On Building Beauty at Ulta

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Lisa Smola-Hollo’s father taught the future beauty industry builder something pretty important when she was growing up. It’s that knowledge of all kinds opens doors—and more is more.

Her family history goes back to coal mining—how her father made a living before earning multiple degrees. Smola-Hollo’s own formal education included a combination of the construction trades, design, and space planning. And today her work is in the beauty industry. She’s the director of construction and remodels for Ulta Beauty Inc., a national retailer of cosmetic, fragrance, nail, bath, haircare, and body products.

“My dad said that the more you know, the better you do,” she says. While working on her bachelor of arts degree in design, she also went to a local trade school to acquire HVAC and electrical vocational skills. She later earned a master’s in business administration, deciding then she likes project management.

“The stores follow similar layouts with only slight variations. But there are different code requirements from state to state and city to city.”

Lisa Smola-Hollo

And manage she does. The company has approximately 1,200 stores—individual stores average around 10,000 square feet of main floor and back-office inventory—and in 2024, Ulta is remodeling more than 40 of them while adding 70 new sites (most of them conversions of existing retail spaces). That’s in addition to a thousand “rollouts,” where the introduction of a new manufacturer into the store drives design- and carpentry-required changes to the display areas.

Smola-Hollo says keeping all such things on track isn’t easy, but having great staff and dedicated contractors are the linchpins to building and remodeling successfully.

Consider how Ulta is in the beauty business, which by its nature is subject to constant change. And it’s a $500 billion industry growing annually at a 6 percent rate. It’s affected by innovation in products and in-store presentation, and lately there is a convergence of beauty and wellness, a focus on self-care, and ingredient transparency.

The customer is looking for products but also looking for an experience at Ulta that will exceed what happens at drugstore counters. Smola-Hollo takes this seriously. “The guest experience is important,” she says. And to the matter of well-managed HVAC systems, she adds, “makeup can melt in heat.”

She doesn’t just make sure the HVAC systems are working. For the good of the planet and the company’s cost management, she also selects systems that run at the highest levels of efficiency.

“The stores follow similar layouts with only slight variations,” she says. “But there are different code requirements from state to state and city to city. We design all stores everywhere to California’s Title 24 Building Energy Efficiency Standards.”

It’s not all about mechanical systems. The Ulta experience for shoppers is nothing if not visual. The store shelves and fixtures are a bright white, which she says provides Ulta’s “other customer” (the product manufacturers) the opportunity to let their products pop with color. The bright light also comes from strategically selected and placed LED lights. It’s a case of how exceptionally efficient lighting technologies serve a marketing objective as well. Smola-Hollo says the migration to LEDs took about six years, systemwide.

For further evidence on how the retailer regards its merchant partners, the makers of the products Ulta sells, consider the process by which several aspects of store design come about. The conversation begins with companies such as Lancôme, Ariana Grande, Chanel, Clinique, Charlotte Tilbury, and Sol de Janeiro. They meet and negotiate with Ulta merchandisers to determine how their products will be presented in the store. This boils down to multiyear contracts that then are handed to the design and operations teams, who next provide the blueprints to the builders: Smola-Hollo and her contractors.

“We first look at the power requirements,” she says about the moment that kicks into gear the build-out and how to meet the merchant partners’ marketing calendar. It’s been a particularly challenging task in the pandemic and post-pandemic supply chain crisis for product rollouts as well as whole store construction.

“My dad said that the more you know, the better you do.”

Lisa Smola-Hollo

“It still a challenge,” she says. “Things like electrical switch gears and lighting controls might not be available. In some cases, we are told to expect a 52-week deliverable.” She sometimes makes it work by taking components from one project and shipping them to another that is more time critical.

This neatly illustrates the essential nature of knowing how things work and its impact on the business. While colleagues toil away at what greets the consumer’s eye, Smola-Hollo is working the phones to ensure lights, air temperatures, circuitry, and contractor schedules make everything else possible.

The portion of women in the store planning and facilities profession is relatively small. “It’s tough to be a woman in construction,” she says. But Smola-Hollo serves on the executive advisory board for SPECS, an annual conference for people who plan, design, build, and maintain stores—representing the growing number of women in the field.

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