DoorDash Expands Ulta Partnership to All 50 States

DoorDash says it is expanding its 3-year-old partnership with Ulta Beauty.

The company announced in a news release provided to PYMNTS Monday (May 20) that it was now offering on-demand and same-day delivery of beauty products from more than 1,350 locations across all 50 states.

The partnership marks Ulta’s introduction to consumers shopping on the DoorDash marketplace and the first time all DoorDash customers in the U.S. users will have access to a beauty retailer on the platform.

“As the largest beauty retailer in the U.S. and premier beauty destination for consumers, Ulta adds over 25,000 products from 600+ brands to the DoorDash platform,” the company said in the news release.

“DoorDash continues to see an increased appetite for convenience and on-demand delivery in beauty and other growing retail categories, as consumers are placing more non-restaurant orders than ever before.”

PYMNTS examined the company’s shift from just restaurant delivery to on-demand fulfillment in categories like beauty earlier this year in an interview with Fuad Hannon, vice president of new verticals at DoorDash.

“Consumers come to us today for a need-it-now use case. ‘I’m out of mascara. I’m out of lipstick. How can I get it delivered?’ And the core of DoorDash’s platform has been an on-demand 30-minute delivery,” Hannon said. “… We’re really excited about what beauty offers our consumers in terms of beginning to think about DoorDash for not just consumption categories like grocery or alcohol or restaurants, but increasingly non-consumption categories.”

At the time, DoorDash had just announced the addition of a range of beauty merchants to its platform, collaborating with Sally Beauty and MAC Cosmetics and expanding its existing partnership with Sephora.

Hannon underlined past positive reception from beauty customers, pointing out that this serves as a valuable category to help lay the foundation for future expansions across retail verticals.

“If we look at some of the things that consumers are searching for most frequently, and are getting added on to their delivery most frequently, it is certainly beauty items,” Hannon said.

As noted here then, research has shown that beauty customers tend to be disproportionately increasing their digital engagement.

For example, the PYMNTS Intelligence/AWS study “Tracking the Digital Payments Takeover: Catching the Coming eCommerce Wave” showed that 39% of consumers were highly likely to increase their online purchases of health and beauty products in the coming year — a larger share than said the same of any other kind of product.

In addition, the 2023 PYMNTS Intelligence study “Changes in Grocery Shopping Habits and Perception” found that around half of all shoppers said they were buying personal and healthcare products in stores less often.

For all PYMNTS retail coverage, subscribe to the daily Retail Newsletter.