The news: Sephora’s localized approach to growth in the UK is informing its international expansion strategy, per Adweek.

The retailer is looking to find a balance between scaling quickly and cultivating deeper ties with individual communities, which it hopes will ensure longevity in markets like the UK where it has previously struggled.

What’s working: Sephora’s 2021 purchase of online beauty store FeelUnique helped pave the way for the retailer’s expansion, giving it a built-in audience of 1.3 million active customers as well as the digital infrastructure required for its ecommerce business. Since then, Sephora has relied on social listening data and other digital insights to determine where to open stores and which communities to emphasize.

From the beginning, the retailer knew that it couldn’t “show up as a London-centric brand,” as that “wasn’t going to be acceptable to our communities,” UK managing director Sarah Boyd told Adweek. Consequently, Sephora has made an effort to highlight the cultural nuances and diversity of each city it enters—from putting a branded traffic cone atop a statue in a time-honored Glaswegian tradition to issuing invitations in the shape of a Welsh love spoon to celebrate the opening of its Cardiff location.

Implications for retailers: As Sephora demonstrates, even brands with strong global recognition need to think locally to maximize their staying power. That could mean making strategic acquisitions—as Sephora did with FeelUnique and Ulta with Space NK—to gain access to both an engaged consumer base and local insights, or conducting extensive on-the-ground research to determine each community’s unique needs and craft localized marketing campaigns.

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