I read a lot on this topic and sometimes I will share with you what inspires me personally. As part of the "Dog Ate" column, today I will tell the story of Sephora.
Facts:
Sephora has 2,000 stores worldwide and
sells 15,000 types of cosmetic products from 300 brands for $4 billion annually;
In 1969, this company was a small perfume shop in Limoges (France), but an unusual shop;
Its owner, 22-year-old Dominique Mandono, was the first to allow customers to open perfume bottles, inhale and apply the scents. A bold idea – at the time, expensive perfumes and cosmetics were hidden behind glass counters, and sellers jealously watched that their goods were not spoiled by accidental touch.
beauty
Dominic did more than let customers test out cosmetics — he changed japan mobile phone numbers database the beauty industry. Forty years have passed since those first experiments. Sephora continues to offer customers a space of experiences and experiments offline and online — from thousands of free product samples and a free 15-minute makeup session to interactive shopping in the Sephora Flash digital store and the innovative Color IQ skin scanner.
cosmetics advertising
In fact, that small shop of Dominique was a real "startup", but in the early 70s, no one thought about startups and coworking. Commission-dependent salespeople in perfume shops usually represented (and sometimes imposed) one brand, and the new cosmetics supermarket, opened in 1979, made a splash.
By that time, Dominique Mandono had collected and applied all his experience and interesting ideas of service and self-service in one place. In a large open space, different brands of perfumes and cosmetics stood side by side, grouped by type of use. Yes, yes, the owner of the future Sephora created the familiar format of a cosmetics store, where inspired French women applied creams and powders, tried perfumes and shades of lipstick.
In the 80s, Mandono continued to develop the formula of "smart self-service", opened several more stores, bought a small cosmetics chain in Paris, changed the investor - the distributor Promodes to the union of investment funds Apax Partners and Astorg.
The latter agreed to support the bold, but slightly unprofitable idea of expansion and opening from three to five stores per year, and in the early 90s, due to the difficulties of the French economy, he switched to the absorption of existing perfume chains.
Finally, in 1993, a suitable purchase object was found: 38 Sephora chain stores managed by the British holding Boots, which was actively promoting the French market through them.
Unfortunately, the invasion failed: the stores, which had been developing since 1970, became close to bankruptcy in 1992: the sale of luxury products mixed with inexpensive ones and minimal self-service capabilities turned out to be an unprofitable strategy. In September 1993, Altamir, Mandono's management company, bought the Sephora stores from Boots for $61 million.
Dominic liked the name, and the Shop 8 chain was also renamed, as was the holding company itself.
It is still unknown what Sephora means: at one time, the owners claimed that there was a Greek word sephos meaning beauty, but no such word was found, and the claim disappeared from the company's website. It is assumed that the creators were inspired by the biblical name Zipporah ("little bird"). Be that as it may, some mothers today name their daughters Sephora - not because of the book of books, but because of their passionate love for the brand.
The products have also changed: the company has its own (still very popular) brand S+, and the first sign and “calling card” of the new brand was a bath line of 24 colors and aromas.
It was Dominique Mandono who innovatively presented products in the form of a color prism, and a little later the creator of the brand once again delighted women by releasing 365 shades of lipstick for every day.
By 1997, the Sephora empire had 54 stores – and 50-year-old Dominique Mandono was about to retire. By that time, a gigantic (1,500 m2) flagship store had opened on the Champs-Élysées, and it was decided to sell the company to the luxury group LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton. Sephora was paid 344 million euros (in equivalent).
