Ulta Beauty CEO Kecia Steelman: From Hourly Employee to Leading 1,500 Stores

I like it. You're wearing Ulta Beauty colors, too. It's great.

I don't know that I would have believed it, that's for sure. You know, I was a small town girl with big dreams, I think, from early on, and I wouldn't change a thing. Coming from a small town, small community that was tight-knit probably kept me out of a little bit of trouble along the way. But, you know, having humble beginnings early on, I think really has been really grounding for me and a foundation of really truly who I am to the core. Very thankful for the opportunities I've been given and where I am today and to have come from a small town like Minneapolis, Iowa, it makes me really proud.

We have an Ulta Beauty lip oil where it's very clean. So, all of our Ulta Beauty products are clean products, which means that they're not chemically derived, so they're safe for all skin types. And one of the things that's really special to me is I have a 2-year-old granddaughter, and believe it or not, she's already into makeup. And whenever she sees grandma putting her lipstick on, she's like, 'Lipstick?' And I can give it to her and know that she can put something on her lips that's safe for her to be able to use. So, it's one of my little go-to products that I always carry around my purse. And she knows I'm teaching her at an early age of two that she wants to be a glam girl in the future.

Yeah. Well, we operate as you mentioned over 1500 stores in the United States. We are now in six countries. When I jumped into the role as CEO, we were US-based only. We made an acquisition in the UK. We expanded through a partnership in Mexico and we have a licensed partnership with Alshaya in the Middle East. So, you know, it was time to pivot from the first 35 years of being only in the US to taking our brand more globally. We sell everything in our stores from entry level mass cosmetics all the way through luxury. We do everything that's around beauty and wellness in all of our stores and we have a services component. So we're really the only one that does everything from end to end the way that we do it in the United States and really abroad. So it's a special place to be. I talk a lot about that everyone can sell products, but it's the DNA of our associates and our company of being, you know, excessive and very inclusive that make Ulta Beauty a place that's for everyone. Regardless of your age, your gender, your ethnicity. I want to be the place where everybody can come and try to be the best versions of themselves. And I think that's what Ulta Beauty is about is making the world feel like a more beautiful place.

Yeah. Well, we have tremendous data and insights around our consumer. You mentioned we have 46.7 million loyalty members in our database. 95% of our sales that come through our registers and shopped online are loyalty members. So we have a tremendous amount of information and insights about the people that are shopping in beauty. And you know, we know everything from like I said that mass product to luxury what they're putting in their beauty bag. We have a community also online, a very active community where we'll send out surveys and questions and I would say that we're on the leading edge of understanding trends even more than our brands are. So we oftentimes get what we call 'get in the kitchen' with our brands where we're telling them there's a white space opportunity. There's this opportunity to bring something new to market. We're hearing about it from our guests and that's a role that Ulta Beauty has been playing now even more so as we've gotten even bigger. And you throw that international component in with us now and I think that's going to make us even stronger here in the future. But you know, the role that we play, it's not just about following trends. It's also about setting trends, which is a very exciting place to be as a retailer. You're not just following, but you're also leading and creating.

You know, the one thing that I'm excited about right now is everything's kind of cyclical, it seems like, at times. And there for a while was this no-makeup makeup look, which actually does take quite a bit of makeup to look like you're fresh-faced and flawless. But you know, heavier makeup usage is coming back. You've got TV series like Euphoria and some of these new trends that are coming out on the runway. We just finished the Met yesterday and you saw a lot of really big glam looks. Heavier eye makeup, so going back to the late 90s, is coming back again and that's really great for our industry. The other thing is that skin is really important. You know, your skin health and how you feel on the inside reflects how the makeup application really works on the outside. So, for me, that's great because it's an add-on sale. Like, if you're purchasing products to improve your skin quality or you're taking wellness products that improve your overall health, it doesn't mean that you're trading or not buying makeup that you're putting on. It just means that you're building your basket. So, for me, that's really exciting in this category.

I would say number one, first and foremost, is the reach that we have at Ulta Beauty. Again, to be able to convert somebody into your brand if they're an entry-level consumer or if you're maybe in that mid-range price. Bringing a consumer that's more in that luxury end into your brand because we cover the entire gamut. I think it makes us a very accessible place for you to launch your brand. Authenticity is really important to me and you know, when we bring in a new brand and especially like a celebrity brand you mentioned a few, we want to make sure that it's not a brand that the celebrities just put their name on but that there's really great product behind the brand. And the ones that you've mentioned, I would also call out Inés with Shakira who created a hair care line. These celebrities are in the kitchen with their, you know, as a founder really working on the formulations and they're trying it and they're testing it. I don't want to be a company that launches a celebrity brand just because it's got a celebrity on it, but the quality of the product's not good because ultimately we want to serve our guests with having the best in beauty. And that's what our buyers really do a great job of is making sure that they are putting the best of the assortment on our shelves and online for our guests to be able to purchase. So I think when these founders see how invested we are in really understanding the authenticity of the brand, how we can really build their brand in a true authentic way and that we want to be true partners with them on the journey, it helps them select us at the end of the day which makes me really proud and excited to be able to launch and scale with them and grow.

