As wellness continues its post-pandemic boom, beauty retailers appear to be coming to a consensus on the category.
Ulta Beauty, Target and Walmart are leaning into wellness, each kicking off 2026 with sweeping additions to their respective assortments and, in the case of Ulta, a wellness shop-in-shop redesign. E-commerce platforms like Amazon and TikTok Shop are — even without such dedicated efforts — seeing wellness sales soar, with supplements growing 42 percent on Amazon to $16.5 billion in 2025, per MarketDefense, and health products growing 70 percent on TikTok Shop to $623.3 million, according to Charm.io.
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On the other hand, Sephora is moving away from the category as it looks to focus more squarely on beauty. Previously, the retailer sought to make its mark in wellness by launching ingestibles from brands like Moon Juice, Vegamour and Alo, plus offerings from Naomi Watts’ Stripes menopausal beauty line and sexual wellness brand, Maude.
“Wellness is not a category for everybody to go nuts in — you should only commit if that’s what your customer is coming to you for,” said Allison Collins, cofounder of advisory firm The Consumer Collective.
Indeed, this slate of first-quarter strategy shifts indicates that beauty retailers are increasingly approaching wellness as an all-or-nothing bid. As key drivers of the category become more apparent (in 2025 alone, protein and metabolic health were more effective catalysts than either menopause or sexual wellness, which beauty retailers took earlier bets on), signs point to more pointed retailer game plans for wellness in 2026.
“Retailers have to think about a specific play based on who’s shopping their stores, what wellness means to those groups of people, and how to credibly deliver on that. If you’re a beauty retailer, you have to think, ‘what permission do I have to play in the wellness space?’” said Wendy Liebmann, founder and chief executive officer of WSL Strategic Retail.
For instance, Ulta’s new Wellness by Ulta Beauty boutiques expand on the premise of the Wellness Shops the retailer introduced in 2021. Piloting in four stores to start, the 300- to 600-square-foot boutiques feature dedicated wellness advisers and are a direct response to increased shopper demand for both beauty-adjacent wellness, but increasingly, more health-oriented offerings, as well.
“We’re leaning into ingestibles within beauty health — hair, skin and nail support — but also, we’re moving further into health,” said Laura Beres, vice president of wellness at Ulta. “Seventy-nine percent of our guests say they view wellness as holistic, so that’s mind, that’s body, that’s spirit. From a brand perspective, wellness is very dynamic and fun right now…there are these emerging brands that are coming to market quickly with great funding and strong, science-backed solutions.”
Ulta’s fine-tuned approach now separates wellness into four key categories: Nutrition & Supplements, Intimate Care, Rest & Reset and Essential Routines. Fifty-eight brands feature across the assortment, including four new brands like The Nue Co., known for its functional fragrances, and Arrae, known for its metabolism support and digestive relief supplements, each priced at $35 for a 60-capsule supply. Most recently, the brand introduced muscle-boosting creatine gummies in January, as did Cymbiotika and Kourtney Kardashian Barker’s Lemme, both red-hot supplement brands with increasingly robust retail footprints.
This month, Lemme added Walmart to its retail roster, which includes Ulta, Amazon, TikTok Shop and Target, where the brand grew 100 percent in 2025 and ranks as the number-one beauty ingestible brand, said cofounder Simon Huck. Data from CreatorIQ shows Lemme generated $60.7 million in earned media value in 2025 — a higher total, even, than Nutrafol ($54 million EMV), one of the earliest and most successful breakouts of the beauty supplement space.
When it comes to Lemme products that are outperforming at retail, “we’ve seen a ton of success with Lemme Purr, Debloat and Sleep — and anything in our metabolic health suite continues to over-perform in-store,” said Huck.
Cymbiotika shares the same core customer as Lemme (women between the ages of 25 and 45); similarly sells on Amazon and TikTok Shop, and made its national retail debut last fall at Target. In November, the brand raised a $25 million seed round after reaching $150 million in annual revenue, with participation from The Weeknd, Post Malone and tennis star Stan Wawrinka, among others.
Next up, Cymbiotika will bring its liquid liposomal supplement sachets to Ulta in March.
“Our form factor is unique; for Target, we created a $5 two-pack for customers to be able to have a test run for different solutions — immunity, skin health and so on,” said cofounder and chief operating officer Durana Elmi. “It makes it less intimidating.”
Target reports that 70 percent of guests add at least one wellness item per shopping trip, and that its goal in expanding its wellness assortment by 30 percent in 2026 is to make wellness a through line across categories — from beauty to baby care to food and beverage. Other launches at the retailer include supplement brand The Coconut Cult, Ryze Mushroom Coffee, buzzy protein bar brands David Protein and Misfits, and more.
“One of the inherent complications of the wellness category is that it isn’t actually about stuff, and that disconnect makes it a little bit harder to merchandise the category,” said Collins. “Beauty has sat for so much longer in the consumer psyche, but the way we view wellness today is relatively new for consumers — they’re still kind of adjusting to the idea.”
To that end, Ulta and Target cite reducing consumer confusion while navigating wellness as a key strategic aim of their category revamps.
“We know that consumers can spend a few minutes on ChatGPT searching for an ingredient or looking for recommendations — those technologies have reduced the amount of time it takes for a consumer to get smart enough to shop in this space, but they still don’t always know what exact solution might work for them,” said Beres. “We want to be that destination that is welcoming, simple, leans on navigation and supports them through making that choice….online, in our app and in our boutiques.”
