How Beauty Executives from Ulta Beauty, Tarte and Beekman 1802 Are Implementing AI Into Workflows

Beauty Industry Leaders Are Betting Big on AI — Here's What That Actually Looks Like

Artificial intelligence has moved well beyond the realm of tech startups and Silicon Valley boardrooms. It has arrived, firmly and decisively, in the beauty aisle. At Glossy's annual E-Commerce Summit held in Miami Beach, three seasoned beauty industry executives took the stage to discuss one of the most pressing questions facing consumer brands today: how are beauty and wellness business leaders actually using AI, right now, in their day-to-day operations?

The executives represented three very different but equally influential corners of the beauty world — Ulta Beauty, Tarte Cosmetics, and Beekman 1802. Their answers offered a rare, candid look at how AI is reshaping workflows, customer engagement, content production, and retail strategy across the industry. If you assumed AI adoption in beauty was mostly hype, their perspectives might change your mind.

Why the Beauty Industry Is a Natural Fit for AI Innovation

The beauty and wellness sector has always been data-rich and trend-driven, making it one of the most fertile grounds for AI integration. Brands are constantly managing an enormous volume of SKUs, customer reviews, social content, personalization demands, and supply chain logistics. AI tools are not just useful in this environment — for many executives, they are quickly becoming essential.

Consumer expectations have also shifted dramatically. Shoppers now expect hyper-personalized recommendations, instant customer service, and content that feels relevant and timely. Meeting those expectations at scale, without proportionally scaling headcount, is exactly the kind of challenge that AI is built to solve.

For established retailers like Ulta Beauty, which serves millions of loyalty members, and digitally native brands like Tarte Cosmetics and Beekman 1802, the pressure to innovate is constant. The executives at Glossy's summit made clear that AI is no longer a future consideration — it is a present-tense operational priority.

Ulta Beauty: Using AI to Personalize at Scale

As one of the largest specialty beauty retailers in the United States, Ulta Beauty operates at a scale that makes personalization both critically important and uniquely complex. With tens of millions of loyalty members and an expansive product assortment spanning mass to prestige, the challenge is not collecting data — it is using that data intelligently.

AI has become a core tool in helping Ulta personalize the shopping journey across digital and physical touchpoints. From product recommendation engines that analyze purchase history and browsing behavior, to AI-assisted email marketing that adjusts messaging based on individual customer signals, the retailer is embedding machine learning across multiple layers of its customer experience strategy.

Beyond personalization, AI is also playing a growing role in inventory management and demand forecasting. Predicting which products will resonate with which customer segments — and ensuring those products are available at the right time and in the right channels — is a logistical challenge where AI is delivering real, measurable value.

Tarte Cosmetics: AI as a Creative and Content Ally

For Tarte Cosmetics, a brand built on strong visual identity, community connection, and social media savvy, AI has found a natural home in content creation and marketing workflows. The brand has been vocal about exploring how generative AI tools can accelerate content production without sacrificing the authentic, bold voice that Tarte's audience has come to expect.

One of the most practical applications has been in copy generation and ideation. Marketing teams are using AI to brainstorm campaign concepts, draft initial social captions, and develop product descriptions — freeing up human creatives to focus on strategy, refinement, and the kind of nuanced storytelling that machines still cannot replicate on their own.

AI is also being explored in the context of trend forecasting and consumer sentiment analysis. By processing large volumes of social data, reviews, and search behavior, AI tools can surface emerging beauty trends earlier, giving Tarte's product development and marketing teams a sharper competitive edge.

Beekman 1802: Bringing AI Into Community-Centered Commerce

Beekman 1802, the farm-to-skin wellness brand known for its goat milk formulations and deeply community-driven ethos, represents a different kind of AI adopter. For a brand whose identity is rooted in kindness, storytelling, and authentic human connection, the integration of AI requires a thoughtful balance between efficiency and soul.

The Beekman 1802 team has been exploring AI primarily to improve operational efficiency — particularly around customer service, content localization, and e-commerce optimization. AI-powered chatbots and service tools help the brand maintain responsive, warm customer interactions even during high-volume periods, ensuring that the brand's signature approachability is not compromised by scale.

Internally, AI tools are also being used to streamline workflows around reporting and performance analysis, allowing the team to spend less time pulling data and more time acting on insights.

Key Takeaways for Beauty Brands Navigating AI Adoption

Across all three brands, a few common themes emerged from the Glossy E-Commerce Summit discussion that offer useful guidance for any beauty business considering deeper AI integration:

• Start with a clear business problem. The most successful AI implementations are solving a specific, well-defined challenge — not deploying technology for its own sake. Whether it is personalization at scale, content velocity, or demand forecasting, clarity of purpose drives better outcomes.
• Human oversight remains non-negotiable. None of these executives described AI as a replacement for human judgment. Instead, they positioned it as an accelerant — a tool that amplifies what talented teams can accomplish, not one that substitutes for them.
• Brand voice and authenticity must be protected. Particularly for consumer-facing content, maintaining the distinct personality and values of a brand requires ongoing human involvement. AI can generate a first draft; it takes a human to make it sound like you.
• Data quality is foundational. AI is only as useful as the data feeding it. Brands investing in AI are simultaneously investing in cleaner data infrastructure, stronger analytics capabilities, and more disciplined data governance.
• The learning curve is real, and that is okay. Even seasoned executives are navigating trial and error. Normalizing experimentation — and learning quickly from what does not work — is part of building an AI-ready organization.

The Bottom Line: AI Is Now a Beauty Industry Baseline

The conversations at Glossy's E-Commerce Summit made one thing unmistakably clear: AI adoption in the beauty industry has crossed the threshold from early experimentation into mainstream operational strategy. Brands that are not actively exploring and implementing AI tools risk falling behind — not just in efficiency, but in their ability to deliver the personalized, relevant, and responsive experiences that today's beauty consumers expect.

Whether you are a global retailer like Ulta Beauty, a digitally native color cosmetics brand like Tarte, or a purpose-driven wellness company like Beekman 1802, the message from the summit is consistent: the question is no longer whether to integrate AI into your workflows. The question is how fast you can do it thoughtfully, and how well you can do it on brand.

As these executives continue to refine their AI strategies, the rest of the industry will be watching closely — and learning from every step of the journey.