Well, I would say one of the most fun ones is most recently I was on a Zoom call with Shakira and we were talking about how do we really continue to bring the brand to life. And I actually had a conversation with her at our annual meeting too. So, not only was it a conference call, but then she followed it up and she's like, 'I told you I was going to make your annual store managers meeting, get the associates excited,' and she followed through on that commitment, which was great. She and I were talking on stage about like she is using her products, she's trying her products, she's using a competitor product with her own at the same time to just show, you know, the authenticity of the brand. And we got in the kitchen, we were like, we've got to figure out this hero brand. What's the hero brand? Especially when you're launching through a really full market, especially in hair. It's a tough category to break into. So, she was listening to us of like our feedback and what we're hearing from the customer segmentation. And you know, that was pretty cool to actually have Shakira sitting at her kitchen table and we're talking through like here's how we can really drive the brand and here's what we can do and then to see it really start to come to life, you know, is pretty fulfilling.

Yeah, you know, I will say early on in my career, I figured out it's always best to surround yourself with talent that in some ways is even better than you. That's how I've gotten to be where I am today. It's not always the people that I've worked for. It's the people that have worked either for me or with me that made me into the leader that I am today. And having a front row seat to see Ulta for it was almost 10 and a half years before I stepped into the CEO role. You know, what got us to where we were for the first 35 years of our company, I knew wasn't going to be the same skill sets we needed for the next generation of growth. And I had the advantage of kind of having a front row seat to that and I knew what we needed. And we had great leaders on the team. I don't want to be disparaging to any of the people that were in the roles before. But it was time to pivot into a new style, different skill sets. The world is changing quicker today than it's ever before, especially in this space. And you know, there's really three things that I look for. I look for functional expertise. People who are the best at their craft, highly collaborative in nature where they play well with others because I've been on teams before where they were great leaders but they didn't necessarily always play well as a team. And those that put enterprise first. It's not just about your area of responsibility. It's about what's the greater good for the enterprise. And that's the leadership team that I've built and I feel we are very well positioned for the next phase of growth here at Ulta Beauty. It's fun. These are tough jobs for those of us that have been in retail. You know, we'll understand. You put in a lot of hours and a lot of time, but when you enjoy who you do it with and you know, everyone's aligned. And you're in a tough retail environment, man, I've got the right team around me to be able to take this company to the next chapter of growth. And that to me is really exciting. And I think that's one of the roles that I play as a CEO. Because it trickles down. You know, you hire great leaders, they also hire great people. And it filters through the entire organization and it's just fun to watch it play out. I couldn't be more proud of the team I've got around me right now today.

I think you got to have a balance of both. Overuse of personal ambition without having the enterprise first will not be good. I look at sports teams and some teams out there that have had star players, but if the star player doesn't share the ball, you know, the team's not going to win. I look at that within my own team, too, is I want to have people who have personal drive and personal growth and want more, but not at the sacrifice of the enterprise and the team. They've got to be balanced in both. And you know, I've always said I can teach anybody any skill. I truly, truly believe that if you're driven, you can learn any skill, but I can't teach you how to be a good team player. You kind of either have that or you don't. So, I think you got to have a balance of both. You got to have somebody that wants that drive, but not at the expense of the organization first.

Yeah, I mean, I was one of the players that was under Mary Dillon and Dave and myself were part of that decision to go into Target. You know, it was being a disruptor and I think you've got to be a disruptor in order to continue to look at how do you continue to drive growth and share. And we felt like let's try this and let's just see what happens. Could we get our brand in front of, you know, the millions of guests that are walking into Target? We've subsequently decided, both Target and we, that the relationship's kind of played its way out. Target's really focused on their own beauty part of the business. And I really feel like when I look at what our strategy is and where I want to take our business in the future, I came up with Ulta Beauty Unleashed plan. And I'm going to be moving my resources really towards more of what it is that we can do to grow. But, you know, retail is cyclical and retail's in cycles. And I think, you know, part of a good leader what they do is you try things, you see them out, and then when it's time to pivot, you make those pivots as you need to. And in August, we'll be ending that partnership with Target. But I'm really glad we did it. We learned a lot along the way. I feel Target did also. And I think we're both going to be better off in the future with working on our new strategic plans independently.

