Glossier and Sephora are taking their partnership to a new market.
The beauty brand is entering Sephora France on June 13 in the retailer’s app, and is debuting in-store and on Sephora.fr June 17, with skin care, makeup, body care and fragrances. It follows Glossier’s 2023 Sephora debut in North America, and ensuing launches with the retailer in the U.K., Middle East and Mexico.
For Kyle Leahy, Glossier’s chief executive officer, there were a few different prongs of her rationale behind the expansion.
“It is the nexus of a cultural perspective, a brand perspective and a business perspective,” she said of her reasoning for launching in France. “Being at the epicenter of fashion, beauty, fragrance and culture, it’s an important moment for us to bring our brand in its full glory and not just in a pop-up.”
It was a natural next step following the success of the brand’s Glossier You and successive expansions, You Rêve and You Doux, though Leahy expects the products’ broader assortment to do well.
“The momentum we’re seeing — leading the next-generation fragrances to activate our omnichannel model with a record-breaking launch — has unlocked global potential,” said Leahy, adding that France is Glossier’s fifth-highest market by social engagement.
“We’re driven by our community,” she said. “In France, there’s incredible history and connectivity with the brand, and we have a highly engaged consumer base there.”
The move comes after a few different activations in France, including a pop-up with Colette in 2017 and e-commerce capabilities servicing the country the following year. In the last few weeks, the brand also held a pop-up for its fragrances.
“We knew we had customer demand and we knew we had customer pull,” Leahy said. “And in our conversations with Sephora, we knew it was such an important market. It is one of their most dominant markets and they represent and dominate prestige beauty both in Paris and all over France.”
The Sephora side saw a similar appetite for the brand. “We look at brand resonance, and we check if the products resonate with French consumers, and if the storytelling resonates with them. These are the criteria we look at for brands to enter the French market,” said Juliette Caloin, Europe’s vice president of merchandising at Sephora, who went on to note that the retailer is the leader in beauty retail in France, particularly in makeup. “The French consumers were waiting for Glossier at Sephora for many years.”
To that end, Leahy noted that the brand’s fragrance pop-up in Paris had 3,500 customers for just the weekend’s duration. “We had some innovative AI technology that allowed you to pick up the bottle of perfume and would develop a bespoke poem,” she said. “It was a modern experience we brought to bear in Paris a few weeks ago to prime the market.”
All of Glossier’s products will be merchandised together on a gondola, similar to other Sephora markets where the brand plays. “We operate like a lifestyle brand in beauty, and we’ve always merchandised across categories on our gondolas at Sephora,” Leahy said. “Our fragrance continues to be on fire, and we continue to see incredible momentum around that, but we also see nice momentum in skin care and makeup, and we have ammunition across categories that will fuel growth in the market overall.”