AI Retail Brand Strategy
Ulta Beauty
A developmental brand strategy proposal based in research to conceptualize and prototype an innovative AI shopping agent for Ulta e-commerce to enhance online functionality and elevate consumer experiences across all digital commerce touch points.
Year
2025
Mockup Client
Ulta Beauty
What is the goal?
To drive e-commerce performance while staying true to the brand’s mission and values and make systemic improvements to the brand’s digital commerce activities through the strategic integration of AI technology.
Heighten discovery, interaction, and loyalty among existing consumers.
Acquire new consumers through enhanced digital experiences.
Deliver meaningful improvements across the consumer journey from discovery through post purchase.
Shape the brand’s e-commerce strategy across web, mobile commerce, and social commerce platforms
AI Applications on Ulta Beauty Mobile App
While Ulta offers AI applications to help narrow down choices and attempt a more personalized experience, the overall experience becomes:
surface level
fragmented
does not save preferences from application usage
This results in consumers having to switch between individual applications, causing fatigue and heightening the risk of cart abandonment.
Overall, the experience is left feeling generic, time consuming, and inconvenient to use.
The Challenge
Shoppers today are increasingly using their mobile devices for discovery and purchase. However, a majority become overwhelmed by too many options in given product assortments and a lack of time to filter through on their own.
The Solution
Key Visual #1
Sola, Ulta’s new agentic AI, moves beyond generic algorithms by monitoring and collecting passive data, including:
hover time
price sensitivity
active data including favorites and trends
to curate and build routines suggesting different products specifically tailored to user’s unique style and budget to drive high-value, personalized cross-selling without the user having to input this information.
She is proactive for users, curating and building carts as well as handling the purchasing and delivery systems for consumers making the shopping experience as frictionless as possible.
Sola utilizes NLP to map data points to Ulta specific products and user preferences, replacing overwhelming manual searching which reduces cognitive load for consumers changing the experience from daunting to enjoyable.
Building on our current relationship, Sola is powered by tech company NVIDIA’s Agentic AI model. This represents an industry first, moving beyond static and reactive AI applications. Being agentic AI, she’s able to reason through multi-step problems and anticipates needs before the user asks.
She solves the starting over problem by remembering long term context, routines, and user’s likes and dislikes.
This turns the Ulta App from a digital store front into a high end personal shopping assistant, reminiscent of high end boutiques all from the convenience of your mobile device.
This offers mental load reduction, routine optimization and enhanced buying confidence.
Launching exclusively through the Ulta App first leverages 45 million members, positioning Sola in users preferred environment.
Key Visual #2
Sola is named to pay homage to the bright and fun brand identity of Ulta while still being representative of the rising diverse demographic of Ulta consumers located in Mexico and the US.
Sola In Action
Pain Points: too many options, generic recommendations, decision fatigue
Values: personalization, authenticity, efficiency, social influence
Pain Points: limited time, too many options, unclear product differentiation
Values: time saving convenience, reliability, quality, family first decisions
Meet Chloe
Chloe is a fast-moving Bay Area professional balancing a demanding career with an active social life. Beauty and skincare are her self-care and self-expression, letting her feel confident from work to weeknight dinners and nights out on the weekends.
She lives on her phone, and discovers new products on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, and expects brands to keep up with her digital lifestyle.
She turns to Ulta for its convenience, rewards, and unmatched assortment, using the app as her go-to destination for trending and influencer-approved beauty. But with so many choices, she often feels decision fatigue and ends up second-guessing decisions which stops her from making purchases. What she craves is smarter guidance and personalized, authentic recommendations that help her buy with confidence.
Meet Layla
Layla is a RN balancing long shifts, graduate school, and motherhood to her three-year-old while putting everyone else first. Her days are tightly scheduled and her definition of self-care is products that work and brands that make life easier than harder. Beauty isn’t about trends for Layla, it’s about reliability, efficiency, and feeling put together in her demanding life.
She’s been an Ulta customer since high school, initially drawn to the convenience of finding everything in one place. As her responsibilities grew, Ulta evolved from a beauty retailer into a time-saving essential. The mobile app sealed her loyalty, allowing her to shop quickly and with minimal friction. Now what she wants is fewer steps, fewer choices, and trusted guidance that gets her from discovery to checkout without wasting time she doesn’t have.
Sola Conversation Prototype for Chloe
Generated and Coded with Canva AI
Sola Conversation Prototype for Layla
Generated and Coded with Canva AI
Ulta Beauty App: grew 3% YOY to 45M members in 2025, accounting for 95% of sales
-BeautyMatter
Using the app to pilot launch Sola allows members to feel catered to as Ulta is meeting them in their preferred shopping space.
55%
of Millennials prefer shopping via mobile apps over desktops due to speed, intuitiveness, and on-the-go discovery
GlamLab2.0: relaunched 2024 with new 3D engine and user interface for more precision, stability and sharing capabilities.
This means Ulta already has the foundations to be able to implement a new agentic AI platform that consumers are more likely to adopt.
83%
Why Sola Works for Ulta
78%
of consumers are more likely to repurchase and recommend a brand that personalizes effectively
of consumers believe that AI gives better beauty recommendations than people
E-commerce has become the primary shopping channel for Millennials and Gen Z, Ulta’s main consumer demographic.
Social discovery is the primary driver for mobile first consumers that want guidance, speed, and convenience.
With over 45M loyal members, there is a huge opportunity for a mobile focused AI agent.
The Future of Sola in Ulta
Due to success of launch on the app, Sola will be scaled and integrated into the web platform 1.5 years after launch. Using the first year as trial and error and building up data base and 6 months to make the interface transition seamless.
Generated with Gemini
In-store integration will utilize smart shopping.
Smart Sensor allows consumers to tap phones to pull up Sola and tap to checkout products without physically checking out.
Measure of Success
Tracking feedback and KPI’s for Sola is critical for long term success. Hitting these key KPI goals will tell Ulta where the program is most successful and where revisions will need to be made.
Average Order Value -
Objective: increase AOV from $80 to $100; 20% increase
Rationale: because Sola takes the initiative to analyze, search and curate a personalized shopping cart for the consumer, it makes them more willingly to purchase more
Timeline: increase occurs within 5 months of pilot launch on the app
Cart Abandonment Rate -
Objective: Decrease Abandonment Rate from 72% to 50%; 30% decrease
Rationale: analyzing abandonment behaviors can allow Sola to intervene before it happens and remove the friction from checkout
Timeline: decrease occurs over 8 months
Customer Lifetime Value -
Objective: increase CLV by 15%
Rationale: Sola shifts interactions on the app from transactional to relationship based acting as a personal shopper making the customer journey as seamless as possible
Timeline: increase occurs over 12 months
Overall, Sola represents the evolution of the Ulta Beauty experience from a fragmented, reactive search tool into a proactive beauty confidante that bridges the gap between digital convenience and personalized high end boutique services that makes life and shopping easier and more enjoyable, making life long beauty members.