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Ulta Beauty doubled the number of U.S. stores that fulfill e-commerce orders in fiscal year 2025.

Over 1,000 of the beauty retailer’s U.S. stores fulfill such online orders as part of its ship-from-store program, according to an annual filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday. That compares to about 500 stores in the ship-from-store program at the end of fiscal year 2024, per an annual filing in March of last year.

The implementation of an AI-powered order management system for fulfillment optimization during the latest fiscal year helped Ulta expand ship-from-store capabilities, CEO Kecia Steelman told analysts on an earnings call earlier this month.

The company maintained the same number of regional distribution centers, smaller market fulfillment centers and fast fulfillment centers from 2024 to 2025. However, Ulta is in the process of constructing a new distribution center in the Northwest that will expand its network capacity and fulfillment speed, Steelman added.

Retailers like Walmart have also paid more attention to stores for fulfillment purposes. Walmart in Q4 of its latest fiscal year posted about a 50% growth year over year in store-fulfilled delivery, contributing to its e-commerce sales, per an investor presentation.

Additionally, Target’s strategy “continues to leverage stores as fulfillment hubs,” which have fulfilled over 97% of its total merchandise sales in each of the past three years, according to its annual SEC filing from earlier this month.

Information on Ulta’s store fulfillment expansion comes as the company earlier this month reported fourth quarter net sales grew 11.8% year over year to $3.9 billion and its full fiscal year 2025 net sales grew 9.7% to $12.4 billion. The beauty retailer expects net sales to grow between 6% and 7% during fiscal year 2026 and projects comp growth of 2.5% to 3.5%.

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