I will say that if you ask people about me and my leadership, there's a couple things that come up is that I am pretty bold. I'm a big believer in like moving forward and making decisions is a better move than spinning and getting stuck. I think that if you move forward and let's just say that you do make the wrong call, you can always pivot, but you're at least moving forward in a direction versus overanalyzing, overthinking things, and getting yourself stuck. And I think that to me those decisions aren't necessarily tough decisions. And you know, at the same time I'm pretty well thought out. When I make a decision I've really done my research, my discovery, taken good partners, but then when I'm ready to go, we move. So to me, I don't know that that necessarily was a tough decision to make. It was let's do it. We knew the marketplace was going to be, you know, there was this partnership that we had a feeling that one of our competitors was going to have out there and it was like let's go try this, let's go do it. And I'm a big believer and many times you learn from these experiences and it makes us even stronger on the other end so I didn't think that it was necessarily a tough decision to make.

No. No. I mean, I think, you know, if truth be told, I grew up in operations for the majority of my career, but I've always had this intellectual curiosity of pushing the boundaries. And I'm okay with being uncomfortable, and I'm okay with not having 100% of the answer. In fact, I share often with my teams, I'm 80/20. Like, if we've got 80% of the plan, let's move. Let's move and we can finalize that last 20%. That might be a little different than a lot of traditional operators are because they like to have everything kind of buttoned up before they go. So, for me, I like to move in a positive forward direction. And I love retail. I love the consumer and I love our associates. And I think when you have a mindset of keeping the consumer and your associates at the center of all the decisions you're making and you're pushing that boundary of what's not out there and what's next, I think naturally that's pushed me to be a little bit more strategic in my mindset and my thought process.

Yeah. A recent one is TikTok. So, you know, we made a decision that we wanted to be on the TikTok shop, not only participate in marketing on TikTok, but we wanted to do live selling on TikTok. And, you know, they're like, we want to do this. And I said, well, we need to do this fast. And I said, initially, like, how long do you think it's going to take? And, you know, the traditional ways of working would have taken us probably a year, you know, a year to get it done. And I'm like, 'Listen, we've got our Ulta Beauty World coming up, which is our big consumer event following our annual meeting. Why would we not want to take advantage of that and do TikTok live?' And they're like, 'Well, we've never really thought that we could maybe do that that way.' And I'm like, 'Listen, it doesn't have to be perfect, but let's get out there and let's take advantage of this one milestone that's a meaningful milestone, and maybe let's do it in a non-traditional way.' Well, it was fun. Not only did we hit that timeline, the team was ecstatic and I said, 'If you do this, I will go on TikTok live and I'll do live selling myself.' So, I stuck with my commitment and I was out there like a QVC or HSN person myself selling my Kecia's favorite bundles, which sold out, by the way.

No, I said, 'Hey, listen. Whatever it takes as a CEO anymore to drive business in retail, I'm all for it.' But, you know, to just put a challenge out there and tell the team like figure out the non-traditional way to get things done and if it's not perfect, that's okay. We'll learn, but let's move. Let's move quickly. And I think that it was a really good lesson for our team that, you know, you don't have to be perfect. You have to have progress. So, progress over perfection is really the way to go. And you know, we've used that example already many times internally which has been great.

Yeah, I'd say that there are a few things. Number one, we have this human aspect and element to this category specifically where the guest does like to touch and feel and trial products. Newness and innovation is really important in beauty and I'm always looking at the newness and innovation in the pipeline and I feel really good about that with our brand partners. That's part of that I mentioned earlier getting in the kitchen with our big brands and we've got a lot of indie brands that have launched with us. So, you know, that's a really important part of our ecosystem. I'd also say our services component, our hair, makeup services, you know, you can't get that from an online only retailer. And then one thing that we've really leaned into in the last year, and I like what I've seen, and we're going to continue to lean into it, is this experiential shopping. So, eventing is very important to us. We had over 110,000 events in our stores. So, think about a brand coming in, bringing in their educators, teaching people how to use new tricks and tips for makeup usage. I mean, even though I'm a big makeup, I think I'm a makeup guru, I'm always learning new things. And the more that you can create those kind of experiences in store, I think continue to strengthen that moat for us as a beauty retailer against online only players. The other thing I would say is that I'm very close to the consumer. We ship from our stores. So speed of delivery which used to be one of our competitive disadvantages. Now I've kind of shrunk that timing. We have same day delivery now through our third-party marketplaces. So the places where we were at a competitive disadvantage, we've minimized those and we've continued to lean in those things that make us special and why you would want to come and shop our stores. And then the just the last thing is this loyalty program that I talked about earlier is like you earn your points, you get dollars back for your points. So, if you're going to make a decision to buy an item, people who are in our ecosystem, which again is 95% of our guest base, they understand the value of that loyalty program, and they will want to spend their dollars with us versus having it diluted someplace else.

