Marks & Spencer Decides the Fastest Way to Win Back Shoppers Is to Let Sephora Do It

Marks & Spencer is renting out its beauty counters to the house that built them better. The British retailer is partnering with LVMH-owned Sephora to open shop-in-shop beauty destinations across roughly 100 UK locations, spanning high streets and retail parks, with a matching online presence on M&S.com offering home delivery and click-and-collect. The rollout is set for spring 2027.

M&S frames the deal as a bid to pull in new customers and get existing ones shopping more often, layering Sephora's prestige-beauty draw on top of what M&S describes as its own established strength and customer trust in own-label beauty. John Lyttle, M&S's managing director of fashion, home, and beauty, said the category has "the potential to attract new customers," while Sephora UK managing director Sarah Boyd called the tie-up with "a brand so trusted, loved and deeply ingrained in British life" the next step in Sephora's UK expansion.

It's a trade that makes sense on paper: M&S gets a beauty hall it does not have to build from scratch, and Sephora gets distribution inside roughly 100 stores it does not have to lease itself. Whether shoppers who came in for M&S's sandwiches start detouring for serum is the actual experiment.

Source: The Retail Bulletin

Kyle Duford, Founder & Editor, BRNDWIRE. More from Kyle →