Ulta Beauty to relocate from South Shore Mall to Gardiner Manor in Bay Shore, company says

Ulta Beauty will be closing its South Shore Mall location this spring as part of a relocation of the beauty supply retailer five minutes down the road, the company said Wednesday.

Ulta, which announced plans in November to add over 200 stores nationwide — including at least two on Long Island — plans to open a new location at the Gardiner Manor Mall in Bay Shore this summer, the company said in an email to Newsday. As part of the new opening, the retailer will be closing its existing location at the South Shore Mall later this spring.

The company did not provide exact dates for its Bay Shore closing or opening.

Officials with Kite Realty Group, the landlord of Gardiner Manor, an outdoor shopping center located at 834 Sunrise Highway, did not respond to requests seeking comment on the Ulta move.

The new location will be roughly 10,000 square feet and will feature Ulta’s Salon and Beauty Bar offerings, the retailer said.

Bolingbrook, Illinois-based Ulta, the country’s largest specialty beauty chain, said last year that it planned to open up locations in Selden and Oceanside this spring or summer.

The cosmetics retailer, founded in 1990, has over 1,400 stores across the country, including 15 on Long Island.

David Swartz, senior equity analyst at Morningstar Research Services LLC, a Chicago-based financial services firm, said although Ulta has continued to add more stores nationwide, the retailer has faced challenges recently due to increased competition and decreased consumer sales of beauty products. 

"Ulta has been affected by competition in beauty that has really increased in the last few years, partly because Sephora has been opening stores inside Kohl’s locations," Swartz said. "There’s also been in an increase of beauty sales through channels like Amazon or TikTok."

Fourth quarter revenue for the retailer, released last week, showed that sales fell 2% to $3.49 billion from $3.55 billion the same quarter a year earlier.

"The beauty industry itself has not been particularly strong in the last few quarters," Swartz said. 

"Ulta has been very successful, but it did admit this past week that 2024 was the first year where Ulta lost share in prestige beauty," he said. "And it was because of the heavy increase of Sephora stores."