Dive Brief:
- Sephora CEO and President Martin Brok is out after almost two years at the beauty retailer, according to Women’s Wear Daily. Brok is set to leave the company at the end of the month, and is leaving “due to a divergence of views,” according to an internal release cited by Women’s Wear Daily.
- Chris de Lapuente, who served as Sephora’s CEO for 10 years, will take over the role, according to that report. De Lapuente currently serves as CEO of LVMH’s Selective Retailing division, and also oversees perfume and cosmetics. Sephora and LVMH did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
- Brok was named CEO of Sephora in September 2020, after four years in leadership positions at Starbucks. Brok also has extensive history at Burger King and The Coca-Cola Company, as well as eight years at athletics giant Nike, according to LinkedIn.
Dive Insight:
Not long after entering the role, Sephora’s CEO is already poised to exit the beauty retailer.
The departure comes during a busy time for Sephora, which has undertaken some large strategy shifts in the past few years, including breaking with department store J.C. Penney to open shop-in-shops with Kohl’s and pivoting its store footprint to focus on more off-mall, neighborhood-style locations.
The changes have increasingly put Sephora in more direct competition with rival beauty retailer Ulta in the U.S. Ulta built its physical footprint around strip centers, and often purposefully located itself close to Kohl’s and Target stores due to the high traffic, Steph Wissink, managing director at Jefferies, told Retail Dive earlier this year.
With Sephora moving into more Kohl’s stores — the companies have plans for 400 shop-in-shops to open this year, bringing the total to 600 — the two beauty retailers are more likely to be co-located than when Sephora operated mostly in enclosed malls. Ulta is also expanding its footprint in strip centers with a shop-in-shop deal with Target, albeit at a slower pace than Sephora. Ulta and Target are planning for 250 shop-in-shops to open in 2022.
Sephora has been faced with replacing two long-term executives at the top of its leadership slate in recent years. The beauty retailer named Jean-André Rougeot as its new CEO of Sephora Americas early in 2019 after Calvin McDonald, who held the post for five years, left to become CEO of Lululemon. The following year, Brok took over the top CEO post. Rougeot, however, was more of a known entity at parent company LVMH, thanks to 12 years as the CEO of Benefit Cosmetics, another LVMH brand.
