NEW YORK — Ulta is eyeing AI to improve its loyalty member experience, according to the retailer’s CEO Kecia Steelman.
The chief executive spoke at The National Retail Federation’s 2026 Big Show in New York City on Monday, noting that AI technologies have the potential to help Ulta leverage its existing customer data to make product recommendations more personalized and predictive.
“I think we can really do that with AI and gen AI going forward,” Steelman told the audience. “I think we're really well positioned to leverage AI into this platform and really just take our business to the next level, where that guest really feels like we're speaking to them in that one on one-type scenario.”
But Steelman stressed that with a majority of the company’s sales still coming through stores, it’s important to consider how AI can be utilized to improve associates’ product knowledge and interactions with customers.
Meanwhile in a separate session at the conference, the retailer’s senior vice president of e-commerce and digital, Josh Friedman, said that Ulta is working to develop its own AI agents. Friedman said that Ulta’s agent roadmap is still a work in progress, but the company thinks it knows what types of agents it wants to build out.
Additionally, Friedman noted that the company’s third party marketplace — which launched in October — has been a useful way to quickly add more content to Ulta’s website, in turn helping it in a world where AI agents are combing through the internet.
“We knew having more assortment that our guests were quite honestly asking us for was the right thing to do,” Friedman said. “And now having all the content that comes with it — both the content we get from the sellers and the content that that generates in the community — is going to really serve us well this year and in future years with agentic commerce.”
