5,000 people, 50 brands: what Sephora’s annual festival reveals about the future of beauty

In the early 20th century, Atlanta’s Pullman Yards was a thriving industrial complex, a leading hub for chemical manufacturing. This past weekend, the entertainment and event venue was home to a very different industry, as 5,000 beauty fans descended from around the country for Sephora’s annual beauty festival, known as Sephoria.

The theme for this year’s event was Beauty Funhouse, and the cavernous space had been transformed into a kind of amusement park for makeup and skincare lovers. Tarte had created human-sized tubes of its Maracuja lip oils. Tacha had turned its area into a locker room, and it pitted its two popular moisturizers (“dewy” and “water”) against each other in a competition. Maison Margiela had set up a French café, complete with madeleines and cafés au lait, to highlight its hit Replica perfume line.

Attendees had flown in from as far afield as California, Illinois, and France. Others had driven through the night from Florida and Mississippi. They were there to interact with more than 50 of Sephora’s hottest brands and their immersive, Instagrammable booths. Attendees could hit up workshops and meet their favorite brand founders, make-up artists, and influencers. Sprinkled around the cavernous space were all sorts of games—ring tosses, claw machines, wheel-spinners, and more—that allowed fans to win exclusive new products.

With the Hurricane Helene passing through Atlanta and all of Georgia under a state of emergency, Sephora had had to cancel Thursday’s opening night party, along with Friday morning activities. But by Friday afternoon, the sun was out, the DJ was playing Troye Sivan’s “Rush,” and the party was underway.

Some of the brands on display, like Drunk Elephant and Supergoop, were industry titans, thanks, in large part, to their outsized presence in Sephora’s stores. But there were plenty of up-and-comers, too—brands that Sephora is helping to position for growth, including Ayurvedic haircare brand Fable & Mane, sensitive makeup line Tower28, and luxury fragrance startup Brown Girl Jane. Notably, many of the newer brands at Sephoria were founded by people of color, and are explicitly focused on making the beauty industry more inclusive.

These startups are transforming an industry that, as recently as a decade ago, was dominated by conglomerates like Estée Lauder and L’Oreal, which largely tailored their products and marketing to white consumers. But over the last two decades, the rise e-commerce and social media has allowed independent brands to emerge and create products for a wider range of consumers.

Since landing in the U.S. in 1998, Sephora has championed indie brands. But in recent years, it’s been particularly focused on bringing more diverse ones to its 600 stores across North America. It’s scoured the market for underrepresented founders with distinct concepts, spurred in part by its commitment to devote 15% percent of its shelf space to Black-owned brands as a signee of the Fifteen Percent Pledge. And it’s taken a more inclusive approach to its marketing and events. It was no coincidence that this year’s Sephoria was set in Atlanta, a multicultural city where nearly half the population is Black.

Sephora’s efforts to help cultivate a more inclusive beauty industry are now bearing fruit, a fact that was evident throughout Sephoria.

Telling Different Stories

Stepping into the vibrant mustard yellow and orange booth from Fable & Mane’s felt like stumbling onto a Bollywood set. On one side, there was a “bindi bazaar” where you could pick up packs of glittery stickers, which South Asian women wear on the center of their foreheads. And on the other, you could play “bindi bingo” to win a bedazzled version of Fable & Mane’s hair oil.

Akash Mehta, who cofounded Fable & Mane with his sister Nikita in 2020, was in the center of the booth, greeting attendees in a sparkly button down featuring a tiger, the brand’s mascot. Mehta, who had spent his early career working at Lauder Companies, Dior, and Burberry, says he and his sister launched the company because they felt the South Asian approach to beauty wasn’t reflected in many luxury brands. “Growing up, our grandmothers would massage our heads with oil while telling us stories,” he says. “Hence, the name. When they passed away, we wanted to find a way to capture their legacy.”

The siblings connected with Sephora early, when they were just developing the concept of the brand. They wanted to produce a line of traditional Indian hair oils, along with shampoo, conditioner, serums, and sprays infused with South Asian herbs like bakuchi, which is said to rejuvenate hair, and strengthening ashwagandha. The Sephora merchants were immediately interested, partly because they were keen to expand their range of high-end haircare. (Sephora has recently brought on other haircare startups like Vegamour, Pattern, and Dae as well.)

