Sephora is an international beauty retailer recognized for its diverse selection of skincare, makeup, and fragrance items from various brands. If you’d like to start your own marketplace like Sephora, you’re facing a buy vs build decision. So before you decide to build it in-house on top of Spree open-source, consider using Vendo, which is a marketplace SaaS. Go live, start selling, iterate.
Build vs Buy a marketplace?
Employing open-source has its benefits, such as full ownership and the freedom to adapt, but these come with their own costs. Developing a complete marketplace solution is an extensive and costly endeavor, often taking many months or years, as learned from multiple marketplace projects.
If you haven’t secured a significant amount of funding, it’s generally more sensible to adopt a pre-built, all-encompassing marketplace solution like Vendo, as recommended by an expert with years of experience in billing for marketplace development.
Back to the Sephora marketplace case study
Sephora, a leading brand in personal care and luxury beauty products, has transformed the cosmetic retail industry with its innovative omnichannel strategy. Starting as a small perfumery in Limoges, France, Sephora has grown into a retail powerhouse with 2,600 stores across 36 countries and an engaging website attracting nearly 60 million visitors a month.
The company’s success is attributed to its focus on creating a holistic shopping experience by integrating in-store experiences with digital platforms, enhancing customer journeys, and sustaining growth.
Key to Sephora’s strategy is its emphasis on a customer-centric shopping experience, using digital technologies like augmented reality and mobile apps to create a digital playground where customers can explore and try products virtually before purchasing. These technologies have revolutionized the way customers interact with beauty products, allowing for a more personalized and engaging experience.
Additionally, Sephora fosters a vibrant community through its Beauty Insider Community, encouraging customers to connect and share tips and experiences.
Sephora’s journey from a humble beginning to an industry champion showcases its commitment to diversity, inclusivity, and empowerment, with its stores featuring a variety of beauty products from over 300 brands. The company’s ability to adapt and innovate has not only redefined customer experience in cosmetics retail but also set new standards for the industry.
How to emulate Sephora marketplace success?
Aiming for Sephora-like success, consider starting your marketplace soon, ideally within weeks, not months. Explore how your product range fits with what your customers need and keep tweaking your customer acquisition techniques based on real findings.
It’s smart to test the market before fully investing in its creation.
Here’s what you’d be getting with a Vendo free trial:
- Book a marketplace demo call: We’ll set up your demo marketplace and populate it with products, so you could give it a try and start selling in 14 days
- Customize your Storefront: Use the drag & drop page builder or custom CSS
- Onboard Brands: Invite your brands or choose brands from our catalog
- Select Products: Curate products and collections manually or automate it
- Embed products: Make your content, newsletters, social media shoppable
- Get Paid: Get paid as soon as products are shipped by the brands
- End-to-end automation: brands sync, fulfillment, payouts, invoicing, taxes
When you’ve tried all that and it works, start thinking about building your own, custom-made marketplace project based on Spree Commerce. First, by decoupling the storefront and going headless with Vendo marketplace API, and later with your own backend, if you decide you really need it. Just lift and shift the storefront.
Nobody has to know what’s under the hood, right?