Well, what I will say is I spend as a CEO, I spend a lot of time with the brands. I think it's important to be really connected to the brands. I also go out to stores a lot and I'm talking to consumers myself and to our associates. Our associates on the front line are some of the best piece of feedback I can get as a CEO because they're the ones that are engaging and they represent our brand every single day. So I think not staying in my office and just reading literature, but being out there, being out there with the brands, being out there in the community with our stores, customers, and the associates, I think, helps me continue to learn and grow myself.

Best idea is that we needed to have like a quick tutorial on what's less than a 10-minute eye application. Speed is really important. You know, not everybody has hours to get ready, you know, in a morning. So to come up with a regimen that we could do like less than 10 minute eye, here's three steps. So simplification, simplification, simplification was something that I'd heard from our associates that I actually took to some of our brands to say the more you can simplify and make it easier for an everyday consumer to get a real glamorous look or the look that they want. I think when you can close that gap that's going to help us continue to drive business.

You know, I will say I came from very humble beginnings and my parents got divorced when I was in high school and I actually had to go to work pretty much full-time in high school to help my mom pay the bills. And, you know, to really learn the value of a dollar and appreciate how hard my mom really worked to reinvent herself later on in life. That stuck with me forever. The drive that that instilled in me to be financially independent myself and to also continue to push myself to learn more day in and day out. I didn't want to stay in a small town Iowa. Not that there's anything wrong with that. When I go back home, I'm so appreciative of that. But I had big plans for what I wanted to do. Did I ever think I was going to be a CEO one day? No. But I just wanted to continue to learn and grow and challenge and get myself out of my comfort zone. And for that, I'll be always thankful. You know, I do think that those are character-building moments that form us into who we are today.

Resiliency and grit. The two. And you know, she subsequently went and started her own business on her own and my younger sister ended up going to work with her and she just retired not that long ago. So, she was working into her 70s and that to me, you know, just seeing her in person just push herself to do more and to provide for her family just meant everything to me.

Yeah. Well, I would say, you know, again, these are the stories that create us and make us who we are today. And I think give us the character that we have as leaders. And I would say, you know, just the power of belief in oneself. I often talk about this story and it's just so clear in my brain of I was in the projects and my daughter was in the little walker walking around and I'm in this little half bathroom looking in the mirror and I'm like this is not where I want to be in life. And I thought to myself, the only person that can get you out of this situation is looking right back at you. So what are you going to do about it? And I just was like I prayed that night. I just needed somebody to give me an opportunity to be able to learn and grow and I was going to work as hard as I could and show whatever company was going to give me a chance what I could do and that's when I went to work for Target and so thankful for that opportunity.

Yeah, I mentioned this earlier. It was about surrounding yourself with people that were even better than you were. And you know, I didn't have the opportunity to get the college education that many of the people who actually ended up working for me had. And so I through osmosis was able to learn from them. I also know what I'm good at and where I needed to learn and grow. And I think sometimes leaders are intimidated by hiring people that are better than themselves that maybe where their weaknesses are. And I just wasn't. I was like, 'Hey, listen. I feel blessed to be in this job and in these roles. I want to hire the very best people that can actually make me better as a leader myself and learn from them.' And I think just having that level of humility to even say to people that were on my team, hey, quite frankly, you're better at this than I am. It creates this, it kind of breaks down this barrier or this wall between boss and employee where it becomes more of a team. And I've carried that with me really through every position I've been on, even into the CEO role today. It's like you're not successful on your own. This is while I have a title. It's not just a one-person job. You're only as good as those people that you surround yourself with. And when you can create an atmosphere where people can really authentically be themselves and be honest and direct and you can have those candid conversations because I'm still very humble and blessed and I'm still learning. There's no finish line. Just because you got the job doesn't mean you know everything.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I started as an hourly employee to a store manager to a district manager or regional then in a merchandising like so I think really understanding and walking in some shoes of others especially in retail. Well, I mean, I've been at this over 30 years. That gives me a very different perspective and a unique perspective that I think keeps me very, very grounded. In fact, when I go into stores, I will always make sure I talk to the cashiers. And people are like, 'That might be viewed as a little odd.' Well, the cashier is the last person anybody purchasing something in my store sees. They can have a great shopping experience, but if they have a bad experience with that cashier, it tarnishes the entire experience. So, I always go in and talk to the cashier about how much I appreciate them, how important they are, that they represent the brand of our store and our company even more than I do because they're the ones that the guest is interacting with. And I think having that perspective from growing up in retail maybe gives me a little different viewpoint than maybe others.

