A Response from Sephora

Dear Kimberly and Amaya,

Please see the following letter from George-Axelle Broussillon Matschinga, Senior Director, Diversity & Inclusion, SEPHORA US

Thank you for your letter and taking the time to share your point of view, your experiences and your questions. We share your drive to demand change — both within Sephora and in our industry more broadly — and recognize our role to do so given our role in beauty and the breadth of our platform. We are committed to building on our plans to promote and enable inclusivity, representation and diversity across all levels of our business.

As you know, on Sunday, we made a public commitment to take actions from recruiting to elevating our Black and African American team members throughout all levels of the company, including leadership, in response to the #PullUpForChange challenge. At Sephora, our executive level leadership team includes team members from our corporate offices, stores and distribution teams, and is currently 45% people of color and 6% Black or African American. Our eight-member operating committee has three people of color, four women, but no Black executives. As part of our commitment, we will increase representation of Black employees and employees of color in leadership roles and we will share our plans to do so. We recognize that Sephora can and must do better, and as we continue this work, we will be open and communicative about our progress along the way.

Yesterday, we also made the 15% Pledge to dedicate 15% of our shelf space to Black-owned companies, starting with a long-term plan for diversifying our supply chain and building a system that creates a better platform for Black-owned brands to grow, while ensuring Black voices help shape our industry. We plan to use our platforms and resources to drive meaningful and long-term change for Sephora and our industry. We have already taken several actions focused on promoting inclusivity, many of which are still in progress, including:

• Regular, ongoing trainings for all employees
• Conducting a comprehensive study of bias in retail
• Engaging third-party experts to advise on our work.

We take this work seriously and want to reiterate that at every stage of this process, we will be uplifting the voices and perspectives of our Black and African American team members and inviting in new voices to join these conversations and drive decisions that help build a better, stronger beauty community.

Our work toward these urgent goals has been ongoing, and we wanted to share the various steps we have taken in the last year alone that demonstrates our unwavering commitment to change.

We believe that right now, creating a sense of belonging, fostering conversations about inclusivity for all in our communities and taking tangible actions to make them a reality is more important than ever. We have shared more information on the actions we have taken since the launch of this platform following this letter and we welcome your perspective as we work toward our shared goals.

Sincerely,

George-Axelle Broussillon Matschinga, Senior Director, Diversity & Inclusion, SEPHORA

Additional Background & Information on Actions Taken To Date

In-Store Client Experience Program

• This program included honoring diversity and celebrating the color of all our clients, which continues to guide our actions today. Following the announcement of our company manifesto, Sephora shut down all U.S. stores, distribution centers, call centers and corporate offices on June 5 to facilitate a company-wide inclusion workshop focused on inclusivity and belonging.
• We recognize that for a long time, clients of color have been underserved by the beauty industry. We partnered with the experts at the NeuroLeadership Institute to create a research-driven curriculum that will mitigate bias and drive positive changes across all our stores. We have already deployed initial programs to our field teams, with our U.S. staff at all levels having already participated in 10 different training touchpoints focused on addressing unconscious bias, improving client service and creating a sense of belonging, and are committed to evolving them informed by continued research and analysis of our workplace environments.
• We are working with Values Partnerships, a leading social impact agency, along with other research partners, to commission a study on racial bias in retail, through which we aim to gather insights that we will apply in our stores to fundamentally improve the retail experience for all clients, especially clients of color. Our future goal will be to convene a network of retailers across the retail industry committed to driving change with us, informed by the findings of our study.
• We announced Sephora Equity Advisors and Equity Partners program, a coalition of leading national experts working at the intersection of racial equity and social justice like Brittany Packnett, Blair Imani, David Johns, Leah Daughtry, Heather Foster, Jess Morales and more. These leaders now advise and help Sephora shape its overall diversity and inclusion efforts. We have engaged these trusted and expert voices in conversations with our employees but also to shape and develop a first of its kind and size study on racial bias in retail. The goals of this study are to first reveal the issues clients of color are experiencing at Sephora specifically, as well as within our industry in general, identify the areas where we can more effectively tackle these issues while learning from our peers, and effect change by fostering inclusive in-store experiences for clients of color.

Employee Resource Groups

• Beyond the Belong initiative, we established 2018 and continue to expand our “SephoraIN Communities,” which are employee resource groups that aim to provide support across our organization, stores teams and corporate offices.
• These groups focus on building a supportive community network, providing a forum for events and discussions, influencing business decisions and initiatives around inclusion and lifting the voices of the diverse perspectives that are in Sephora. These groups include:
• SephoraNoir, a resource group for Black employees and allies
• SephoraPrism, dedicated to the interests of the LGBTQA+ community
• Mi Gente, a group supporting Hispanic employees
• EllesVMH, a LVMH leadership and development program for women
• INspirASIAN, a group supporting Asian employees
• Sephora’s Working Parents community
• And our Green Team, which drives sustainability initiatives across Sephora

Financial Donations

• We also recognize that inequality and injustice are systemic issues that extend far beyond the retail industry, and are deeply rooted in many facets of American society. We are proud to have given more than $1M to support organizations in our communities, like National CARES Mentoring Movement, the Center for Urban Families, the NAACP, the National Black Justice Coalition and the National Black Coalition on Black Civic Participation Black Women’s Roundtable, all of which are building up Black communities and leading the fight for racial justice and equity.
• We are incredibly proud that through our recent points to dollars initiative, in which clients could donate points for a financial contribution to the National Black Justice Coalition, we donated over $1 million to the organization in just one week.
• Our donations have also supported this work at the local level, and in August 2019, we supported 44 local community organizations and their fight for equality and racial justice.
• Additionally, we’ve donated $250,000 to more than 100 organizations located throughout the country. This includes Sephora contribution in the form of matching employee donations, as well as grants to organizations nominated by Sephora’s racial Equity Partners, working at the intersection of race and culture that have been advising Sephora since August of 2019, and the store teams within those communities.