What to Watch: Ulta Goes Abroad

Ulta Beauty will be expanding its footprint internationally throughout the rest of this year.

The company will open its first international stores in Mexico and the Middle East very soon, with more markets set to be revealed. At the same time, industry watchers will be waiting to see how its surprise acquisition of Space NK plays out.

In Mexico, Ulta has forged a joint venture with Axo, a global brands operator. The first Ulta Beauty store is expected to open in Mexico City this month, with Axo planning to open numerous doors.

In the Middle East, the plan is to open around a dozen Ulta stores across the region by the end of next year via a licensing agreement with Alshaya Group, which also brought the likes of H&M and Cheesecake Factory to the region.

The first store will open in Kuwait City, where Alshaya Group is based, in the fourth quarter, closely followed by Dubai.

Kecia Steelman, chief executive officer and president of Ulta, previously told WWD that she is testing different styles of partnerships to see what works best for the company, but ultimately she envisions having a few players operating in multiple markets.

For Space NK, while CEO Andy Lightfoot said it’s still very early days in terms of what it means for scaling the British retailer, the plan is to continue to grow space as a stand-alone business.

It is not known if Ulta has any plans to bring it back to the U.S.

“It certainly opens the possibility, but strategically, we haven’t got any plans to re-enter the U.S.,” said Lightfoot in a previous interview. “It is too early to say.”

The U.S. wholesale division of Space NK, which entails roughly 600 points of distribution across Bloomingdale’s, Nordstrom, Nordstrom Rack, Hudson’s Bay and the company’s shop-in-shop collaboration with Walmart and Beauty SpaceNK, was acquired by PCA Companies in June 2024 and is now called BeautySpace.