Today, Sephora is excited to announce applications are open for its 2023 Accelerate program. Now through September 26th, beauty founders are invited to apply to participate in the brand’s well-known brand incubator program.
The Sephora Accelerate program is dedicated to building a community of innovative, inspirational brand founders in the beauty space, and creates a foundation, network, and ecosystem for brands to launch and thrive. This year, Sephora will continue to focus the program on BIPOC-founded and owned brands as part of its commitment to increasing BIPOC representation in its product assortment.
Sephora’s Accelerate program features a 360-degree, six-month curriculum with mentorship, merchandising support, grants, and investor connections to all participants, with the opportunity to launch at Sephora upon completion.
In addition to the support the founders received over the last two years in the form of merchant sponsorship and partners both internal and external, the 2023 Accelerate class will also be offered an advisory team inclusive of a financial and investment expert, a legacy industry partner, and a current brand founder from within the Sephora portfolio of brands.
“We know that many deserving brands face challenges when beginning their retail journeys,” said Priya Venkatesh, SVP, Global Merchandising. “At Sephora, we want to eliminate those barriers, and help create an opportunity for new and exciting brands to thrive in the beauty space. We look forward to welcoming the class of 2023 founders into our Accelerate family and providing even more mentorship and support to this year’s upcoming cohort.”
Through the additional dedicated support being offered as part of this year’s Accelerate program, Sephora hopes to further foster a community within its Accelerate network among founders from all graduating classes old and new.
Similar to past Accelerate programs, Sephora Accelerate 2023 will take place from January through June, digitally, with two in-person events: orientation and graduation.
About Sephora Americas
Since its debut in North America more than 20 years ago, Sephora has been a leader in prestige omni-retail with the mission of creating an inviting beauty shopping experience and inspiring fearlessness in our community. With the goal of delivering unbiased shopping support and a personalized experience, Sephora invites customers to discover thousands of products from more than 340 carefully curated brands, explore online and through our mobile app, enjoy services at the Beauty Studio and engage with expertly trained Beauty Advisors in more than 500 stores across the Americas. And with its new long-term retail strategic partnership, customers can now shop Sephora at Kohl’s, a fully immersive, premium beauty destination, with 200 locations in 2021, and at least 850 locations by 2023. Customers can access the free-to-join Beauty Insider program and digital community, which together enhance the experience of Sephora’s passionate customers.
Sephora has been an industry-leading champion of diversity, inclusivity, and empowerment, guided by our longstanding company values. In 2019, Sephora announced a new tagline and manifesto, “We Belong to Something Beautiful,” to reinforce its dedication to fostering belonging amongst all customers and employees and to publicly strive for a more inclusive vision for retail in the Americas. Sephora continues to give back to our communities and advance inclusion in our industry through its social impact and equity programming, called the Sephora D&I Heart Journey.
For more information, visit: https://www.sephora.com/about-us and @Sephora on social media. For media inquiries, please visit our Sephora newsroom or email ExternalComms@sephora.com
