Marks & Spencer has launched a tie-up with Gen Z beauty favourite Sephora as in an effort to win over younger shoppers.
The two brands announced "Sephora at M&S" on Tuesday, with concessions in branches and online scheduled to launch in spring. Sephora concessions will appear in 100 M&S stores.
French-owned Sephora has rapidly become one of Britain's most successful retail brands since it returned to the UK in 2022 after a nearly 18-year hiatus. It stocks a wide range of beauty and skincare brands popular with younger shoppers.
The retailer has won over younger generations through substantial investment in online campaigns, and through using AI technology to offer personalised skincare routines, "virtual makeup" try-ons and product recommendations.
Its youngest cohort of shoppers, Gen Alpha consumers born after 2010, have been nicknamed "Sephora kids", and Marc Jacobs once described the brand as a "mecca" for cosmetics. The retailer is owned by LVMH, the French luxury group behind Louis Vuitton and Dior.
It also marks a coup for M&S in its ambition to attract a new generation of customers to help drive the growth ambitions of Stuart Machin, the chief executive. The move will also see it take on the likes of John Lewis and Boots which have both invested heavily in beauty.
While its food division is growing rapidly – with sales up 7pc in the last financial year – the non-food half of M&S, which include fashion, homeware and beauty, is still struggling to recover from last year's devastating cyber attack.
M&S has not yet disclosed which locations will feature Sephora concessions, nor which products will be on sale through the partnership.
However, it promised a "carefully curated mix of established beauty favourites, emerging brands and exclusive products across skincare, makeup, fragrance, haircare and bodycare".
Founded in France in 1969, Sephora previously operated in the UK but decided to close its stores in 2005 because of competition from chains such as Boots and Superdrug.
However, since returning it has put pressure on the retailers that once drove it out. The launch of Sephora's first UK physical store in 2023 at the Westfield London shopping centre in White City was marked by three-hour queues of shoppers.
Catherine Spindler, the president of Europe & Middle East at Sephora, said: "Our UK launch has been such a huge success that we wanted to go further and faster. 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."
John Lyttle, the managing director of beauty at M&S, said the tie-up would "sit at the heart of our future beauty offer".
