The “beauty from within trend” is real and something I have been obsessed with for years. Consumers want it, the category is maturing, and the demand is not going away.
But Sephora’s decision still makes perfect sense to me when you think about their business. Sephora is a prestige beauty retailer first, not a holistic wellness platform. Their entire business is built on categories with high margins, high repeatability and, most importantly, instant proof of performance in categories like color cosmetics, skincare, fragrance, tools. These win because you can see, smell or swatch the result now. Supplements just can’t compete with that immediate payoff.
When I was overseas in South Korea earlier this year and had the chance to go to Olive Young, the contrast was stark. As Olive Young enters the U.S., it’s entering in a similar style to Ulta as an all needs marketplace built to house supplements.
The bigger issue is that ingestibles entered the market long before the clinical efficacy and rigor caught up. A lot of early brands were selling vitamins as if they were “painkillers” with big promises and minimal proof. Today’s customer is smarter, more skeptical and much faster at cutting through what does not work.
Let’s think about the customer, their need state matters as well. Wanting shinier hair is not the same as not being able to sleep. Sleep is a true painkiller category. It is urgent, emotional and immediate. Fertility is another. Bird and Be, an HSR Ventures portfolio company, sells through Ulta because the value proposition is crystal clear. They improve egg and sperm quality and support conception. They solve a real problem that millions of people are actively trying to fix. That is where supplements can behave like “painkillers” and solve a real problem rather than “vitamins,” a nice-to-have fix.
If supplements were ever going to work in prestige beauty, the playbook would have required real clinical proof, strong differentiation and merchandising built around specific outcomes rather than broad aesthetic wellness. Prestige beauty trains the customer to expect impact on the spot and supplements just cannot deliver that.
I firmly believe that supplements will continue to thrive at Ulta, Target, Amazon and DTC. These channels have different expectations and different purchase journeys. But in prestige beauty, Sephora doubling down on what it does best is the right move. When the category is this competitive, being the best comes from knowing exactly what game you are playing and refusing to get distracted.