Lessons in Beauty

How Mary Dillon has taken Ulta Beauty from a sleepy discount brand to the leading cosmetics retailer

- Jennifer Braunschweiger

In the past two years, Ulta Beauty, a salon chain and retailer carrying more than 500 cosmetics brands, has surpassed Sephora to become the nation’s largest beauty merchant, opening more than 200 new stores, breaking ground on its first location in Manhattan, and upping its online sales by more than 50%. That’s all good news for CEO Mary Dillon, but one of her biggest accomplishments isn’t as quantifiable. Dillon, a veteran of McDonald’s and Gatorade, summarizes the sorry state of Ulta’s brand awareness when she took the helm in 2013 with a friendly impression of her target customer: “Ultra? What’s that?” Though sales were satisfactory, a long association with tired strip malls and budget shopping had taken its toll. Dillon repositioned the brand, putting new stores closer to urban centers (she expects to open 300 more by 2019) and investing in technology to deliver online orders more efficiently. “We’re a 27-year old brand that I feel is just getting started,” she says. Here are some of the strategies in her corporate makeover playbook.

Go beyond numbers