A leader in prestige omni-retail, our mission at Sephora is to create a welcoming beauty shopping experience for all and inspire fearlessness in our community.
We operate over 2,700 stores in 35 countries worldwide, with an expanding base of over 500 stores across the Americas, and a world-class ecommerce site. Since opening our first US store in New York’s SoHo neighborhood in 1998, Sephora has been an industry-leading champion of diversity, inclusivity, and empowerment in the US, guided by our longstanding company values.
Owned by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the world’s leading luxury goods group, Sephora was founded in France by Dominique Mandonnaud in 1970 and is defined by its unique, open-sell environment with an ever-increasing assortment of products from carefully curated brands, featuring emerging favorites, trusted classics, and Sephora’s own line, Sephora Collection. Sephora continues to curate innovative brands including a robust Clean beauty assortment and exclusive brands like Rare Beauty by Selena Gomez and FENTY BEAUTY by Rihanna brought to market first by Sephora. Today, Sephora is a powerful beauty presence in countries around the world thanks to our unparalleled assortment of prestige products in every category, unbiased service from beauty experts, interactive shopping environment, and relentless innovation, including our expanding array of the ways in which clients can shop with Sephora.
Sephora has been recognized by Forbes as one of America’s Best Employers four years in a row, from 2018-2021. For three years in a row, from 2019-2021, Sephora scored 100% on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Quality Index, the national benchmarking tool on corporate policies and practices pertinent to LGBTQ+ employees.
Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion
At Sephora, our diversity and inclusion mission is simple: To never stop championing all beauty fearlessly and building inclusive environments for our employees, consumers, and communities. In 2019, Sephora announced a new tagline and manifesto, “We Belong to Something Beautiful,” to reinforce our dedication to fostering belonging among all clients and employees and to publicly strive for a more inclusive vision for retail in the Americas. In 2020 Sephora launched our Diversity and Inclusion Heart Journey to support our vision of becoming the Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity Champion in the retail industry.
Together, we’re committed to creating a culture of belonging. In 2020 Sephora became the first major retailer to take the 15 Percent Pledge, committing 15% of our assortment to prestige Black-owned companies. By the end of 2021, we’ll more than double our assortment overall, including achieving the 15% benchmark in prestige haircare.
To continue our commitment to bringing diversity, equity, and inclusion to the core of our mission, Sephora has dedicated our annual Sephora Accelerate program to brands with founders of color. To learn more about our Accelerate program, please visit sephoraaccelerate.com.
The Racial Bias in Retail Study Commissioned by Sephora
This first-of-its-kind national study was conducted over a yearlong period, beginning in the fall of 2019 and ending in late 2020, and was designed to measure the issue of racially biased experiences in US retail and to identify opportunities to end unfair treatment. Comprising academic literature reviews, cultural insights analysis, and comprehensive qualitative and quantitative research, the Racial Bias in Retail Study commissioned by Sephora offers an in-depth look at this important issue.
The goal of the research is to call attention to the inequities of retail shopping experiences for consumers and, more importantly, identify actionable solutions to galvanize change. The research identified five primary “truths” that define retail shoppers’ experiences with racial bias along with offering ways in which other retailers can leverage the learnings. Coupled with the study’s findings and our all-encompassing Diversity and Inclusion Heart Journey strategy, Sephora designed a preliminary action plan to tackle bias across all aspects of the organization via three key areas: Marketing and Merchandising; The In-Store Experience and Operations; and Talent and Inclusive Workplaces.
Sephora has committed to bi-annual share outs of our progress towards creating an inclusive environment for all. To learn more about the study, as well as the latest updates of our action plan and Diversity and Inclusion Heart Journey, please visit www.inside-sephora.com/en/usa/diversity-equity-inclusion and our Sephora Newsroom.
Best-in-Class Omnichannel Experience
Sephora.com launched in the US in 1999 and quickly became Sephora’s largest North American store, where clients can today discover and interact with more than 340 curated brands and more than 45,000 products and engage with the Beauty Insider Community.
Obsessed with teaching and inspiring clients to play in a world of beauty, Sephora has pioneered the use of mobile in beauty, creating groundbreaking content on our intuitive Sephora app and on social media to bring Sephora’s expertise to our clients whenever and wherever they want. Please follow along at YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok.
