With Ulta Beauty Entry, Ilia Wants to Go Mainstream

Ilia has long been a favourite of beauty editors and clean beauty acolytes, but now, the makeup label wants to conquer a perhaps even more discerning consumer: the suburban American shopper.

The Canadian-founded brand, which launched in 2011 but began to gain greater popularity from 2020 after diversifying its assortment, will launch in Ulta Beauty on Aug. 30 with a digital presence and front of store display; it will roll out full displays to over 500 stores by the end of September. It’s just one expansion move planned for this fall: In October, Ilia will enter more than 40 Sephora stores in the Gulf Coast region, including the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

Ilia has already grown its US Sephora presence from appearing in small, multi-brand assortments in 80 stores in 2019 to larger displays, known as gondolas, in more than 700 stores today. But Ulta Beauty will bring another kind of customer, which chief executive Lynda Berkowitz believes will help it reach $200 million in sales this year.

“Sephora really owns the urban areas and the coasts, but Ulta’s strength is in the middle of the country, and that allows us to reach a customer where Sephora doesn’t necessarily have a stronghold,” she said, adding that Ulta Beauty has double the store count of Sephora.

Increasing its presence in suburban areas also represents an opportunity to engage more customers with its core offering of complexion products. That’s a shift from Ilia’s early days, when it was better known for its balms and stains. Finding itself over-indexed in the lip category, it shifted focus and successfully leant into the complexion category, which now comprises more than half its business, said Berkowitz.

It released the Super Serum Skin Tint, a lightweight foundation that gives the skin a dewy finish, in 2020, just in time to capitalise on the “clean girl” trend that emerged favouring a more natural, fresh look. It’s added to its complexion offerings since then with new concealing, bronzing and highlighting products, and in 2022, the Courtin-Clarins family’s investment arm, Famille C, acquired a majority stake in the firm when annual sales reached $100 million.

Monica Arnaudo, Ulta Beauty’s chief merchandising officer, said transparency and choice were more important than ever to its shoppers, and that Ilia delivers on those values. But Ilia’s next phase of growth will require more than that, hinging on its ability to parlay its cool-girl appeal to a more mass consumer — and manage the demands of that scale.

A Clean Slate

A larger wholesale presence is vital for Ilia to keep growing, given its pivot to a complexion focus. People often prefer to buy complexion products in stores, so they can be colour matched in person and sample multiple shades, said Berkowitz.

Berkowitz added that, prior to joining Ilia in 2016 from niche skincare brand Korres, more than half of its business had been in the lip category, but she and Sasha Plavsic, the brand’s founder, decided to steer into complexion as they felt their value proposition was stronger. Its growth in the complexion category has dovetailed with an increase in its wholesale business, which now accounts for about 70 percent of sales.

But to handle the demands that come with entering more doors, the company had to make internal adjustments.

“We needed to wait until our business was mature enough to handle that kind of additional growth,” said Berkowitz. She and Plasvic worked to stress-test its supply chain and demand forecasting before looking to increase brand awareness through marketing to ensure the line debuted with a splash.

“We had to figure out what drives the Ulta client versus the Sephora client, and ensure we were speaking to that unique point of difference,” said Berkowitz.

Launching in so many more stores brings the need for additional training and education, both in terms of helping customers find the right shade to ensure they’re satisfied with their purchase, but also to galvanise Ulta Beauty’s staff to communicate the brands’ ethos. The brand has increased headcount in its field education team by 45 percent. Roles have also been created to help with international marketing to support the brand’s Middle East launch, with Berkowitz and Plavsic saying the guidance from Famille C has been vital.

Plavsic said the Middle East represents another big opportunity for growth, although awareness is lower. “There’s interest in clean beauty, but it’s very nascent … It’s a very new market,” she said. Ilia may have a first-mover advantage: Other cosmetics brands with clean claims such as Kosas, Saie and Tower 28 aren’t carried in the region’s Sephora stores.

With investment into staffing and sampling on top of a marketing push to ensure consistent messaging, Ilia has certainly done its homework. ”We’re at a size now where we can really push this … All the levers are coming together so we can really make a mark in these new areas,” said Berkowitz.

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