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Member Exclusive

Why Sephora tapped Lyft to compete with Amazon’s Prime Day sale

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By Lexy Lebsack
Jul 15, 2025

This week, I checked in with Sephora CMO Zena Arnold and Lyft evp Suzie Reider to learn about last week’s “delivered to beauty” activation, which provided direct competition to Amazon’s Prime Days sale through discounted rides to Sephora stores. Additionally, L’Oréal-owned Maybelline sponsors WWE wrestling, Wonderskin becomes an Amazon category leader, and executive moves at Superdrug, Galderma and Nest New York.

How Sephora promoted in-store shopping against Amazon’s Prime Day sale

Sephora CMO Zena Arnold has spent the past year thinking about what makes Sephora special. 

“It’s a crowded marketplace, and there are more places than ever where you can [purchase] beauty,” she told Glossy. “[Our differentiator] is really encompassed in the experience: You can play with things, you can get expert advice from beauty advisors, there is a community we’ve built.”

One of Sephora’s biggest, and newest, competitors is Amazon, which has slowly transitioned from a murky, gray-market marketplace site to a full-fledged beauty retailer with top beauty conglomerate support in the past few years. To compete with last week’s Prime Day Sale, which saw record results according to Amazon, Sephora focused on promoting its brick-and-mortar difference. 

“How do we try to capture [our difference] in the face of a huge event that’s happening where people will be buying a bunch of stuff and getting it delivered to them?’” Arnold said. “We thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun if we delivered people to Sephora so they could have a really great experience?’” 

Called “delivered to beauty,” the campaign included $20 off one Lyft ride to a Sephora store plus a $10 off coupon good on a $50 purchase during their visit. The campaign ran from July 7-10, one day ahead of Amazon’s Prime Days sale, which ran from July 8-11. Sephora included New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Seattle markets. More than 70 Lyft cars and SUVs were wrapped in black-and-white-striped Sephora branding and featured large-scale shopping bags on their roofs.

“My favorite part was the Sephora bag on top,” Arnold told Glossy. “It was a way to extend the idea, and it was so fun seeing social media posts from people out in the wild seeing these cars.” 

Sephora targeted consumers in the included markets through social media ads. Once the consumer clicked through to Lyft, they were offered the promotion within the Lyft app. Lyft acted as a vendor for Sephora and did not promote the partnership. A $10 off Sephora coupon was delivered through the Lyft app once the trip was complete. 

Sephora’s “delivered to beauty” activation is part of the company’s larger “get beauty from people who get beauty” campaign, which seeks to highlight the added value gained when shopping for beauty products in person with educated sales associates. 

“We’re finding it’s harder and harder to break through with a traditional ad,” Arnold said. “Doing something like this — that I think of as a brand act, not just a brand ad — is a really important part of our marketing mix to get that breakthrough.” 

The partnership with Lyft came together in a few months, Arnold told Glossy. To execute the partnership, the teams worked with agency partners Digitas and Le Truc from Publicis Groupe. 

Arnold told Glossy that the Sephora team is still analyzing the results, but they are very pleased with the performance. Arnold told Glossy that this is the first of many similar activations. “The demand far outpaced what we expected on the first day,” she said. “We had a lot more people requesting than what we forecasted.” 

The partnership was appealing to Lyft for many reasons, including acquisition of Sephora shoppers. According to Suzie Reider, evp of Lyft Media & Business, 60% of Lyft rides to Sephora are from first-time customers, which is 25% more than the average for stores of comparable size. 

This is a first-of-of-its-kind activation for both Sephora and Lyft.  Reider joined Lyft six months ago. Her CV includes Google, Waze and YouTube. 

“We’ve got 45 million riders on the Lyft platform, [which is] enough size and scale to really matter and really make a difference,” Reider told Glossy. Reider declined to share with Glossy results of the partnership, but said it quickly became a blueprint for other opportunities involving brick-and-mortar retail. 

“Phenomenal outcomes come from strong partnerships, relationships, creativity, innovation and, frankly, just being scrappy and working super hard for something,” Reider said. “We [at Lyft] don’t have the scale of a Google or a Meta, so we have to get a lot more creative and really lean into these partnerships.” 

She told Glossy that, within her new role at Lyft, she’s less interested in campaigns that shift an algorithm or are executed entirely on the app. “What makes this activation really fun is the people behind it,” she said. “Getting people from place to place is a phenomenal use of our platform and getting people to stores is at the core of what we are doing.”

