Ulta’s Next Growth Opportunity May Be the Women Already Shopping There

Ulta Beauty is adding Midi Health, a women’s telehealth company, to its wellness assortment. Seven supplements are now available online, with five scheduled to reach more than 300 stores on September 27. This is described as Ulta’s first partnership with a dedicated women’s healthcare platform.

But the detail that caught my attention was a comment in Emily Jensen’s reporting for Glossy. Midi co-founder Joanna Strober pointed out that Ulta’s audience includes mothers shopping alongside their daughters. It made me wonder how often beauty retailers focus on winning the younger shopper while overlooking what the woman accompanying her might want for herself.

I think this partnership is worth watching for that reason. A retailer does not always need to find an entirely new audience to grow. Sometimes the opportunity is to understand an existing customer more fully, particularly when her needs start changing.

Midi brings a different background to the beauty aisle. The company built its reputation in perimenopause and menopause care and is expanding its approach to women’s health across life stages. Its retail launch introduces products positioned around midlife concerns, including cognitive function, stress, and nutritional support, rather than simply offering another version of a hair, skin, and nails supplement. Those are the company’s intended uses, not proof that every shopper needs them or would benefit.

This also fits a direction Ulta has already established. Its wellness offering includes nutrition and supplements, intimate care, rest and recovery, and everyday personal-care products, with sections addressing needs such as pregnancy, postpartum, and menopause. Midi connects that assortment to a business that starts with women seeking care.

I also think Ulta deserves credit for continuing to make space for women’s health inside beauty retail. Women’s health has historically been fragmented across doctors’ offices, pharmacies, specialty platforms, and private conversations, while many of the issues women deal with across different life stages have rarely been treated as part of the broader consumer experience. Ulta has already expanded beyond traditional beauty into wellness, intimate care, pregnancy, postpartum, and menopause-related products, and the Midi partnership feels like the perfect extension of that work rather than a sudden attempt to enter a trending category.

What interests me is the possibility of a beauty retailer becoming more relevant as its customers get older without treating aging only as something to conceal. A woman can still enjoy lipstick, fragrance, and a new skincare launch while also wanting information about changes she does not fully understand. Those interests don't cancel each other out, and she shouldn't have to stop feeling like a beauty customer because her priorities have broadened.

From a consumer-behavior perspective, that is a useful way to think about loyalty. We often talk about getting someone to buy again, but a longer relationship requires recognizing that she may not always be shopping for the same reasons. A retailer can keep offering new products and still lose relevance if it does not notice how the person buying them is changing.

For Midi, the setting offers a different kind of introduction. Someone actively searching for menopause care has already identified a concern and begun looking for help. Someone browsing Ulta may encounter the company before she would think to search for a specialist. Midi said it hopes its retail presence can be an encouraging first step toward appropriate clinical care, although buying a supplement is, of course, not the same as receiving that care.

I see potential in making these conversations feel more ordinary. Finding midlife-focused products in a familiar store could help a shopper feel that her concerns belong in the conversation rather than somewhere outside it. That does not require turning every beauty purchase into a health discussion; it means making room for the customer who is ready to have one.

There is a commercial opportunity here, but I would not judge it only by how much more Ulta can add to a shopping basket. I would watch whether customers find the assortment useful, whether the information earns their confidence, and whether women at different life stages feel the store understands them. Those are harder things to establish than shelf space, but they give the expansion a purpose beyond selling more supplements.

What I like about this move is that it leaves room for growth without assuming growth must always come from someone younger. The woman who has been shopping at Ulta for years may have new questions now. Giving her a thoughtful reason to keep shopping there could be just as valuable as persuading someone else to walk in for the first time.

Dania Khalife