A brave — and perhaps hyper-specific — new world of beauty retail is on the horizon.

That is, an emerging set of players is looking to evolve the way beauty and wellness products are sold — from bringing text-to-buy back to making overstock sexy to decoding the next generation of beauty-tech products and more.

The time seems ripe for alternative approaches to retail: In recent years, Amazon and TikTok Shop have both been snatching market share from beauty’s more traditional department store and specialty retailers, and consumers are increasingly prioritizing value in ways that transcend brand or even retailer loyalty. Two years after debuting in the U.S., TikTok Shop now accounts for roughly 1 percent of beauty sales across the mass and prestige markets, according to Circana, and as retailers proliferate, the pie is likely to become increasingly fragmented.

As K-beauty World founder Sarah Chung Park put it: “Today’s beauty consumer is driven by curiosity, not just loyalty; people want to discover, not just shop.”

With different approaches to curation, brand-building and even how to hit “purchase,” here, Beauty Inc spotlights four rising beauty retail platforms to watch.

Martie 

Byredo perfumes sold at half the price? 

At Martie, the off-price online grocery store founded by Louise Fritjofsson and Kari Morris in 2021, the answer is “yes.” Earlier this year, Martie expanded its assortment beyond the likes of Hydro Flask, Tate’s Bake Shop and other food and lifestyle offerings to include beauty — and in a matter of months, the category has soared to become the e-tailer’s number-one revenue driver. 

“Our vision is to build the Amazon for liquidation,” said Fritjofsson, who previously founded and sold AdProfit as well as PopSox, now a part of Nordic online fashion retailer Bubbleroom. “I want Martie to be a household name and somewhere people know they can turn when they want to be smart and affordable, while feeling modern and chic and buying great-quality brands.”

The platform’s assortment is ever-shifting, but roughly 75 of the 551 brands sold on Martie are beauty brands, ranging from Boy Smells’ pre-rebrand product to overstock items from luxury brands like La Mer and Joanna Czech. The average discount on beauty products hovers around 50 percent, with Byredo, Chloé and La Mer ranking as the platform’s top three brands by revenue; its top three by units sold are Futurewise (which was shuttered in March), Goop and True Botanicals.

“Even the most boujee brands deal with overstock — liquidation does not discriminate — and it’s an industry we felt that no one is doing in a way where they’re building a platform that consumers want to be associated with,” said Fritjofsson. 

Martie’s customers are 80 percent women, with 30 to 45 years old being the most prominent age group, and Los Angeles and New York being the e-tailer’s top two markets. Most shoppers earn above the average household income of their respective locale, which Fritjofsson said, “is surprising for a store that sells items on discount, but also — everyone loves a deal, and we’re just seeing a surge in people wanting to be smart amidst economic uncertainty about where they’re spending their cash.” 

Indeed, it isn’t just cash-strapped shoppers browsing through Martie: 60 percent of the platform’s shoppers report using Martie “specifically for the purpose of discovering and trying new brands and products,” Fritjofsson said, adding that 90 percent report buying the products they try and like via Martie at full price when it comes time for replenishment. 

“Most of the brands we’re working with have never worked with liquidation partners, which is part of what leads to that customer experience that is all about discovery,” said Fritjofsson, who aims to double the platform’s beauty assortment by the end of 2025 and quadruple it by this time next year. 

“We’re helping the brands and retailers we work with to move inventory, but many of them are also seeing us as a marketing platform, which is very exciting,” continued the cofounder. “We want to see how big we can make our beauty category.”

213Deli

A West Coast start-up is looking to make “text to buy” happen again. 

Founded by Ipsy veterans Corey Weiss, Nicole Collins and Juliane Camposano, 213Deli — which gets its name from Los Angeles’ first area code conjoined with “deli” (because, “there’s one on every corner in New York, you can order something just the way you want it, and you leave happy,” Weiss explained) — is looking to make e-commerce even more convenient for beauty obsessives. 

The platform functions via a once-weekly product drop, which shoppers are notified of — and can then purchase — via a text that is delivered each Thursday at noon PST. Drops are typically either new launches or hero products, and have included Vacation’s SPF 30 Orange Gelée Spray Oil, Vegamour’s Gro Dry Shampoo, Evolvetogether deodorants and more. 

“We felt strongly that the art of curation has been lost — that retailers like Sephora and Ulta used to tell us what’s cool, and now social media is telling retailers what’s cool — it’s not the shopping experience it once was,” said Collins. “So we thought, what if your ‘best friend’ was to text you once a week saying ‘girl, you’ve got to know about this,’ and if you want the product — you simply text back.”

Once users have purchased via 213Deli and uploaded their shipping and payment info once, each subsequent purchase is a single-text “reply to buy” process. And shoppers do come back — in fact, the company reports that 75 percent of users, the majority of whom are Gen X, make multiple purchases. 

“We intentionally target Gen X and 35-plus-year-old women because they have the funds to make purchases, and they don’t have the time to doomscroll on social media for two hours a day looking for the best brands and products — we’re doing that for you,” Weiss said. 

213Deli’s top-performing brands include Phlur (“fragrance in general does well,” Collins said), Shhhowercap and Thrive Causemetics, and the platform has teamed with RMS Beauty, GoldFaden MD and Kopari to launch new products. In terms of fueling growth, the brand’s primary strategy is teaming with seasoned beauty influencers and beauticians to promote the platform to their audiences on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok.

