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Tag: Adore Beauty

  • Adore Beauty Expands Physical Network to 20 Stores in Omnichannel Shift

    Adore Beauty Expands Physical Network to 20 Stores in Omnichannel Shift

    Adore Beauty opened 13 physical stores during fiscal 2026. The Melbourne online retailer now has 20 locations across Australia.

    This expansion more than doubled its brick-and-mortar footprint. The brand had operated primarily as a pureplay digital platform for 26 years.

    Store Rollout Across Two Banners

    Openings included 11 flagship Adore Beauty storefronts and two locations under the IKOU brand. Group management committed tens of millions of dollars during the year to fund retail leases, supply chain infrastructure and expanded warehouse capacity.

    Those physical storefronts trade alongside the digital platform. Customer retention efforts helped expand the Adore Rewards loyalty program to 538,000 active participants during the financial year.

    Shifting Channel Economics

    Pureplay online beauty retailers across the Asia-Pacific region face climbing digital customer acquisition costs. Physical networks give digital operators direct access to foot traffic and higher-margin basket sizes, mirroring omnichannel rollouts across regional markets.

    Another five physical stores are scheduled to open as the company builds out its national retail pipeline.

  • Adore Beauty Hits Record Sales of $207 Million as Store Costs Cut Profit

    Adore Beauty Hits Record Sales of $207 Million as Store Costs Cut Profit

    Adore Beauty lifted full-year revenue 4.3 per cent to a record $207.3 million for the 12 months ended June 30, but heavy physical expansion cut underlying earnings by more than half.

    Underlying EBITDA fell to $3.8 million from $8.1 million a year earlier. Physical stores contributed $18.6 million to total revenue, while gross margin declined 52 basis points to 34.8 per cent.

    The Cost of Opening 13 Stores

    The Australian retailer added 13 locations during the financial year, comprising 11 Adore Beauty outlets and two Ikou shops. That took its national footprint to 20 doors after years of operating as a pure-play digital platform. New customer numbers climbed 14 per cent over the period.

    Alongside lease and fitout costs for an immature store network, the company funded a new national distribution centre, an enterprise resource planning software overhaul, and broader technology upgrades. Weak consumer sentiment in the fourth quarter added further pressure on margins.

    Adore Beauty expects store drag to ease as locations mature over an 18 to 24 month cycle. Pure-play e-commerce operators across the Asia-Pacific region have faced similar margin friction when transitioning into physical storefronts, trading immediate cash flow against long-term customer acquisition.

    Targets for the New Fiscal Year

    Chief executive Sacha Laing said the group has completed its core infrastructure overhaul on budget and on schedule, positioning the business for operational use.

    “The foundations to support our scaling omnichannel operations are now in place,” Laing said.

    Management has set an underlying EBITDA target of $9 million to $13 million for FY27, predicated on top-line revenue expanding by at least 10 per cent.

  • Adore Beauty Looking at International Expansion

    Adore Beauty Looking at International Expansion

    Online retailer Adore Beauty has officially launched a dedicated website in New Zealand. The move marks a return to international expansion after the company put its plans on ice over the past few years to address rapid growth in the Australian market.

    The completion of a warehouse transformation project in late 2018, which tripled fulfillment capacity, meant Adore Beauty was able to provide the same level of service to overseas customers as those in Australia – a precondition for the company’s founder and CEO Kate Morris.

    “Being able to pay in your own currency, having payment methods you recognize, a strong shipping offer…it’s all about taking the parts of the customer experience that people respond to really well in Australia and figuring out how to do that in New Zealand,” Morris said.

    Adore Beauty’s local New Zealand website, which officially launched on Monday, ticks all of those boxes. The retailer is offering free express shipping on all orders over $50, and same-day dispatch for orders placed by 4 pm, New Zealand time.

    According to Morris, the launch so far has gone better than expected, despite the buzz that Sephora is generating ahead of the opening of its first bricks-and-mortar store in New Zealand later this month.

    “It’s not something we get too wrapped up in to be honest,” she said about the arrival of the French cosmetics giant.

    “Anything that goes towards helping the New Zealand customer get the selection she deserves is generally a good thing.”

    Morris added that Sephora’s expansion in Australia has “grown the pie” for the beauty spending. Indeed, the online retailer expects sales to surpass $100 million this year – more than double last year’s sales of $52 million.

    “We’re seeing a bit of a shift in the way that consumers are approaching shopping for beauty online,” Morris said.

    “When we started 19 years ago, online shopping was all about price. The only reason people shopped online was that things might be cheaper, and that was never really what we were about. Then it moved to be a convenient replenishment option, and that was where a lot of our growth started.

    “What we’re seeing now is that customers are willing to go on a journey of discovery completely online. Between the type of content we’re producing now for our Beauty IQ blog and what we’re doing on Instagram, people are buying products online sight unseen.”

    Adore Beauty offers more than 14,000 makeup, skincare and haircare products from brands including Mac, Napoleon Perdis, Kerastase, Oribe, Aesop, Jurlique and others.

  • Adore Beauty to launch New Zealand before Summer

    Adore Beauty to launch New Zealand before Summer

    After putting international expansion plans on ice for the past few years to focus on growth in its home market of Australia, e-commerce business Adore Beauty is ready to go overseas again, and the first stop is New Zealand. According to Kate Morris, Adore Beauty’s founder and CEO, the Australian business will launch a localised website in New Zealand within the next six months. This will be accompanied by a local marketing campaign to increase awareness of the brand in the market.

    “The offering will be more competitive, and we’ll be looking to make ourselves a bit easier to find for New Zealand customers,” Morris told.

    Adore Beauty has shipped internationally since it launched in 1999, but in the past, the experience was less than ideal for overseas customers, since prices were in Australian dollars.

    In January 2017, the company partnered with Borderfree, a tech solution that enabled customers to see different currencies, payment methods and customs and taxes, depending on their location.

    This was always intended as a stop-gap solution to improve the international shopping experience until the business had capacity to think about international expansion again, according to Morris.

    “It wasn’t an area of focus; we weren’t spending any marketing dollars outside of our Australian consumers,” Morris said about international sales over the past few years.

    That has changed, as Adore Beauty recently completed a significant warehouse transformation project with HighJump, which saw its capacity triple to 4500sqm. This will enable the online beauty retailer to support its growing Australian business, while servicing new customers.

    “You’ve got to make sure you keep up your promises to the customers you already have before expanding out and trying to support new ones,” Morris said.

    “Part of our brand is the service level [we provide] and our reliability. Unless we can execute on that wherever we go, what’s our offering? We need to be consistent with our brand.”

    Morris said the New Zealand launch is just the first part of Adore Beauty’s expansion plans. It marks the “reopening of international generally”, she said.

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