As a leader in digital innovation, Sephora continues to provide the best-in-class e-commerce experiences and meet our clients where they are. The dynamic shifts in consumer behavior, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, resulted in a variety of strategic digital partnerships to increase the ways our clients can shop, prioritizing ease and convenience, including Facebook Live Shopping, Same Day Delivery, Buy Online Pick Up In Store and Instagram Checkout to name a few.
In the latest evolution of the industry-leading Color iQ, Sephora has relaunched this complexion matching tool with AI technology. Current shade matching in the industry only accounts for depth and undertone, while Sephora's new Color iQ technology also includes a third and critical component, saturation. The Sephora-proprietary AI technology includes the use of an unbiased algorithm that provides clients with a proprietary dataset of 10K+ skin tones, suitable across all shade ranges, ensuring a personalized match for all.
Beauty Insider Benefits
In 2007 Sephora launched a client loyalty program to offer clients exclusive benefits and rewards. The Beauty Insider program is available in Sephora stores nationwide and at sephora.com. In 2009 Sephora launched VIB (Very Important Beauty Insider), and in 2013 added Rouge. Since the program’s continued evolution in 2020, Beauty Insiders can now redeem cash rewards and have even more samples to choose from and exclusive access to events.
Beauty Insider Community—Sephora’s own Beauty Insider Community is one of the world’s largest beauty forums, with more than three million members. The members-only mobile and online platform is a first for the prestige retail industry and serves as a destination for beauty lovers to find inspiration, ask questions, and get recommendations in an unsponsored, real-time, “real talk” social setting.
Sephora Credit Card – In 2019 Sephora introduced the Sephora Credit Card, Sephora Visa® Credit Card, and Sephora Visa Signature® Credit Card, giving Sephora clients even more ways to get rewarded for shopping their favorite brands. Sephora cardholders earn credit card rewards in addition to rewards in the retailer’s existing Beauty Insider Program. Sephora Visa Signature cardholders also have access to further Visa Signature benefits.
Distribution Centers
Sephora has five distribution centers located across four states—Maryland, Mississippi, Nevada, and Utah—totaling more than 1,600 employees moving products throughout the country to our stores and clients’ doorsteps.
In our continued commitment to create an inclusive space for our employees, Sephora’s distribution centers are leading the way by creating accessible environments that welcome talent with disabilities. A structured nine-week training program, a commitment to equal pay for equal work, and equitable performance standards are some of the ways we respect the dignity of our employees with disabilities and value talent in all its forms. Our employees can expect state-of-the-art facilities that help simplify and streamline our processes to expand employment opportunities for our diverse workforce. To learn more, please visit www.inside-sephora.com/en/usa/life-at-sephora.
Sephora at Kohl’s
The new long-term strategic partnership between one of the largest omnichannel retailers and the leading global specialty beauty retailer offers a fully immersive, premium beauty destination, prominently located at the front of Kohl’s store. In August 2021, Sephora at Kohl’s officially opened the doors to its first location in Ramsey, NJ and exclusively launched its beauty selection on Kohls.com, with around 125 of Sephora’s most beloved brands. 200 locations have opened in the fall of 2021, and shoppers can expect at least 850 locations by 2024.
Sephora Executives
Guillaume Motte, Global President & CEO of Sephora
Artemis Patrick, President & CEO of Sephora Americas
Carolyn Bojanowski, Executive Vice President, Merchandising, US
Christophe Le Boterff, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer
Corey Yribarren, Executive Vice President, Chief People Officer
Joan Willat, Executive Vice President, Chief Retail Officer
Mike Racer, Senior Vice President, Supply Chain
Nadine Graham, Senior Vice President, General Manager of E-commerce
Vlad Kuznetsov, Senior Vice President, Chief Information Officer
Zena Arnold, Senior Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer, US
Thomas Haupt, Senior Vice President, General Manager of Canada
Press Inquiries:
For media inquiries, please visit our Sephora Newsroom or email ExternalComms@sephora.com.
Potential Sephora Vendors Contact:
Have a product-focused brand that you think would be perfect for Sephora? We’d love to hear from you! Please click here to create a profile with our RangeMe partners to share your product submission with our Merchandising team.
Follow Sephora at YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok.