Marks & Spencer has signed a partnership with Sephora that will see the LVMH-owned beauty specialist open branded areas inside 100 of the British retailer’s stores, with its products also sold through the M&S website from spring next year.

The move is the latest tactic in M&S’s drive to attract younger shoppers, folding a global beauty brand with strong traction among twenty-something and thirty-something customers into a store estate that has been steadily modernising its offer.

A second act in Britain

Sephora relaunched in the UK in 2023 with considerable fanfare and now operates around 18 stand-alone British stores. The French retailer first entered the market two decades ago, closing a handful of stores in 2005 after failing to make a dent in a competitive sector, and its second attempt has expanded far more rapidly.

The deal with M&S marks a new chapter in that expansion. Rather than relying solely on stand-alone sites, Sephora will place staffed beauty areas, run by its own employees, inside one of Britain’s largest store networks, giving it immediate reach into high streets and retail parks across the country.

Sephora is owned by LVMH, the luxury goods group led by Bernard Arnault, whose family ranks among the wealthiest in the world with estimated wealth of £129 billion.

Beauty as a growth engine

Analysts have credited Sephora’s work with up-and-coming brands, alongside collaborations with high-profile influencers across social media, with helping the company reach its target female audience of 24 to 36-year-olds. That demographic is precisely the customer group M&S has been working hardest to win over as it remodels its clothing, home and beauty offer.

John Lyttle, managing director of M&S’s fashion, home and beauty division, said beauty is an important category for the business, with the potential to attract new customers and encourage existing ones to shop more often.

Combining Sephora’s specialist expertise with the strength of the M&S brand, its store estate and its growing digital platform would strengthen the category further, Lyttle said, while M&S continues to invest in its own-label beauty ranges, where it has established strength and customer trust.

A pattern of partnerships

The agreement continues a wider pattern at M&S of using partnerships to refresh its brand without wholesale reinvention. The retailer has spent recent years sharpening its food halls, upgrading its clothing ranges and rebuilding its digital business, with third-party brands playing an increasingly prominent role in attracting shoppers who might not otherwise visit.

For Sephora, the arrangement provides physical presence at a scale that would take years to build organically, at a moment when beauty remains one of the fastest-growing categories on the British high street.

The first Sephora-branded areas are expected to open in M&S stores ahead of the online launch next spring, with both companies describing the deal as a long-term collaboration. If the rollout performs as both sides hope, it will give M&S a sharper answer to the question every established retailer currently faces: how to stay relevant to customers whose loyalties are formed young.