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E-commerce
Sephora

The MENA digital strategy that reads as one Sephora

Global Beauty Retail · Part of LVMH · MENA · 3,000+ stores across 35 markets
Sephora — client context
The challenge

Sephora had global scale but a MENA presence that needed to feel local. Central and regional teams were both moving fast — sometimes in the same direction, sometimes not. They wanted one strategy that respected local taste and still played nicely with the global system.

The solution

We worked alongside Sephora’s leadership as a small, embedded partner across product, technology and delivery. Rather than hand over a slide deck, we helped stand up the operating model that would run it — who decides what, when central adapts, when local flexes.

Proof of work

What the customer actually experiences.

Reference imagery drawn against the same brand system the programme ships against — not a client screenshot, but a faithful reading of the surface.

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The direction we took

Where we pointed the work.

A single diagram, drawn from the programme, showing how the strategy actually lines up — where it converges, where it stays plural.

How we shaped the work.

Step 01
Understanding the region
We spent time with the regional team mapping how MENA customers actually shop for beauty — what search looks like on Arabic keyboards, which occasions matter, how loyalty behaves. That work fed a strategy that reads as one Sephora, expressed locally.
Step 02
A blueprint the teams could ship
We prioritised the roadmap around measurable customer moments rather than internal projects, and drew the working boundaries between central and local teams — so decisions could be taken quickly, at the right level, without a committee.
Step 03
A strategy that keeps working
The strategy is now running. It moves quicker than the old one, adapts to regional shifts without waiting for global sign-off, and gives Sephora a repeatable playbook for the next market they turn on.
Outcomes

What reached production.

One strategy
MENA plan that reads as one Sephora — central and local, in step
Quicker
Regional shifts absorbed without waiting on global sign-off
A playbook
A repeatable operating model for the next market they turn on
AI-native, today

Where the same programme would go further today.

Run today, the same Sephora programme would add contextual personalisation to product discovery, a bit of predictive planning against local demand signals, and one or two carefully-scoped agent-assisted service workflows. The strategic muscle is the same. The operating leverage is materially larger.

Start here

Start with one thing that works.

A 60-minute working session with two of our engineers. You bring a delivery problem. You leave with a written assessment of where AI would help, where it would not, and what it would take to find out.

No pitch deck. No obligation.