This week, the executive leadership team of Sephora has descended on New York for its first global brand summit, where chief executive officer Guillaume Motte will share his strategic vision with about 200 brands.
The goal: To solidify Sephora’s standing as the retail partner of choice in a landscape that is increasingly competitive and nuanced around the world.
“We think it’s important to share our optimism with our brand partners,” Motte said during an exclusive interview prior to the global gathering on Thursday. “It’s really a matter of sharing our strategy, sharing our priorities and making sure that together with them we grow the market, because there is no such thing as external demand.”
To be held at the Rainbow Room in New York, the event comes at a pivotal moment for Sephora. While it is a bright spot for parent company LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, with organic revenue in its Selective Retailing division — in which Sephora is by far the largest contributor — growing 4 percent and operating profit up 28 percent in 2025, Sephora has not been immune to the fast-shifting channel dynamics in some of its key markets.
While Latin America, the United Kingdom and Middle East have all had positive market share gains, challenges in other key markets are proving thornier. In the U.S., for example, Amazon has exponentially increased its share of prestige beauty sales, and TikTok Shop is quickly gaining ground, becoming a top 10 beauty retailer just two years after launch. China continues to be a pain point, while in Australia, Mecca continues to have a commanding market share.
Such geographical nuances have resulted in a delicate dance for many brands when it comes to exclusivity — and key among Motte’s goals this week is to solidify Sephora’s position as the retailer of choice in an increasingly fragmented and complex market. “We are the only worldwide player and we do have a track record of incredible brand partnerships,” he said.
In the year ahead, Sephora is planning to open roughly 150 new stores (a pace it will maintain for the next three years), including launching in Belgium and Croatia and expanding its presence in the U.K. to about 20 doors total. It will also continue to invest in upgrading existing stores, as with the recently renovated unit in Mall of the Emirates in Dubai, which Motte said is now a top-five performer globally.
But it’s not through opening new stores that Motte hopes to build the business — it’s in optimizing those already in the fleet. “We still have a lot of room to improve in terms of market share,” he said. “In our best market, we have about 50 percent share and in the lowest one, about five, so there is a lot of opportunity. And because of the size of the market,” he continued, “there is nothing more important than to continue to win in the U.S. in terms of massive opportunity.”
At a meeting with analysts and investors on Tuesday to discuss LVMH’s 2025 year-end results, group chairman and CEO Bernard Arnault said of Sephora, “We only cover a very small part of the world, so there’s still so much to do, even though we’re generating significant revenue today. But profitability is very good, growth is very good so anything is possible.”
Sephora’s biggest win in 2025 was the launch of Hailey Bieber’s Rhode, which was introduced at Sephora U.S. in September and in the U.K. about a month later. Industry sources report the brand hit $65 million in sales in the last four months of the year. The retailer declined to comment on that figure, but did say Rhode is currently the number-one brand for Sephora North America and the launch was the biggest in its history.  But while Sephora won the exclusive for the brand in the U.K. market, beating out SpaceNK (now owned by archrival Ulta Beauty), it lost out to Mecca in the Australian market, where Rhode is launching in February.
For his part, Motte insists that exclusivity is not necessarily an all-or-nothing proposition for Sephora. “When we say exclusivity it means bringing something unique to our customers. We have plenty of brands which are broadly distributed in the market, but they bring exclusive ranges, previews, ways of activating,” he said. “Exclusivity can be seen in very different ways.”
Still, multiple brand executives (who declined to speak on the record about exclusivity for fear of upsetting Sephora) contend that the retailer is often quick to express its displeasure when a formerly exclusive-to-Sephora  brand  decides to launch on Amazon or partner with a different retailer outside of the U.S. That dynamic has become even more sensitive in the last couple of years, as many brands that are considered primarily exclusive to Sephora such as Kosas, Glow Recipe and Makeup by Mario have been put up for sale but have failed to transact.
Motte strongly refuted the notion that there is a correlation between exclusivity and the ability to attract a strategic buyer. “The capital market is one thing and the fact that indeed there were less transactions is not linked to exclusivity,” he said. “Launching at Sephora has a [positive] influence on the way the product is perceived.
“The most important thing for the brand and for us is to say, how do we partner to grow together?” he continued. “We have never forbidden anyone to do anything with their brands.”
More recently, Sephora unveiled a partnership with Korean health and beauty retail powerhouse Olive Young, which calls for curated Olive Young “zones” in stores starting this fall in the U.S., Canada, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, encompassing about 650 freestanding stores in North America and 48 in Asia. The program will roll out to the Middle East, the U.K. and Australia next year.
“K-beauty is moving very fast. You need to be really close to new brands, new products and the innovation that’s coming in,” said Motte. The move also better positions Sephora to play in a lower price point range than many of its current brands. “Skin care is very much driven by K-beauty, which is about both affordability and efficacy,” he said.
After a volatile year in the color cosmetics category, in which key brands like Rare Beauty, Charlotte Tilbury and Fenty were all said to be down by double-digits in the U.S. market, Motte expects a strong year ahead in makeup overall, noting that there are a number of foundation launches slated for 2026, a hero product in the category. He anticipates fragrance will remain “dynamic” and said hair is “expanding very fast.”
The CEO is also focused on bigger-picture questions,  including how AI will impact consumers and the retail experience. Sephora is one of Google’s partners for its  universal commerce protocol to pilot agentic commerce.
Motte is also endeavoring to hone how the teams operate with more agility in the age of virality. “We see that in all categories, the life cycle of product and brand interest is shortened. So how can we be even more agile?” Motte said. “How can we make sure that when the trend is there, we make big, bigger and we anticipate the next wave of interest?
“The consumer is switching very fast,” Motte said. “How do we answer the trend and better plan those fast trends?”
