Sephora is the latest major company to finally get onboard the diversity train.
On Wednesday, June 5th, they’ll be shuttering all of their stores across the country to train their staff on diversity and inclusion.
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Here’s the real reason why.
First, here’s what you need to know about Sephora.
Sephora is a France-based cosmetics and fragrance company with hundreds of locations around the world.
In North America alone, they have over 400 locations and approximately 16,000 employees.
The company recently found themselves in hot water involving singer Sza.
The Grammy nominated musician was shopping at one of Sephora’s locations when she said she had the security called on her.
The singer then took to Twitter to talk about the incident.
“Lmao Sandy Sephora location 614 Calabasas called security to make sure I wasn’t stealing,” she wrote. “We had a long talk. U have a blessed day Sandy.”
Sza’s tweet quickly made the rounds online and it wasn’t long before everyone started to drag Sephora for racial profiling.
Shortly after getting called out, Sephora went on Twitter as well and responded to Sza.
“You are a part of the Sephora family, and we are committed to ensuring every member of our community feels welcome and included at our stores,” they wrote.
The fans still weren’t having it, however, and so the dragging continued.
“That’s all YOU had to say?! [You’re] bad,” one person tweeted.
Meanwhile, many others began tweeting about other discrimination incidents they experienced at Sephora.
“I hope so @Sephora because I’ve been a long time customer, but just last week I had like 5 of your girls tail me thinking I was stealing something. Seriously, I have money, its just cause I’m brown and in a mall…” one person wrote.
Now the company is responding by closing all of its US stores for one hour.
In a statement issued to Good Morning America , Sephora said, “This store closure is part of a long journey in our aspiration to create a more inclusive beauty community and workplace, which has included forming employee resource groups, building Social Impact and philanthropic programs, and hosting inclusive mindset training for all supervisors.”
The training is said to be an inclusivity workshop and will discuss topics like gender identity, race and ethnicity, age, abilities and more.
Their training also happens to fall one day before their new campaign “We Belong to Something Beautiful” debuts.
While Sephora has confirmed that their latest campaign is unrelated to Sza’s tweet, they did say that “it does reinforce why belonging is now more important than ever.”
Here’s hoping that this training actually does improve the discrimination issues so everyone can get their Fenty Beauty in peace.
