SEPHORA Goes Silicon Valley Style

Izzie Kalaja takes a look at groundbreaking cosmetics company, SEPHORA, and their leap into new realms within Silicon Valley, California.

One in LVMH’s suite of retail brands, SEPHORA is taking their 2016 social impact into Silicon Valley territory. Yesterday, the leading beauty retailer unveiled SEPHORA Accelerate– a program designed to mentor and encourage 10 early-stage beauty start ups founded by female entrepreneurs.

“Even in the beauty industry, where most customers are women, female founders are still underrepresented,” said Corrie Conrad, Head of Social Impact at SEPHORA. In a world where 85% of venture capitalist funded start-ups are lead exclusively by men*, SEPHORA Accelerate aims to provide innovative female thinkers with a supportive staging space.

The program eschews a competitor-style format and instead focuses on collaboration, community, and connectivity. To qualify, candidates must meet certain criteria: they must be the founder or co-founder of their business, be committed to socially conscious enterprise, and create a cosmetic product or relevant technology/service.

SEPHORA will select its class of 2016 by March, with participants flown to the company’s headquarters in San Francisco for a skills bootcamp. Mentorship will be provided through SEPHORA’s expansive network of industry leaders, and successful companies may become eligible for future funding.

The program’s goal is to support more than 50 women-led beauty businesses by 2020 as part of SEPHORA STANDS — the company’s overarching Social Impact hub. To learn more about SEPHORA Accelerate and other new programs under the Social Impact banner, check out http://www.sephora.com/sephora-stands.

*Professors Candida G. Brush, Patricia G. Greene, Lakshmi Balachandra, and Amy E. Davis, and the Arthur M. Blank Center for Entrepreneurship Babson College; Diana Report Women Entrepreneurs in 2014: Bridging the Gender Gap in Venture Capital (September, 2014) as referenced by PR Newswire.

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