfill accurately and quickly and encourage their customers to do more ecommerce? And what kind of challenges does that create for Ulta?

{audio:0:46:53} Yes. When I was there, we spent millions and millions of dollars on the supply chain overall to overhaul it. So not only a brand new warehouse management system, but as much automation as would work at the time for beauty. The tough thing about beauty is that the damage rate can be high, so you still need to be cautious about instilling automation in the operation. But I think the understanding was apparent of how critical the supply chain was, and the investment was very much supported from a company perspective, which was awesome. 

{audio:0:47:41} That was before the Covid years, so it was set up extremely well to get through Covid. They continued to do buy online, pick up in-store, focusing on accurate inventory overall. Inventory inaccuracy really throws off your omnichannel capabilities if you tell a customer we have it, come down and pick it up, and then find out you can't fulfill the order. I think there was a lot of investment made there. Overall, Ulta is in a good place, and I know they've continued to look at new ways to do operations and new automation. I think it's an innovative, entrepreneurial-focused company and the aptitude to keep looking at this stuff is there, which is great. I think the operational know-how is there regarding how to drive additional programs. But how they have made progress on those is tougher to tell. 

{audio:0:48:57} I have one last question. If we fast forward 10 years and look back, and Ulta didn’t live up to expectations, what do you think would have happened in that situation?

{audio:0:49:18} I think they started to get too complacent and missed opportunities on brand partnerships for one reason or another. Again, I think having brand partnerships is so critical. I also think they may miss an opportunity if they don't start to grow their own brand more aggressively than they have. The pressures of having price pressure or availability pressure will always be there. I think they can somewhat insulate themselves if they had a stronger owned brand with a loyal following.

{audio:0:50:58} I think having a really strong own-brand insulates a bit from other things and continues to have you be a destination. I don't think Ulta has an incredibly loyal following of their own brands, and to be honest, I think it's seen as low value, a low price point, for the most part. I think they have opportunities to build that in a way that drives inherent value to their business and insulates. I don't think it's an area they've invested heavily in, but it could be a good area for them to go after. They must stay on their toes and continue to ensure they are attractive to brands wanting to sell with them. If they start to go too hard of a line in terms of what we expect or begin to be too tough to work with, then brands will choose other retailers, and maybe ones that we don't even know about yet.

{audio:0:52:10} This has been very helpful; thank you very much for your time today.

Ulta Beauty & US Beauty Retail

Former VP at Ulta Beauty

inpractise.com/articles/ulta-beauty-and-us-beauty-retail

Ulta Beauty & US Beauty Retail(September 22, 2022)

Former VP at Ulta Beauty

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