Sephora and TikTok team up

Sephora, TikTok, and ad agency Digitas announced a new partnership: The Sephora x TikTok Incubator Program.

It will connect TikTok creators with 12 brands from Sephora’s Accelerate program, a six-month incubator for beauty founders of color that culminates in a Sephora brand launch.

These are two beauty powerhouses

LVMH-owned Sephora sells products from 360+ brands in-store, online, and via its app, per Retail Dive. It has 2.7k+ locations globally, plus a shop-in-shop partnership with Kohl’s that’s anticipated to generate $2B in annual sales by 2025.

TikTok has 1B+ monthly active users. Beauty brands go viral on the platform, where #beautytok has 35.4B views:

• The Ordinary saw a 426% spike in sales of its peeling solution.
• Glow Recipe saw a 600% spike in sales, with one product selling out 17x in 2021.

Consumers…

… are turning away from celebrity brands, instead seeking authenticity and quality, per Bloomberg.

An outlier is Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty, also part-owned by LVMH and worth an estimated $2.8B. Fenty won consumers over with inclusivity, offering shades for darker skin tones.

Sephora Accelerate is geared toward founders of color, and incubation is key to the company’s growth strategy.

• In 2013, Huda Beauty launched at Sephora Dubai with false lashes. It now sells 140+ products and generates ~$200m in annual sales, per Forbes.

Sylvie Moreau, Sephora president of Europe and the Middle East, told Vogue Business that it’s seeking another “10 or so” brands to follow suit. Should one go viral on TikTok, fans will only be able to get it at, well, Sephora.