Ulta is expanding its wellness shop to have more health-focused brands and more shelf space for those items.Melissa Repko ? CNBCSanta may be bringing you some supplements this year.Along with typical holiday wish list items like clothing, perfume and gadgets, the wellness category is poised to gain popularity this shopping season and beyond — particularly as retailers like Ulta Beauty and Target give it more shelf space long before the start of New Year’s resolutions.Beauty is always a top-performing holiday category. November and December combined account for about 25% of annual spending on prestige beauty items, which includes brands usually sold by specialty beauty retailers and department stores, according to Circana, a market research group. Holiday shoppers said they plan to spend an average of $247 on beauty while buying gifts this year, the fourth-highest holiday category for spending, according to Circana’s annual survey.Yet the beauty category’s assortment has become wider ranging with the addition of more health and wellness-focused items, such as products that promise to improve nutrition, hydration and sleep.Larissa Jensen, global beauty industry advisor at Circana, said wellness has gained attention since the Covid pandemic as consumers prioritize self-care and feeling good from the “inside out.” She said health-related products typically relegated to drugstore shelves, such as teeth whitening kits, vitamins, full-body deodorants and eye drops, have gotten a glow-up. Some now come in more attractive packaging, have gotten backing from influencers and celebrities or have moved to the beauty section as retailers seize a chance to blend beauty and wellness and become a one-stop shop.Ulta Beauty, in particular, has carved out more space in its stores for wellness. The specialty retailer, which has more than 1,450 stores across the country, has always carried some individual items related to wellness and “beauty from within,” said Laura Beres, the retailer’s vice president of wellness.Yet as demand grew after the pandemic, Ulta started to open wellness shops inside of its stores in 2021 and devoted about four to eight feet of shelf space to items including probiotic gummies, sleep masks and aromatherapy oils. In August, the company said it would expand the size of those wellness shops to up to 45 feet in about a third of its stores. It’s added nearly 30 new wellness brands to its stores, bringing its total to about 100, Beres said.She said customers who shop wellness cut across ages, but Ulta has seen growth especially with millennial shoppers and consumers with household incomes of more than $100,000. She said innovation has sparked more interest, especially as customers seek solutions for key life stages that brands overlooked in the past, such as needs for pre- and post-pregnancy and menopause.This year, she said Ulta is carrying some gift sets of wellness items, including an Advent calendar of Saje Natural Wellness’ essential oils and a beauty sleep gift set from Kourtney Kardashian’s vitamins brand, Lemme. Yet she said she expects wellness to become a b …
