Sephora launches Pinterest-inspired social shopping concept

By Simon Pitman

- Last updated on GMT

Sephora launches Pinterest-inspired social shopping concept

Related tags Social media

Global beauty retailer Sephora, part of the France-based LVMH group, has launched a social shopping platform aimed at encouraging more customer engagement by using beauty images.

Called Beauty Board, the platform encourages users to share Sephora images of cosmetic products and effects by giving them the ability to post, share, browse and shop from Sephora’s photo gallery on Sephora.com, which is accessible through all mobile devices.

This enables consumers to upload photos, tag products and share with other social media users how they tailor the use of these products to their individual beauty routines, and is designed around social media platforms such as Pinterest and Instagram, which are evolving on increasingly image-focussed lines.

As social media evolves around images...

"Our beauty lovers are gathering and sharing beauty tips across a variety of social properties like Instagram and Pinterest, as well as our blog and beauty community site,"​ said Julie Bornstein, EVP, Chief Marketing and Digital Officer at Sephora.

"Sephora shoppers can now share looks or hauls, and tag all of the products they used to make shopping easy for the entire beauty community… we designed Beauty Board to seamlessly connect with our clients' other social platforms, providing an informative and social shopping experience for all."

The integration of the platform with other social media platforms is also an important step as a seemingly countless array of social media tools means that new social media tools have to be designed around connectivity and interaction with other social media platforms in an effort to ensure success.

Beauty Board builds around the existing Sephora website, allowing customers who are already online members to create a new account for Beauty Board.

This gives them access to a variety of tools, including tag-able, the ability to ‘love photos, and share them across their social media networks.

Sephora and Amazon do battle

Both Sephora and Amazon have evolved amongst the leading dedicated online beauty retailers, with Amazon recently extending its footprint in the beauty market with the launch of Luxury Beauty Store, which is targeted as direct competition to the acknowledged number one global beauty e-tailer, Sephora.

Social media has grown at breakneck speed over the past couple of years and is being designed increasingly around increasing functionality, in line with the fact that users are becoming more and more adept at using it as a communication tool.

Retailers have jumped on this opportunity, both as a means of promoting their brands, and as a means of tapping into the fast expanding e-commerce retail channel.

But beauty brand holders have also jumped on the social media band wagon too, but more as a means of promoting their brands, with the Unilever Dove brand proving to be one of the leading players in this area.

At the beginning of this year, a study by Unilever beauty brand Dove revealed that 82% of women believe that it is social media which is driving the definition and redefining the definition of beauty, and often in a more positive way because it is every day women that are forging this definition.

Related topics Market Trends

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