Sephora announced a partnership with Tmall Global, the leading cross-border e-commerce platform in China. The Sephora Tmall Global flagship store will carry 25 international brands, including Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty, Bon Parfumeur, Farmacy, and Dermalogica, and more than 600 products.

“Based on our long-term relationships with global beauty brands, we are glad to cooperate with Tmall Global to introduce overseas brands into China market. Through the synergy of online and offline channels, consumers can access overseas brands to fulfill their emerging and evolving needs,” said Benjamin Vuchot, Asia President of Sephora. “This initiative is very special to Sephora, as we are celebrating the 15th anniversary of Sephora in China this year. The opening of the Sephora Tmall Global Flagship Store offers a great opportunity for Sephora to continue reinforcing its commitment to the China market, by catering to the Chinese consumer’s ever-changing trends and evolving needs to enhance their beauty power.”

As part of the launch, a showroom presenting cross-border beauty products with “cloud shelves” in the physical Sephora store is also being unveiled to further enrich customer experience and create online/offline synergy. This partnership connects Chinese customers to the world and synchronizes the local community with global beauty trends by bringing together numerous emerging and popular overseas beauty brands and offering the benefit of breaking geographical and time barriers through cross-border e-commerce.

Franklin Chu, Managing Director of Azoya USA, said of the announcement, “Sephora has been running offline stores in China for fifteen years, but its product selection has been limited due to China’s animal testing requirements, which prohibit cruelty-free brands from selling offline. The new Sephora Tmall Global store is a game changer because cross-border e-commerce doesn’t have to abide by those requirements. Sephora can now supply the market with niche brands that may be more difficult to find. In short, Sephora’s cross-border e-commerce store can act as an incubator for these new brands that want to test the China market, without investing significant amounts of capital or going through animal testing processes.”

Today, Chinese consumers are not satisfied with just popular big-name brands; they instead desire a wider range of choices of niche overseas brands.