beauty.com

February 9, 2026

What beauty.com is today (and why that surprises people)

If you type beauty.com into a browser in 2026, you don’t land on a standalone store with its own brand identity. You get redirected into Walgreens’ beauty category pages on Walgreens.com. That’s not a glitch. It’s basically the end state of a long e-commerce story: Beauty.com was once a distinct online beauty retailer, but the domain now functions as a doorway into Walgreens’ main retail site.

This matters because Beauty.com used to mean something very specific in online beauty: a multi-brand destination trying to sit closer to “prestige beauty” than a basic drugstore aisle, even though it lived in the broader ecosystem of health-and-beauty e-commerce.

Beauty.com’s earlier identity: a prestige-leaning online beauty retailer

Beauty.com started in the late 1990s/around 1999, based in the Seattle area, positioned as an online retailer focused on beauty products. Several company-profile databases describe it as founded in 1999 (often attributing founding to Brock Wylan) and later acquired.

In practice, the brand became closely tied to Drugstore.com (another early online retailer for health, wellness, and beauty). If you remember the early era of e-commerce, Drugstore.com was one of the businesses that tried to replicate “the big box + pharmacy” experience online, before fast shipping and giant marketplaces became the default.

Beauty.com fit into that world as a more beauty-forward storefront within the larger “health and beauty online” model.

The Walgreens acquisition that changed the trajectory

The big turning point was 2011, when Walgreens announced it would acquire Drugstore.com in a deal valued at about $409 million enterprise value. Walgreens’ own press release from March 24, 2011 lays out the rationale: accelerate digital growth and gain access to Drugstore.com’s online customer base and operations.

Coverage at the time also noted that the acquisition included other sites operated by Drugstore.com, including Beauty.com and SkinStore.

It’s worth being blunt about what this meant strategically: Walgreens didn’t buy Beauty.com because it loved having a separate beauty destination brand forever. It bought a whole e-commerce engine (customers, infrastructure, know-how) and inherited multiple storefronts in the process.

Why Walgreens eventually shut Beauty.com down

In July 2016, Walgreens said it would discontinue Drugstore.com and Beauty.com, focusing instead on its core online property, Walgreens.com.

Reporting at the time described it as an exit from maintaining those separate sites, with an emphasis on concentrating effort on Walgreens.com and the company’s own digital retail priorities.

Multiple sources reference the sites going offline by the end of September 2016, aligning with the communicated shutdown timeline.

A practical way to interpret this:

• Running multiple retail sites is expensive, especially if they overlap in categories and inventory.
• Customer acquisition for standalone e-commerce brands got harder over the 2010s as ad costs rose and Amazon became a default search bar for many shoppers.
• Walgreens likely decided it was better to consolidate traffic, loyalty programs, personalization, and fulfillment under one umbrella instead of splitting attention between Walgreens.com and legacy acquisitions.

What the domain tells you: Beauty.com as a retained asset

Even though the standalone store is gone, Walgreens appears to have retained control of the beauty.com domain. Public WHOIS records list Walgreens-associated nameservers and show the domain’s registration history and current expiration window.

That lines up with what you can observe as a user: the domain is actively used as a redirect into Walgreens’ beauty shopping experience.

This is a common post-acquisition pattern:

• Keep the old domain so you don’t lose type-in traffic.
• Redirect it into the modern site so legacy awareness still produces sales.
• Reduce customer confusion and eliminate duplicate operations.

What Beauty.com’s story says about online beauty retail

Beauty retail online has a weird tension that never fully goes away:

• Shoppers want discovery, education, ingredient guidance, shade matching help, community, and reviews.
• Retailers want speed, repeat purchases, loyalty economics, and operational efficiency.

Specialty beauty retailers (like Sephora and others) built strong discovery and brand positioning. Mass retailers built convenience and breadth. Beauty.com tried to occupy a space that leaned more “beauty destination” while still connected to mass e-commerce DNA. After acquisition, that “in between” positioning becomes harder to justify unless it’s uniquely profitable or strategically essential.

The shutdown doesn’t necessarily mean Beauty.com failed at selling products; it’s more that, inside a larger corporation, running a separate storefront has to earn its complexity.

How people still “use” beauty.com in 2026

For a consumer today, Beauty.com is basically:

• A shortcut URL that lands you in Walgreens beauty shopping pages.

If you’re a marketer or brand person, it’s also a case study in:

• Why brand equity can outlive the business model.
• Why domains with intuitive names remain valuable even when the original product shuts down.
• How consolidation tends to happen when companies optimize for a single omnichannel experience (app, loyalty, stores, and one main e-commerce site).

If you’re building a beauty e-commerce brand, here are the practical lessons

1) Don’t underestimate the cost of running “another site.”
Every separate storefront multiplies content production, merchandising, SEO maintenance, customer service edge cases, and tech debt. Consolidation is often the rational move once scale matters more than niche branding.

2) A memorable domain is a real asset, even after the store is gone.
Beauty.com still captures intent because it’s obvious and easy to type. Retaining and redirecting it keeps that intent inside the parent company.

3) Acquisition logic can change over time.
In 2011, Walgreens wanted fast digital capability and customer reach.
In 2016, Walgreens wanted focus and simplification around Walgreens.com.
Both can be “right” decisions under different market conditions.

4) Beauty is not just another retail category.
Beauty shoppers often want education, trust, authenticity, and a sense that the retailer curates. Mass retail can absolutely sell beauty, but the experience has to be designed deliberately, not treated like toothpaste with nicer packaging.

Key takeaways

• Beauty.com is no longer an independent retailer; it now redirects into Walgreens’ beauty shopping pages.
• Walgreens acquired Drugstore.com (and related sites including Beauty.com) in 2011 for roughly $409M enterprise value.
• Walgreens announced the shutdown of Drugstore.com and Beauty.com in July 2016, aiming to focus on Walgreens.com, with closure by the end of September 2016.
• The Beauty.com domain remains maintained and appears tied to Walgreens infrastructure via WHOIS, consistent with continued use as a redirect asset.

FAQ

Is Beauty.com a real store anymore?

Not as a standalone site. In 2026, beauty.com functions as a redirect into Walgreens’ beauty category pages on Walgreens.com.

Who owned Beauty.com originally?

It’s commonly described as a Seattle-area beauty e-commerce company founded around 1999 and later acquired.

When did Walgreens get Beauty.com?

Walgreens acquired Drugstore.com in March 2011, and reporting at the time noted the deal included other Drugstore.com-operated sites such as Beauty.com.

When did Beauty.com shut down?

Walgreens announced the shutdown in July 2016, with multiple sources describing the sites going offline by the end of September 2016.

Why keep the Beauty.com domain if the store is gone?

Because the name still captures high-intent traffic. Keeping it and redirecting it helps Walgreens convert people who type the domain directly, and it prevents someone else from using a familiar name in the same category.