Within months, Fable & Mane was featured on the “Next Big Thing” end cap at Sephora, along with other new brands. It has done so well that that the brand is now expanding into its own shelf. Akash says that Sephora merchants have offered invaluable advice to help the brand to achieve the kind of scale necessary to be at a major retailer. But he says that it is also very meaningful that Sephora is willing to help Fable & Mane tell an authentic story.

“For beauty to be inclusive, we need to be telling stories from different cultures,” he says. “Sephora is very good at helping to tell our story online and in stores. It reflects a distinctly South Asian approach to beauty rituals.”

Supporting Black Founders

In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder in 2020, retailers and brands across the country offered messages in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Fashion designer Aurora James challenged them to go a step further, asking them to sign the Fifteen Percent Pledge and devote shelf space to Black-owned brands.

Sephora was the first major company to sign on. At the time, only 3% of brands on its shelves were Black-owned. It has now doubled this figure, and says that it is expecting to reach 15% in the next few years. In addition to identifying Black-owned startups, Sephora relaunched its Accelerate brand incubator program to help founders of color. It also began offering the Sephora Beauty Grant, a $100,000 cash prize and year-long mentorship program for a Black-owned brand.

Brown Girl Jane, a luxury fragrance startup, was the first brand to win the grant. Malaika Jones, the brand’s co-founder, was at Sephoria, in a special section called Next Big Thing, devoted to Sephora’s newest brands. She doled out spritzes of Carnivale, the brand’s newest fragrance, which blends sandalwood and vanilla, inspired by the smells of Trinidad. There was also Lamu, which blends bergamot and citrus to capture the scent of Kenya’s beaches.

Jones, who went through the Accelerate program, didn’t have a background in beauty, having spent two decades in the finance industry. She says Sephora gave her the practical guidance necessary to launch a beauty brand, from ramping up the supply chain to hiring the right team. But like Akash Mehta, she also says that Sephora seemed to understand the importance of offering a different point of view in the world of luxury fragrances.

“Perfume is aspirational, and when I was growing up, none of the big brands reflected my experiences,” says Jones. “I always wanted there to be a Black-owned fragrance brand alongside all the other luxury brands on the market.” Now, Brown Girl Jane sits alongside Valentino, Tom Ford, and Maison Margiela on the Sephora fragrance wall.

Success Stories

Danessa Myricks, whose eponymous brand launched in Sephora only three years ago, had one of the most popular booths at Sephoria. The line snaked around the floor and attendees were eager to get their hands on Myricks’ newest shades of chrome flakes, a product you swipe over your eyeshadow to give you a reflective sparkle. The entire booth had a holographic theme, as was filled with mirrors. Attendees could pick up free metallic tote bags—and fill them with free products.

Myricks’ partnership with Sephora has been a remarkable success story. For years, as a makeup artist, she had struggled to find products that work on dark skin. In the end, she resorted to creating her own formulas, mixing dark pigments she found at costume makeup stores into other brands’ foundations.

She launched her own line in 2015. For four years, she slowly grew her direct-to-consumer business, traveling around the country to get the word out abut her products. But everything changed when Sephora reached out to her in 2019, asking if she’d been interested in entering retail. Myricks points out that this was well before the racial justice protests rocked the country. “There was nothing performative about Sephora’s relationship with me,” she says. “They wanted to work with me before they signed the Fifteen Percent Pledge.”

But while working with Sephora can be a ticket to growth, it is also an expensive proposition for a small brand. Myricks was wary about investing in large quantities of inventory, and spending money on branded shelving and testers for stores. And it was hard for her to land capital; less than 0.5% of VC funding goes to Black founders.

Myricks says she explained her concerns to Sephora, and the merchandizing team worked with her to roll out slowly, to ease into the investment. First she launched online, then with a few inches of shelf space in the Next Big Thing end cap. Her brand quickly blew through all of its sales targets, which allowed her to get a larger shelf and then a full bay. In September, she moved into two bays. And importantly, this year she managed to close an undisclosed round of venture funding.

It’s relatively easy to launch a beauty startup. About 1,000 new beauty brands were founded in the mid-2010s, according to Ashley Helgans, an analyst at Jeffries. But achieving scale is another matter altogether, and often requires the right retail partner. Over time, companies like Danessa Myricks and Brown Girl Jane could become household names, alongside brands like Bobbi Brown or Jo Malone. And then the needle will truly move toward 15%.

“I still need to pinch myself when I think of how quickly we’ve grown,” says Myricks. “But there’s more work to do. We want even more people to discover our products.”