Our Insights

At Navigo, we have been watching the digital retail landscape evolve for years. The writing has been on the wall: beauty retail is shifting toward marketplace models. Amazon has set the standard with endless assortment and consumer convenience, and now Ulta is...

Advertising Activity in the Beauty and Personal Care category decreased 14.5% percent quarter
over quarter, and organic visibility increased by 14.7% percent.
Hero SKUs were the main drivers of success. Brands like Nutrafol, Medicube, and Clean Skin Club
leaned into their top products using clear positioning, optimized PDPs, and high social proof. The
strongest performers showed alignment between media strategy, pricing, and conversionfocused content.
Looking ahead, brands with disciplined assortments, tested creative, and clear margin control are
best positioned to outperform during key shopping moments like Prime Day.

Concentration = Opportunity: The event rewards scale, but smaller challengers can win by finding white space in under-leveraged subcategories.
Margin Over Volume: Growth isn’t equal across categories—premium categories like fragrance and skincare drive higher profitability potential.
Investment Imperative: Success isn’t organic, brands that dominate also spend. Strategic ad dollars are nonnegotiable.
Unify Your Channels: Treat Ulta’s event as part of a full-funnel strategy, not a silo. Without integrated data, you’re underestimating true ROI.
CEO Action Point: To unlock share, simplify your partner ecosystem, align investments across retail + DTC, and insist on measurable, unified results.

When a brand begins to scale, early wins in a single channel can feel like a green light for everything else. A product gains traction on Amazon, or starts climbing the bestseller ranks after a limited launch on Ulta. Maybe a few SKU-specific TikTok moments create a spike in DTC. These wins are real, and they often signal that something fundamental is working. But for brands beyond their early traction phase, the temptation to extrapolate one channel’s performance into an entire growth roadmap is where misalignment begins.

Today’s beauty shoppers move seamlessly from TikTok to Amazon, Ulta, or Sephora before making a purchase. The fastest-growing brands aren’t relying on one platform, they’re connecting awareness, consideration, and purchase across channels.

On Amazon and Ulta, the shopper is not browsing. They are searching. They arrive on the page looking for something usually a product they already have in mind, or a very specific problem they are trying to solve. They are not passive. They are not waiting to be inspired. They are looking to be convinced.

Beauty retail in 2025 is not a one-size-fits-all game. While many brands appear on Amazon, Ulta, and Sephora, the way they succeed in each channel is very different. After reviewing Q2 2025 performance
for Amazon and Ulta and Q1 2025 performance for Sephora, one truth is clear: the right product, in the right format, with the right story wins, but the path to that win depends entirely on the platform.

Nutrafol continues to dominate with clinical credibility, strong DTC brand equity, and a high AOV product that performs without relying on discounts.

Prime Day looked a little different this year. With four days instead of two, the event stretched consumer attention and made urgency harder to capture. Day 1 started strong, followed by a dip on Days 2 and 3, then a rebound on Day 4. Despite the diluted format, our brands outperformed, and did it profitably.