Beauty’s interest in Mexico gathered pace in 2025 and is showing no sign of slowing down.
Kicking off its partnership with Grupo Axo last year with a glitzy party in Mexico City attended by the likes of Shakira, who has her own hair brand stocked at the retailer, Ulta Beauty has now speedily opened a total of nine stores, with more on their way.
Ulta Beauty president and CEO kecia Steelman, Shakira, Grupo Axo CEO Andres Gomez Evoto
The initial move brought around 35 brands to Mexico for the first time, including Isima by Shakira, Peach & Lily, Orebella, Ulta Beauty Collection, Morphe, Bubble, about-face, Ouai, Half Magic and Kitsch. They’re displayed alongside Mexican brands like AHAL, AloeVida, Bailando Juntos by Yuya, Sarelly and more.
Jessica Phillips, vice president of merchandising at Ulta Beauty, said: “Mexico represents one of the most dynamic and culturally influential beauty markets today, with guests demonstrating strong enthusiasm across makeup, skincare and hair care as they explore both global favorites and beloved local brands. We’re seeing strong momentum from brands like Morphe, e.l.f., Yuya, Ulta Beauty Collection, Sarelly, KeniaO’s fragrance, and isima, which reflects the importance of celebrating iconic local beauty alongside global innovation. At the same time, interest in K-beauty continues to grow rapidly.”
Elsewhere, E.l.f. Beauty launched in Mexico via Sephora in 2024 and at the end of last year the Estée Lauder Cos. made a minority investment in Xinú, a Mexican luxury fragrance brand, marking the first time the beauty company has invested in a Latin American brand.
The reason driving all this activity lies in the data. According to Euromonitor, the Mexican beauty and personal care market was worth $17 billion in 2024, the most recent year available, up from $15.5 billion in 2023 and $11 billion in 2020.
Ana Seccato, Circana’s beauty analyst for the Latin America region, believes retailers and brands are attracted to both current demand and future potential of the country with a population of 132.8 million, many of whom are young. Data from the World Bank showed that in 2024, almost a quarter of the population was age 14 and below.
“Mexico is a powerhouse in Latin America’s prestige beauty market, accounting for nearly half of regional sales — yet globally, it remains an emerging market showing great potential,” Seccato said. “With an average age around 30 years old, Mexico’s beauty consumer is young, highly penetrated by social media and well aligned to global trends.”
From a retail perspective, she noted that the fading trend of direct selling over the past decade has created openings for the development of new channels and brands, fueling some of the strongest prestige growth rates in the region. “This has attracted many players — not only entry brand and retailers to the market, but also expansion in terms of distribution and new apertures.”
Sephora has been in Mexico for 15 years, but has been in expansion mode recently, opening eight stores last year, bringing the total to 52.
“There have not been that many double-digit growth markets for multiple years, and Mexico is one of them. It’s a very important market for us, with a lot of potential. It’s a competitive market, but thanks to our longtime presence, our strong market share, our excellent team on the ground, and our unique and differentiated offer, we have so far done a good job at exciting the Mexican consumers,” Sephora global chief operating officer Alexis Rollier said. “We are accelerating our store opening phase and what’s exciting about Mexico is there are many new high-quality shopping malls that are being built, which are a good environment for beautiful stores.”
Sephora Mexico
This expansion is being driven by consumer demand, according to Andrea Orcioli, general manager of Sephora in Latin America. “The Mexican consumer is well educated, super curious and more and more they go for digital content influencers, and all the trends that we see globally go fast to Mexico,” she said. “So we are opening many new stores, but also our digital platform is really exploding.”
In this market, she added that brands need to be agile, but also have the right storytelling in order to connect with the consumer. For example, for a campaign around exclusive brands, Sephora produced it locally, with local models.
In addition to its assortment of many international prestige brands including Makeup by Mario and Patrick Ta and homegrown ones like Sarelly (more on this brand later), in 2024 Sephora Mexico became the first Sephora ever to bring in E.l.f., a move followed by the chain in the Middle East.
“Initially, it was to have a more affordable brand that would be accessible to the Mexican consumers,” said Rollier. “Our number-one brand in that segment is our own collection, but we also want to be able to offer some other brands. And E.l.f. has been doing a beautiful job in entering Mexico, being very relevant locally, doing incredible local marketing for the Mexican consumers.”
Tarang Amin, the CEO of E.l.f. Beauty, said demand has been phenomenal. “We’re one of their top brands in Mexico. We’re bringing in a whole different consumer set — Gen Z, more diverse.”
It’s now also in the process of rolling out in Ulta Beauty’s Mexico stores. “Mexico is an important market for us, particularly given our strength with Hispanics,” said Amin.
E.l.f. Cosmetics Glow Reviver Melting Lip Balm
Ben Alsop
Blush-Bar, a Latin American beauty retailer with locations in Colombia and Chile, entered Mexico in 2023 and currently has nine locations.
