Founder of Sephora: Who is Dominique Mandonnaud?

The story of the founding of Sephora: The meaning of Sephora is beauty, style is fun, elegance. Dominique Mandonnaud opened a small perfumery shop in France in 1969. The name of the shop was Shop 8. At that time, there was no testing when purchasing perfumes. You could buy the perfumes first and then smell them. Mandonnaud made a revolution, allowing customers to try products before purchasing. Giving people the gift of an experience can sometimes lead to great results. 12 more stores were opened in 1979. In 1979, Mandonnaud opened a new perfume store called Shop 8 in Limoges. Unlike the typical small perfume shop, the store provided a large and open sales area and placed the products within reach of customers.

Sephora is a French multinational retailer of personal care and beauty products with nearly 340 brands, along with its own private label, Sephora Collection, and includes beauty products such as cosmetics, skincare, fragrance, nail color, beauty tools, body lotions and haircare.

Sephora later increased its store count. With 2 partners, things grew even bigger. It grew further as a chain store towards the mid-1990s. It reached 54 stores in France in 1997.

Sephora made a big breakthrough in 1997. Louis Vuitton and Moet Hennessey (LVMH) purchased Sephora by paying 344 million Euros. Mandonnaud retired when he turned 50. Sephora has doubled in size since LVMH. The brand opened its first overseas store in New York, USA, in 1998. Later, it also expanded to Italy, Portugal, Spain and Poland. Sephora opened stores in Japan in 1999, and in Portugal and Greece in 2000. In 1999, Sephora also launched online sales. Sephora, which had more than 460 stores by the end of 2000, became a major international brand.

The company was founded in Limoges in 1969 and is currently based in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. Sephora is owned by luxury conglomerate LVMH as of 1997. The name comes from the Greek word meaning beauty, sephos, and the Greek spelling of Zipporah (Greek: Σεπφώρα, Sepphōra), wife of Moses.

Although the company grew and became an international brand, it had to curb its further growth. In the early 2000s, the company experienced losses along with growth. Innovations were made within the brand. Sephora has produced innovative products. In 2004, the brand expanded to Poland. Then he entered China.

Sephora During the Pandemic

Sephora President and CEO Jean-André Rougeot announced that they have made a very difficult decision to let go of less than half of their part-time and seasonal store employees in the United States.

In total, they retain 70% of Sephora's US store employees (full and part-time) and more than 80% of Sephora's total US workforce. It stated that they are offering all affected employees a severance package to close the gap in unemployment benefits if they choose to leave the job.