Why these three retailers are building out new marketplaces

Retailers are taking a page from Amazon’s online stores playbook—but with a twist.

Over the last year, specialty retailers Lowe’s (December 2024), Best Buy (August 2025), and Ulta Beauty (H2 2025) have each unveiled their own third-party marketplaces. This new wave of curated third-party marketplaces isn’t about becoming the so-called “everything store” like Amazon. Instead, it’s an opportunity for retailers to expand their product selection without the headache of holding inventory, offering shoppers more choice while keeping the brand experience tightly controlled.

Overall, this seems to be part of a broader bet that owning the marketplace layer means owning more of the assortment, monetization, and discovery game, two retail analysts told Retail Brew. According to eMarketer’s latest forecast, US e-commerce marketplaces have surpassed 40% penetration and are projected to exceed $500 billion in sales in 2025, with total marketplace sales expected to surpass $700 billion by 2029.

While Ulta, Lowe’s, and Best Buy are not exactly going head to head, each of the retailers now has a fresh growth lever to pull. As customers get more comfortable shopping at marketplaces, there’s a long line of merchants who could use the opportunity to get their products in front of shoppers via these platforms.

“Each of these companies wants to ensure that they aren’t missing sales because they don’t have some very specific item that somebody might want,” Zak Stambor, senior analyst for retail and e-commerce at eMarketer, told Retail Brew. “That’s the objective.” By partnering with a vendor like Mirakl, Stambor said, expanding product assortment would be a “fairly light lift” for these retailers.

Drilling down selection: Since launching its marketplace, Lowe’s has added a wide range of third-party products from indoor and outdoor furniture to kitchen and bath items, home decor, power tools, hand tools, and more. Similarly, Best Buy said it will more than double its product lineup as part of its marketplace strategy. “It’s a curated selection,” Stambor said. “They’re not trying to be Amazon or the everything store.”

These retailers are not just expanding their product assortments, they’re expanding their potential advertisers, Sarah Marzano, retail analyst at eMarketer, noted in an email: “The most successful retail media networks today are built on top of mature marketplace ecosystems, where a growing base of long-tail sellers translates into more demand for visibility and more opportunities for monetization. Over time, the cumulative ad revenue generated from these sellers can become a meaningful driver of growth for the overall network.”

Winning game: Ulta Beauty CEO Kecia Steelman said during the retailer’s March earnings call that the new marketplace will be a part of Ulta’s way to manage the evolving beauty shopping experience. “It’s about brand building, digital acceleration, personalization, marketplace, and wellness,” Steelman said.

Meanwhile, Stambor wrote in a follow-up email, launching a marketplace helps Ulta “meet the full range of beauty needs—whether that’s offering more indie brands or products designed for underrepresented consumers.”

Out of the three new entrants, Ulta probably stands to gain the most, Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail, wrote in an email to Retail Brew: “The beauty category is vast and [Ulta] can add all kinds of new brands and expand into categories like wellness which are not core to its existing offer.”

“Also, consumers have shown a propensity to discover and buy beauty online and to engage with new brands,” Saunders said. “We have seen this with TikTok Shop where beauty is huge. Beauty is also a very impulse-driven category, which can drive spend. Lowe’s and Best Buy, by comparison, are more purposeful purchases.”

Ultimately, the biggest challenge for these platforms will be delivering a seamless experience that lives up to the main brand’s promise. “Marketplace owners don’t have total control over sellers, and a lot of vetting and checking is needed to ensure standards remain high,” Saunders said. “Amazon has the tools and skill to do this; newer marketplaces may not.”