1998: The first Sephora in the U.S. opens at 555 Broadway in New York City on July 17, with an assortment of 190 brands.
1999: Sephora.com goes live on Oct. 14. Today, it is the second largest beauty e-commerce site globally, behind only Tmall.
2000: Mailboxes around the country get a blast of beauty with Sephora’s first catalogue.
2002: Lip gloss mania sweeps the U.S. Sephora sells close to one tube per minute.
2004: The first Sephora in Canada opens in Toronto’s Eaton Centre. There are now more than 100 stores across the country.
2005: On March 8, Sephora opens its 100th store in Natick, Massachusetts.
2006: The first Sephora inside JCPenney opens on June 10 in Forth Worth, Texas. At its height in 2018, the partnership had 667 doors.
2007: The Sephora Beauty Insider program launches nationwide on June 1. Today, there are over 31 million active members.
2008: Make a wish upon a star: Ratings and reviews debut on sephora.com.
2009: Sephora sets a Guinness world record for most makeovers by a team of five in one hour.
2010: Sephora App and Beauty Talk launch on Sept. 29.
2011: Sephora opens its 300th store on Nov. 17 in Las Vegas.
2013: ColorIQ color-matching technology is introduced nationwide. Two years later, it expands from foundation to concealer and lipstick, too.
2016: Sephora Accelerate debuts on Jan. 12, a brand incubation program. Eight female entrepreneurs, including Drunk Elephant’s Tiffany Masterson, were in the first graduating class.
2016: Sephora opens its 400th store on Aug. 26, on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue.
2017: Fenty Beauty launches in Sephora globally
2018: Clean at Sephora is introduced, with skin care, fragrance and wellness brands that follow a “formulated without” list of ingredients.
2018: More than 4,500 people attend Sephoria in Los Angeles, a two-day consumer facing beauty playground event.
2019: Ka-ching! Sephora introduces its first credit card programs.
2019: Sephora launches its first racial diversity campaign with “We Belong to Something Beautiful.”
2020: Sephora becomes the first major retailer to take the 15 Percent Pledge, dedicating 15 percent of its assortment to Black-owned brands.
2020: Sephora and Kohl’s announce a long-term strategic partnership, enabling Sephora to significantly increase its presence in suburban strip malls.
2021: Sephora announces the results of the first-of-its-kind Racial Bias in Retail study and introduces its first Black-owned brands Sephora Favorites kit.
2021: The bigger the better: Sephora announces its largest store expansion program, including more than 60 freestanding locales and 200 Kohl’s locations.
2022: Sephora’s first documentary film, “The Beauty of Blackness” is released.
2023: From head to toe: Sephora announces a partnership with Zappos debuting in early summer.
Source: WWD