Sephora to open 13 stores inside Houston Kohl’s during 2023

Sephora is poised to double its presence in Houston by opening even more Kohl’s stores.

The French beauty retailer, which has 13 freestanding stores and five inside Kohl’s stores in the Houston area, according to its website, plans to open 13 more locations inside Kohl’s stores in the region. With five of the 21 Kohl’s stores in the Houston area housing a Sephora store, the expansion would bring the regional total of beauty stores to 31, including 18 inside Kohl’s by the end of 2023.

“We are making great strides in building a great beauty business with the addition of Sephora at Kohl’s,” Karen Daoust, Kohl’s senior vice president and general manager of Sephora at Kohl’s, said in a statement.

Without giving a timeline, Kohl’s, headquartered near Milwaukee, said it plans to put a Sephora inside each of its more than 1,100 stores in 49 states. It already includes 600 Sephora stores with another 250 expected by the end of 2023, the company said Wednesday.

In recent years, some struggling brands have sought to strengthen themselves by incorporating more successful brands with stores within stores.

In early 2021, Toys R Us closed its US stores, including one in the Galleria, but in October returned to the Houston area with a store inside Macy’s Memorial City Mall.

Conn’s, a Woodlands-based home goods and electronics retailer, has also seen sales and profits decline as inflation and worries about a recessionary trigger slowed big consumer purchases. At the same time, however, it has grown its national footprint through a partnership with North Carolina-based department store chain Belk, which now hosts “Conn’s x Belk” stores within stores. In the third quarter of last year, Conn’s added two stand-alone stores, but 15 within Belk stores.

But the Sephora-Kohl dynamic seems to be the opposite. Kohl’s struggled last year, reporting a more than 7 percent drop in sales last year and a $19 million loss through 2022 compared to a $938 million profit a year earlier. Sephora’s parent company, Paris conglomerate LVMH, said its Sephora stores had “record growth” in 2022.

In a release, Kohl’s said it expects both brands to benefit by including more Sephora stores. Nearly 8 million consumers bought Sephora products in Kohl’s stores in 2022, the company said, and it predicts its Sephora store locations will have annual sales of $2 billion by 2025, the company said.

Kohl’s said its Sephora store locations are about 2,500 square feet and each mimic the look and inventory of freestanding locations.

Currently, Kohl’s plans to open in-store Sephora locations in Humble, Friendswood, Baytown, Houston, Conroe, Lake Jackson, Cypress, League City, Pasadena, Rosenberg and Missouri City, although the exact stores are subject to change, the company said. . Sephora locations already exist inside Kohl’s stores in Houston, Tomball, Spring, Richmond and Conroe.

Exact opening dates for Sephora in-store locations will be released later, according to Kohl’s.

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