Executive moves:

  • Shawn Haynes is the new president of Revive Collagen’s Americas business. “Shawn has an outstanding track record of transforming emerging brands into global success stories,” said Revive Collagen co-founder John Bailey. Haynes’s CV includes E.l.f Cosmetics and Revolution Beauty. Revive Collagen sells its supplements through Ulta Beauty and CVS, among other retailers.
  • Laura Slatkin, the founder and executive chairman of fragrance company Nest New York, is stepping down from her day-to-day role with the company. “I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve accomplished together — creating award-winning fragrances and expanding into new categories with innovation that elevates everyday life,” Slatkin said in a statement. She launched Nest in 2008 and sold a majority stake to North Castle Partners private equity in 2022 for an undisclosed amount. 
  • Simon Comins is the new COO of U.K. retailer Superdrug. He has been with the company, which has around 800 locations in the U.K. and Northern Ireland, for around four decades, most recently as chief commercial officer.
  • Dr. Lauren Jamieson is the first medical director of the skin-care company HydroPeptide. “I’m honored to have the opportunity to help shape the future of this exciting brand and expand its peptide-powered product line that beautifully combines transformative results with a luxurious user experience,” she said in a statement. HydroPeptide skin care launched in 2004 and is privately held. It is sold DTC and through Nordstrom and Amazon. Jamieson has a dermatology practice in Scotland called Dr. Lauren Medical Aesthetics.
  • Thomas Dittrich, CFO of Galderma, will step down from his role after six years. He is set to stay on until a replacement is appointed in Q2 of the company’s fiscal 2026. Galderma owns consumer brands like Cetaphil and Differein and medical injectables like Dysport, Restylane and Sculptra.

News to know:

  • Amazon’s four-day Prime Day sale beat all previous sales records, according to the company. “Adobe Analytics puts U.S. spend at roughly $23.8 billion, up 28% from last year, essentially running two Black Fridays back-to-back,” Craig Crisler, CEO of business outsourcing company SupportNinja, told Glossy. According to media company Numerator’s live tracker, beauty products and health and wellness products made it into 25% and 26% of carts, respectively. “In short, every fourth purchase was something you swipe, spritz or supplement,” Crisler said.
  • L’Oréal-owned Maybelline is the official cosmetics partner of professional wrestling organization World Wrestling Entertainment. The partnership with WWE, developed through media agency Beauty Co-Lab, will include center ring branding and other activations. Wrestling has recently received new attention with Neutrogena’s partnership with John Cena and E.l.f. Beauty’s sponsorship of the largest girls wrestling event, Wonder Women of Wrestling Varsity Tournament, earlier this year. WWE is owned by American media conglomerate TKO Group Holding.
  • Lindsay Lohan is the newest ambassador of hair-care and -color company Schwarzkopf. For the brand’s campaign, Lohan debuted a new blonde color, which was created by longtime celebrity colorist and salon owner Tracey Cunningham. The duo starred in the campaign together, a soft launch for Cunningham’s new role as Schwarzkopf’s creative director of color and technique. Cunningham owns Beverly Hills salon Mèche and is an ambassador for Olaplex. Lohan’s big screen return in “Freakier Friday” with Jamie Lee Curtis happens in August. Schwarzkopf was acquired by German conglomerate Henkel in 1995. 
  • Facegym, the U.K.-based facial fitness studio chain and skin-care range, has taken on minority investment from Reliance Retail Ventures Limited, India’s largest retail company. Facegym operates 13 global studios in cities like London, Los Angeles and Sydney. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
  • L’Oréal Group has acquired a majority stake in British skin-care brand Medik8. The move strengthens the conglomerate’s Luxe division and focus on dermatological beauty. Medik8 launched in 2009 and is best known for its $85 retinol serum. “This is an exciting day for Medik8. I am delighted to be joining forces with a company which shares our vision for the brand’s future growth and whose core values align with our deep commitment to science, innovation and, above all, results without compromise,” Medik8 CEO Simon Coble said in a statement.

Stat of the week:

Wonderskin’s viral Wonder Blading Lip Stain Masque has held Amazon’s top sales spot for the lip stain category for 12 months, according to the company. This includes a 41.3% sales increase from January 2025 to February 2025, and a 21.5% jump the month prior, the company said. Wonderskin said it sold 127,000 units on Amazon in February. As previously reported by Glossy, Wonderskin was founded in 2020 and has grown across TikTok and Instagram thanks to its highly visual hero product lip stain. It also sells powder, eyeliner and more color cosmetics. To further boost sales, the company offered 40% off during Amazon’s Prime Day sale last week. 

In the headlines:

Target, Sam’s Club’s summer promotions are all about holding prices as tariff threat looms. Inside the 90 days brands spent navigating Trump’s trade blitz. The limited, but real impact of Trump’s tips tax break for hairstylists and aestheticians.

Listen in: 

What do beetles and red lipstick have in common? More than you may think. Joshua Britton, founder and CEO of L’Oréal-backed Debut, joins the Glossy Beauty Podcast to discuss a biotechnology breakthrough that could soon impact a large segment of the beauty industry — and save millions of female cochineal beetles currently used in cosmetics manufacturing. 

Need a Glossy recap? 

A ‘disruption in discovery’: What Google and Instagram’s new search partnership means for brands. Juicy Couture expands its fragrance offering with Just Moi. Ulta Beauty doubles down on K-beauty with 13 new brands. Ulta Beauty acquires UK retailer Space NK to power its international expansion. Why customer brand trips are core to Cocokind’s marketing strategy. Marketplaces drove 40% of e-commerce growth in 2024, according to new report. 19 months after selling to private equity, JVN Hair enters Ulta Beauty. 

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