The 426 sq m Raffles City store breaks new ground in beauty retail, which took a hit during the pandemic.

Even after Covid-19 restrictions eased, brick-and-mortar retail was impacted by the absence of make-up testers and in-store interactions.

“Crisis management has been a large part of my life,” says Ms Gogi drily. The Briton, who stepped into her role in July 2020, oversees Sephora Asia’s 10 markets, which include Singapore, Greater China, India and New Zealand.

“But we were fortunate enough, pre-Covid-19, to have invested in digital capabilities and our ecosystem – the website, mobile app and stores – to continue to serve consumers’ beauty needs.”

Sephora’s success story is one many try to replicate. The subsidiary of French luxury group LVMH was founded in 1969 and revolutionised the beauty retail landscape, pioneering the try-before-you-buy concept for cosmetics and introducing to the market cult brands one could not find in department stores.

Its first flagship store in Singapore landed in 2008 at Takashimaya Shopping Centre. In 2015, Sephora acquired beauty e-tailer Luxola as part of the transformation of its South-east Asia e-commerce business (sephora.sg) – a move Ms Gogi believes put Sephora in good stead for its omnichannel capabilities today.

“It allowed us to access consumers online in a very disruptive way, and created an omnichannel, digital-first mindset in the people in our teams,” she says.

“When we think about a new product launch today, everything is about ‘how is this going to show up online?’ That wasn’t necessarily the case eight years ago when we were just one channel, and it was very much around ‘how is it going to look in stores?'”

Prestige beauty has an added touch of “image and aspiration”, when compared with fast-moving consumer goods, she adds.

Before she joined LVMH as senior vice-president of merchandising for Sephora China in 2011, she spent more than nine years in China as the trading director for health and beauty retailer AS Watson Group, which owns pharmacy chain Watsons.

“Mass is about being accessible with great operational experience. When you go into prestige, it’s a much more aspirational approach around how beauty is perceived. You start to build a brand. Sephora as a multi-brand retailer is a brand – it has authority ,” she says.