Category Management & Shopping Experience: How Sephora Is Promoting The Trend Of Contouring

I have been working in the health & beauty business for several years, and I find it very interesting. The wide range of brand, and the opportunities to grow new categories is very challenging.

One of the hypest trend of the make up business right now is what we call "contouring". What is it?

"Contouring is giving shape to an area of the face and enhancing the facial structure through makeup," says Beau Nelson, Kristen Stewart's longtime makeup artist.

Contouring used to be a professional techniques needing a lot of expertise in order to use. But a lot of the mass market make up brands decided to propose products to contour. Nevertheless, due to the technicity of these products, they are hard to sell.

This is the reason why Sephora has worked on a new store concept in order to help customers try these new techniques.

“That’s where Sephora comes into play,” said McDonald. “When you demystify, people feel empowered to buy. This translates into her being more engaged in beauty, and that translates into her buying more items.”

Also featured alongside the workshop is Sephora’s digital Beauty Board, a shoppable screen that plays user-generated content coinciding with current trends. Visitors who sit down at the station can watch the looks go by for inspiration, and then pick up the exact products used. Customers can also share their beauty routines and accompanying products to stream on the board. A “People Like Me” search function filters the content stream to show specific skin tones, hair textures and more.

“It’s not digital for the sake of digital,” said McDonald. “It’s a combination of products, services and teachable moments that support our customers’ missions.”

More features in the new San Francisco store include fragrance identifier InstaScent (previously called Poof) that spritzes raw notes of a perfume to help customers decide which defining scent they’re most attracted to (McDonald noted that fragrance is one of Sephora’s under-performing categories). Digital Trend Tables show which online products are most popular and best-selling in real time.

This is a good example on how category management could be leveraged in store to develop new product categories. 

Sephora Flash

Sephora has recently opened a new store concept in Paris named Sephora Flash. The purpose of the store is to try the new technologies in store to improve the shopping experience. You will see a video (in French) below showing you how the shopping experience goes.

The key concept in the shopping experience is the NFC cards allowing the shopper to get information on the product and compose their "digital basket". The idea is simple, based on showrooming: The store, whith counts only for 100 square meters, holds as much products as their larger store of 1 500 m2. How, simply because they have very few stock in the shop. They count on home delivery and the day after delivery in store.

Now, to me, the concept has been base on the problematic of the size of the store. The goal is probably to propose the larger product range as possible (the one the standard concept needs) in smaller places.

Moreover, the retailer has an opportunity to test its new technologies in order to understand better how to use them in terms of customer relationship management. This is the reason why they have a robot to give advices on top of the standard employees they usually have.

Now The only thing that seems to be lacking is obviously beacons. Because why would people use small NFC cards while they could use their phones to have extra content, even maybe more personalized?

Also, it is interesting to have a look at what Sephora does with this store, as obiously the luxury goods and cosmetics product categories are most of the time in advance in terms of usage of new technology and new trends. Even if you are a FMCG retailer you shall have a look at this cutting edge concept.

Retail Strategy: Sephora Is Expanding Its E commerce Activities

Sephora has recently launched a beauty box offer. The concept is simple: 

• The customer fills in a questionnaire, about its preferences in terms of cosmetic products (colors, style, type of skin...)
• The customer pay a monthly subscription
• Each month it receives a box full of samples to try out

Now, the fact that Sephora proposes beauty boxes is not what is really outstanding in terms of retail strategy:

• It is a leader of the beauty market
• The beauty box is known to be a success for several years in a row
• They have strong brand partnerships, and already proposes tons of samples to their customers.

What is interesting, is to see how Sephora leverages its Ecommerce presence. Indeed, not for every companies it is a good idea to launch an online stores. At least, it is difficult to find success as competition is very tough. Especially when Amazon is eager to develop the category online.

But the fact that one retailer creates a specific offer for its online strategy is something very interesting:

• Rather than selling DVDs online, why not selling a streaming service?
• Instead of selling the same clothings than in store, why not having a customization proposal?
• Instead of selling some furnitures online, why not having a second hand market?

There is a lot of new business models, created by start up or not yet existing online, that need to be figured out, and having a creative and unique strategy online could be a great way to generate online traffic and extra sales.