MAC In ULTA Shameful. ULTA Is A Flea Market.

MAC Cosmetics is betting that it has found at least a partial solution to the sales slowdown it is suffering as traffic thins out in America’s malls and department stores.  MAC is owned by Estee Lauder by the way and uses the best pigments that can be found in there products. But I would never think of such a wonderful company selling the products to a lower scale conglomerate. But it happens.

The answer as it has been for so many other brands one of the hottest retailers in the U.S. and one that MAC is planning to enter at last, first via the beauty specialty store’s e-commerce platform Ulta.com in May and then via about 25 stores in June. By the end of the year, MAC is expected to be in more than 100 Ulta stores, according to Karen Buglisi Weiler, MAC global brand president. “By mid-June we should have the first one opened,” she said. While MAC is initially going into only a fraction of Ulta stores, the move represents a dramatic departure for the makeup artist brand, which has confined its U.S. distribution mostly to department stores and its international chain of MAC stores, 200 of which are in North America. For example, the brand is not sold in Sephora in the U.S., according to executives.

While MAC is initially going into only a fraction of Ulta stores, the move represents a dramatic departure for the makeup artist brand, which has confined its U.S. distribution mostly to department stores and its international chain of MAC stores, 200 of which are in North America. For example, the brand is not sold in Sephora in the U.S., according to executives. Buglisi Weiler maintains that MAC is shifting in its philosophy from being “a destination brand” with only “one third of the distribution that most of the makeup brands in specialty have. We realize that with the changing behavior you really have be where they want to shop.”

On average, MAC will occupy 200 square feet per store and the product assortment will be limited to 600 stock keeping units, Buglisi Weiler said. While that number is on a par with Ulta’s big makeup brands — Lancôme, Urban Decay and Clinique — it is a smaller total than the roughly 1,200 sku’s MAC has in departments stores and the 1,500 sku’s in its own brand boutiques. Simon said the Ulta curation represents about 45 percent of MAC’s product universe and the individual items were picked in close collaboration between brand and store, playing to MAC’s heritage and Ulta’s penchant for crisp editing. “We worked very closely with Karen and her team to make sure we had the must-haves, the hero products and the pillar categories,” Simon added. “We are deep into foundation, primer and lipstick.”

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