Store gallery: Sephora opens ‘beauty playground’ in Bluewater shopping centre

The “beauty playground” at the new location spans 4,593 sq ft and is designed to provide an immersive and transformative experience for shoppers. It has a selection of global and viral beauty products on offer alongside its own-brand Sephora Collection.

Customer experience is a major focus with the store offering bookable in-store services across makeup, skincare, haircare and brows such as facials from Elemis and Dermalogica, eyebrow threading and brow styling from Benefit, and blow-drying services from Dyson.

The store features self-service checkouts alongside a team of “cast members” – how the business refers to its frontline staff – to assist shoppers with queries and provide product information.

Sarah Boyd, managing director of Sephora UK, said the location was chosen as shoppers in the Kent area are “underserved” and Bluewater felt like the “perfect retail destination”.

She told Retail Week: “I think this store is going to be hugely successful and that we’ll have a great response from consumers with people coming and becoming regulars. It’s still what you expect to see from Sephora; a similar size and shape to our other stores and brand ranges and product expression.

“We will also be really leaning into, as we do with our stores, our services and we have some amazing cast members who will be offering makeup and skin services and everything in between.”

Boyd said that investment in staff is critical to Sephora’s bricks-and-mortar strategy.

“What you’ll find is that we hire in line with our customer demographic and hire very broadly across a number of all different demographics so that a cast member serving a shopper in-store will resonate. We hire much further in advance than other retailers do and we focus a lot of time on training and development, getting them in other stores first and learning the Sephora way, ” she added.

The opening follows Sephora chief executive Guillaume Motte’s announcement last week of an ambitious UK store opening programme with plans to double its footprint to over 20 stores in the next two to three years.

Discussing future UK stores, Boyd said: “We’re opening more stores next year than we have this year, which is really exciting. The first one is April 2025 in Liverpool.”