Sephora To Close All Its Stores For a Day to Host 'Inclusion Workshops' After Racial Bias Complaint

Eric Schaffer | May 30, 2019
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Sephora, a giant in the beauty and cosmetics industry, announced last Thursday on Facebook that it will close “every Sephora store, distribution center, and corporate office in the US” on June 5 to host inclusion workshops for its employees. 

The announcement comes just weeks after famous singer SZA claimed security was called on her in Sephora’s Calabasas location “to make sure [she] wasn’t stealing,” spurring accusations of racial profiling. 

Sephora has connected the use of the workshops to their "We Belong to Something Beautiful" initiative. 

In a statement to Fox Business, the company said:

Sephora has always been a values driven organization, but this is its first public articulation of what Sephora stands for and represents… We Belong to Something Beautiful builds on the many diversity and inclusion programs that have existed at Sephora since its inception, and has been in the works for at least one year.

The move by Sephora is being compared to that of Starbucks just a year ago. The coffee giant closed 8,000 of their stores on the afternoon of May 29 to conduct racial-bias education training after two black men were arrested for trespassing in one of the corporation’s many stores after, according to the Associated Press, they refused to buy anything or leave.

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