Yeah, absolutely. In fact, I just saw Carol not too long ago. And I just shared with her, you know, I often have used her as an example of a female that I greatly, greatly admire. She was tough. And you know, I learned the importance of like if you're going to go in and ask for dollars, you better make sure that you're asking with a really good game plan because she was going to follow up on did that investment pay out. And I often think about that today when, you know, we're making choices of investment in capex or opex dollars in Ulta Beauty. It comes back in my mind of like, okay, well, you're going to need to come back and show me what that ROI is because if you don't have the ROI, it's not going to be as easy to get the money the next time. So, you better be asking with a really good plan behind it. And for that, I'm always very appreciative. And you know, when I was at Home Depot, there were not a lot of female leaders that were in the officer ranks at the time. And she just was really someone that was approachable, tough, fair, and was an advocate for other women. And for that, I'm always grateful and very thankful and, you know, to see her be successful as a CEO at UPS, I'm cheering her on.

Yeah. You know, listen, there have been a few times where, you know, we've all been there where you think you're the one and then you don't get the job. And I think that there's two ways you can go. You can either be bitter or you can be better. And I've always chosen the path to be like, 'Okay, maybe it stings right now, but I'm going to take a step back and what is it that I can do to get myself ready for that job that's going to make me even better for it?' And that's every single time where I've not gotten the position, it's happened the way that it's supposed to, you know, and energy is a big thing to me. And I talk about this with my team. It's like how you spend your energy, what you spend it on, spend it on things that are going to propel you in the right direction. And you know, I see so many people, they don't get something, they get angry, they get upset, that's wasted energy to me. It's like I'm going to spend it on, okay, I'm going to take this opportunity to be really ready than when my time comes. And again, I couldn't be more proud of where that's taken me into this role that, you know, as a little girl growing up in rural Iowa, I would never have believed I would be the CEO of the largest specialty beauty retailer. It's a job that most girls, I think, would envy to have. So, it's worked out well for me. I've shared that with others many times. It's like things happen when they're supposed to. Just keep moving forward and what can you do to take this opportunity to be even better when the time is right for you.

I believe in simplification. You know, even our strategy, it's the Ulta Beauty Unleashed strategy. We've got three core parts to the strategy. I want to make sure that we're using language and a clear understanding that everyone from the backroom of a store to our boardroom clearly understands what it is that we're trying to do and the role that they play in that. And I think that's some simple language. Sometimes I've been parts of organizations, great organizations that like I don't know what it is that we're trying to do. I'm just, you know, trying to move forward. But I do feel like our teams really understand and they're inspired and they're motivated and they understand the why. I think that's also really important. And that goes back to like when I was working in stores, like I would be doing things, I'm like, I don't understand why I'm doing this. I'm doing it, but I don't understand why. When we can give the associates the answers to the why, they feel a little bit more invested in it. So I think that's a role that I play as a CEO is clarity of vision and mission, clear strategy that everyone understands what their role is to execute the strategy and then deliver it. And when you keep doing that and you keep putting the wins up, the momentum does change within the organization. And I've seen that happen this last year.

Yeah. Well, I think we do a lot around culture surveys. I do skip-level meetings with various levels within the organization. I also think that, you know, every once in a while you've got to phone a friend and be like, 'Hey, I need you to tell me the truth.' Like sometimes when you get to these levels, people tell you what they think you want to hear. That's not what I want. I want you to tell me the truth because the only way that we can keep moving this company forward and getting the teams aligned is if everyone's really clearly aligned. And that to me is really important, spending time with the associates, listening, being out there, being engaging and creating an environment where people can tell you that they don't agree and that's very, very important to me. That's just as important as people that are like, 'Yeah, I'm all on board, great.' If you're not, I value and respect that just as much, but I want to hear why. Like, tell me why. And maybe there's something I need to change.

People who are problem solvers. I love rewarding. I've identified a problem and they come in and they say, 'This is the problem, and here's what I think some of the solutions could be.' I think that's a mindset that I really value and appreciate. Not just bringing problems and having a victim mentality or like this is being done to me. It's like no, this is a problem. This is what I think we could do or even having multiple versions of different plans that they've thought through it. That means a lot to me.