Before Sephora, beauty retail was a very different world. Products sat behind glass, and a single sales rep, loyal to just one brand, controlled how a customer experienced beauty.

Today, Sephora has completely rewritten that experience. It is now the largest beauty retailer in the world, generating over 17 billion U.S. dollars in annual sales and holding immense power over which brands rise and which brands fade. But how did a 60-year-old French company become an American powerhouse? What happened that allowed Sephora to rise from a disruptor to the most powerful player in beauty retail?

In this episode, we’re diving into part one of Sephora’s story. (Apologies for the late upload, but this turned out to be a much bigger story than we expected.) We’ll unpack how Sephora began, and how it went on to take over the world. Next week, we’ll zoom in on the past decade and take a closer look at the wider industry to understand what Sephora’s position means for brands today, and where it’s headed.

A series of images, references, graphs and visual aids have been created to help narrate this story. You can find them at barefaced.substack.com. And you can find Barefaced everywhere else at beacons.ai/barefaced.

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