“We’re going out to people who are true beauty lovers — not novice beauty lovers — and we’re getting product into 100 to 300 peoples’ hands in a given week,” Collins said, adding that the next frontiers for 213Deli are growth and personalization. 

That might look like: “You telling us you never want nail polish; or that you only ever want perfume, or makeup specifically in these shades — maybe you want to receive your texts on a Tuesday instead of Thursday,” said Collins. 

“Three different users could be getting three completely different drops based on their profile,” added Weiss. “This is very much a one-to-one experience.”

K-beauty World

Sarah Chung Park, founder and chief executive officer of Landing International, is no rookie to bringing Korean beauty brands Stateside — though her latest endeavor involves doing so at an all-new scale. 

Specifically, it involves eight brands and 200-plus products rolling out to Ulta Beauty in one swoop this month as part of “K-beauty World,” a collective entailing next-gen Korean skin care and makeup favorites including I’m From, Mixsoon, Some By Mi, Rom&nd, Chasin’ Rabbits and more. 

“After nearly a decade of helping individual Korean brands find success in U.S. retail, I recognized the need for something bigger: a unified platform that could tell a deeper, more inclusive story about Korean beauty and where it’s headed,” said Chung Park, who  spearheaded CosRx’s entry to Ulta Beauty in 2017 and has helped several other brands from the region build their U.S. presence since. “This isn’t just about what’s trending in Korea — it’s about what’s next in beauty overall.”

The launch of K-beauty World follows a steady stream of U.S. beauty retail forays by K-beauty brands that have become popular on TikTok for their efficacy and general affordability. Anua — a routine top-10 brand on TikTok Shop, per Charm.io — entered Ulta last December; Aestura launched in February at Sephora, where Beauty of Joseon and Torriden also debuted this summer. 

“Shoppers don’t just want to buy a product, they want to understand the context, the culture, and how different items fit into a routine,” said Chung Park. “By bringing eight brands together under one branded experience, we’re able to tell a broader story about Korean beauty — one that spans skin care and makeup — while still giving each brand its own moment to shine.”

As part of this mission, Chung Park hosted a monthslong pop-up tour for K-beauty World, called K-beauty Mart, bringing the assortment to five cities over the last several months in a vibrant, traveling “mart” — complete with prop branded snacks inspired by traditional Korean snacks like Turtle Chips, Together Ice Cream and Choco Pie — in New York, Los Angeles, Austin, Chicago and Coachella. 

“We’ve found that multisensory, educational experiences are incredibly effective in helping people connect with new products and ingredients,” said Chung Park, adding that no products were sold at K-beauty Mart — though some 120,000 samples were handed out — rather, the tour served to allow a new set of consumers to engage with these emerging Korean skin care and makeup brands and Korean culture more broadly. 

At Ulta, multibranded kits will be a key part of K-beauty World’s retail strategy, with a “Beginner’s Kit,” “Viral Kit,” and “Expert Kit” available, respectively, to further encourage discovery. 

“One of the biggest takeaways from building K-beauty World is that today’s beauty consumer is driven by curiosity, not just loyalty — people want to discover, not just shop,” said Chung Park. “K-beauty World is the first time U.S. consumers can explore a curated, multibrand K-beauty assortment at this scale in a mainstream retail environment.”

Tm:rw

Times Square’s newest, 20,000-square-foot store and so-called “multisensory playground,” was born of one question, explained by the company’s global head of marketing Jordan Traxler: “Why is retail so boring?”

Called Tm:rw, the store features an assortment of innovative, tech-driven products across the lifestyle, gaming, wellness and beauty categories, and is the first stand-alone brick-and-mortar store from Smartech Retail Group, which was founded in 2016 by Nathalie Bernce and Jacov Nachtailer as a concession inside Selfridges. 

Today, Smartech is the second-biggest concession at Selfridges after Louis Vuitton; it also operates shops-in-shop at Kadewe in Berlin and Rinascente in Rome, all of which will eventually transition to Tm:rw outposts. 

“We wanted to brand as Tm:rw so we spoke to innovation holistically,” said Traxler. “The ability to interact with innovation should not be gatekept to the rich — everyone should have access to what drives us forward.”

Among the beauty and wellness products sold at Tm:rw are Gillette heated razors, Laifen Hair Dryers, Whoop’s wearable wellness trackers, Foreo LED masks, handheld AI skin and scalp analysis device Becon, Momcozy electric breast pumps and more. They’re merchandised alongside offerings like LG’s transparent Smart TV, a race-car simulator which customers can take for a metaphorical spin and more. 

“When you go to trade shows like CES, you see all of these incredible, groundbreaking technologies and then they just never make it to market — or if they do, they’re placed behind plexiglass in a Target where you have to ring a bell for an associate — it’s not a pleasant experience,” said Traxler. 

Tm:rw aims to breathe more interactivity and autonomy into the consumer tech experience at retail. Each product is displayed out in the open, with an informational screen behind it that details how the offering works. There are Hyprvsn holograms throughout the store, a Tm:rw cafe offering sweet treats, a karaoke experience set in a mock living room and an e-sports section called Playhouse. 

“We want to be welcoming to everyone, and we want to show how technology can work with humanity to make life better,” Traxler said.