IRDC: Sephora is the Expert Again

Sephora keeps reinventing itself — successfully.

Yesterday morning, Paul Loux, svp of store design and property development, took the audience at the International Retail Design Conference on a Sephora journey, from its origins as a French parfumerie to its position today as a worldwide sector innovator.

But the conference’s second-day keynote speaker noted that it hasn’t been a problem-free trip. He said the company has had to reexamine is strategies several times, most recently when it reinvented its store design in 2009 after a too-much-too-soon growth program left existing stores bruised and outmoded. It closed several of what had once been its most successful locations and moved what had been its signature cashwrap in the center of the store because, he said, it was too bulky and obtrusive and halted customer traffic, It also set up beauty advisor consultation rooms around the store interior to establish its role as a beauty expert, not just a seller of merchandise.

One of the company’s best moves, Loux said, was its partnership with JC Penney Co. Inc. (Plano, Texas). Though Penney’s has had many public struggles lately, the partnership has been good for Sephora. Loux said the retailer’s three biggest markets in the world are the U.S., China and France, which account for 71 percent of sales. “But if JC Penney were a separate country,” he said, “it would be our fourth-largest nation in terms of sales.”

VMSD is holding its 13th annual IRDC in Vancouver this week. The magazine will have coverage of the event in its November issue.