Dive Brief:
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Sephora has partnered with Marks & Spencer to bring “Sephora at M&S” shops into 100 of the U.K. retailer’s stores and to its website, starting next spring.
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M&S said the spaces will boost traffic from new and existing customers. The retailer’s share of the U.K. beauty market in the 12 months ending mid-July is a little over 1%.
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For Sephora, the shops will extend its reach in the U.K., according to a joint press release.
Dive Insight:
The beauty market in the U.K. is approaching roughly $7 billion and grew 1.2% in the 12 months ending July 19, according to WorldPanel by Numerator data cited in the press release from M&S and Sephora Tuesday.
These retailers have come together in their efforts to grow their share. For M&S, the Sephora spaces will enhance a wider push there that includes investments into a private-label beauty assortment, according to a statement from John Lyttle, managing director of fashion, home and beauty at M&S. The partnership is part of an ongoing transformation of the beauty offer, he said.
“Beauty is an important category for M&S, with the potential to attract new customers to shop with us and give existing customers the opportunity to shop with us more often,” he said.
This was the hope at Kohl’s in the U.S. when that retailer forged a similar alliance with Sephora in 2020. The U.S. department store touted the shop-in-shops as a traffic and sales driver for years. But so far this year they have been a drag on Kohl’s results.
But the similarities don’t go all that deep because M&S is starting off the relationship with more advantages of its own, including some traction with younger consumers, according to GlobalData Managing Director Neil Saunders.
“M&S is in a strong position, and it already has plenty of traffic drivers to stores — especially the food offer. M&S also has its own beauty and personal care assortment, albeit one that is fairly narrow,” he said by email. “Comparatively, Kohl’s added Sephora to a core proposition that was struggling and the offer jarred a little with the rest of the Kohl’s store. The move by M&S is tactical. It was already building up its credibility with younger shoppers and it sees Sephora as a targeted way to get more of those cohorts in its stores.”
The tie-up with M&S furthers Sephora’s ambitions in the U.K., too, by combining its prestige beauty expertise with the retailer’s brick-and-mortar infrastructure, according to Catherine Spindler, Sephora’s president of Europe and Middle East.
“Our UK launch has been such a huge success, that we wanted to go further and faster,” Spindler said in a statement. “Our partnership with M&S is the next evolution of this strategy, introducing a retail model that complements our existing formats and allows us to build on the strength of the Sephora brand in the UK.”