“Mexico is a very large and growing market so the sheer size was very interesting to us,” said founder and general manager Claudia Lloredo. “The consumer is very passionate about beauty. We love seeing a market that allows us to have tremendous room to grow with expansion. We also love that Mexico shares our Latin American spirit. There’s cultural differences, of course, across Latin America, but many of our core values, our love of music, our love of pop culture, our Latina spirit connects very well with the Mexican consumer. So, for our third market, we said this is the market that we want to be in.”
Blush-Bar
Her advice for brands entering Mexico? “Mexico for us is a long-term game. While there’s been tremendous growth, it is still a very large market where building awareness will take time, so it’s not quick. If you enter Mexico, it must be with a very long-term perspective in mind, because you are building brand awareness, brand loyalty, excitement, engagement.”
Other key retail players include the department stores Liverpool and Palacio de Hierro, and Superama, a subsidiary of Walmart. Like the U.S., Amazon and TikTok Shop are also key platforms for beauty shopping in Mexico. The latter said beauty was the top-performing category for the past year of operations in Mexico.
On what consumers are focused on, fragrance is key.
“One of the specific characteristics of the Mexican beauty market is how relevant the fragrance category is — it represents over half of the total sales of the market, which is even higher than Europe,” said Seccato. “With beauty category lines being blurred, scent and longevity are key.”
Lloredo has also found the consumer at Blush-Bar is very interested in color cosmetics, including brands like Milk Makeup, Natasha Denona and Pixie.
“We found that she loves makeup,” she said. “We were surprised by that because it’s been such a skin care moment in beauty for a long time, but in 2025 we saw makeup in Mexico just grow for us tremendously. Body care is another great surprise — body mists, body creams, body scrubs, have all done tremendously well.”
On the homegrown makeup side, Sarelly, founded by Mexican influencer Anna Sarelly and French beauty exec Remi Martini, who relocated to Mexico City a decade ago, has been a standout.
Anna Sarelly and Remi Martini
Aquiles Cardens
Starting life as an accessories brand, the duo soon moved into cosmetics. As well as showcasing Mexican culture, the brand has set out to target pain points for its community, including producing shade matches. “Eighty percent of the market don’t cover Latin undertones, which are more golden and more olive,” said Martini.
Then there is its Long Cow Lashes mascara. “We really tap on a pain point that no one’s was talking about before with fun and humor,” said Martini. “Latinas have cow lashes. They are thick, and they [point down]. So we launched the Cow Lash mascara with a very fun campaign, and that became viral.”
In Mexico, the brand is sold at Ulta, Blush-Bar, Amazon, TikTok Shop and Sephora. It also has three stores, is on track to open 10 more this year, and in 2025 it secured $3 million in a seed funding round from Wollef, a Mexican VC fund. It now has its eye firmly on U.S. expansion. A soft launch on TikTok Shop in the U.S. indicated that demand is definitely there, with $1 million in revenue in six months for one product.
“There is room and there is a spot for a brand to become the next Sol de Janeiro,” he said.
As for domestic versus international brands, Lloredo believes there is space for both to coexist. “We love bringing homegrown brands from the region. We do have international brands, of course. The Mexican consumer loves both brands.”
In addition to Mexican and American brands, the K-beauty trend is strong in Mexico, according to Circana. Its data found that while traditional department stores still represent the majority of sales for international brands, beauty specialized retailers are gaining traction, driven mostly by Gen Z that are looking for brands outside the mainstream like K-beauty.
Ulta Beauty is capitalizing on this, bringing an assortment from retail platform K-Beauty World to Mexico. Sephora is also making headway in this space, bringing brands like Medicube to Mexico: “We are seeing this trend get stronger and stronger,” said Orcioli.
Medicube
It’s partly due to this reason that there was an explosion of K-beauty exhibitors at Cosmoprof Miami in January, often seen as a gateway to Latin America.
As for the Mexican economy, Nielsen Mexico said that while consumption for fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) was down last year, the only category to see growth was beauty, which increased 0.8 percent, although these figures only cover the mass market. The overall economy grew by 0.7 percent in 2025, according to Mexico’s national statistics agency INEGI. Nevertheless, this was the slowest pace of growth since the pandemic as tariffs continue to weigh on the country.
“It’s the only industry that is still growing, even after a full year of very consistent decreasing in the volume, in the consumption in Mexico,” said Raquel Jiménez Padilla, director of customer success, Nielsen Mexico. “It is a relevant industry for the Mexican market and a priority.”
Data:
Top Beauty and Personal Care Brands in Mexico by Market Share
Colgate: 3.8
Natura: 3.8
Mary Kay: 3.7
Jafra: 3.4
Palmolive: 3.3
Nivea: 2.9
L’Oréal Paris: 2.8
Garnier: 2.6
Gillette: 1.7
Avon: 1.6
Source: Euromonitor
