Introduction
There is a term for the product where you are guaranteed to make your customers happy. It’s called “Summer Sephora.”
We do it every day and it doesn’t cost us a cent.
History of Sephora
In the following post we will discuss Sephora’s history in NYC and sketch out a few of the company’s key moments.
In the early 2000s, Sephora opened its doors in New York City. It was one of several international stores that opened in the city at this time, while at the same time, beauty chains and other shops were opening their doors all over the US.
One of the first things Sephora did was to open an online store for customers to buy from, using a system called Shopify. At the time it was a little strange (we’ll get back to this later) but it proved to be very successful for Sephora and allowed it to offer its clients more customized products. From then on, Sephora started offering customers access to services like custom packaging and personalized delivery in addition to products — all because it turned out that people really liked ordering from their own local store through an online storefront!
This turned out to be a smart move for Sephora: as soon as people realized how easy it was to browse through their favorite brands and choose jewelry or makeup on their own instead of waiting in line at a store, they quickly adopted this idea into their lives. The rest is history!
Sephora Resume
Summer is the season of refreshment — and it’s also the season of jobs. It’s that time of year when people are looking for new experiences and new adventures, like a trip to the Bahamas or a visit to a new city. And for many, success in finding new ways to put that experience into their resume might be considered an option as well.
It’s important to note that applying for summer jobs isn’t just about having great ideas and being willing to put in the hard work necessary to make them happen: it’s also about how you present yourself professionally and how you communicate with your prospective employer. While some employers may see summer job candidates as something akin to “pet rock,” others will view them as more like “pet rocks on steroids.”
The most important thing you can do is make sure your resume is organized well so employers have everything they need when they look at it. Summer job applications should include:
• Your name, information on your education (if any), background (both your professional experience and volunteer/community experience) and current roles/jobs held
• Previous job title, description, keywords and feedback (if available) for each role you have held
• A brief summary of what you did during your summer job
• A list of skills you gained from your summer job that are relevant to your next position (e.g., graphic design)
While many employers like short summaries on resumes, some prefer more extensive descriptions of skills that are relevant to their hiring process—and this list should include a list of those skills as well (e.g., analytical thinking with a BS). It is completely acceptable for an employer who does not like long resumes (like myself) to accept only short summaries – but we strongly recommend keeping every entry at least one sentence long!
Skills and Abilities
This is probably the one that people are most interested in. I’ve been neglecting it for a while, but I’m finally writing up an idea that I’ve been kicking around for some time now.
One of the things I love to do as a consultant is take existing ideas and turn them into something more complete. So, I thought why not make this into a blog series instead?
This week, we’ll be talking about skills and abilities. The first post will be all about skills and abilities from one person’s perspective. To spice things up, we’ll also cover abilities from two different perspectives: one person’s success on average and another person’s experience with success/failure.
The second post will then focus on how to use skills and abilities to get results in our own case. Stay tuned!
Personal Info
Summer sephora is a personal and professional information management service that enables users to access, organize and share information about both themselves and anyone else with whom they share a connection. The service provides features for managing email, blog, social media and corporate-level information.
The company has raised a total of $30 million from investors including Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, T. Rowe Price Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners. It was founded in 2011 by Trevor Kiewitz and Michael Elgin
In March 2013 Summer Sephora announced the acquisition of the site/service “Social Media Best Practices” by Twilio. This move was in reaction to Google’s recent purchase of Motorola Mobility, who acquired Social Media Best Practices in 2011.
The acquisition was completed on May 20th 2013
Summer Sephora is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Tel Aviv and Bangalore. It has offices in New York City, London, London office (where it’s based), Tel Aviv office (where it’s based) Mumbai office (where it’s based), Mumbai office (where it’s based) New Delhi office (where it’s based).
In 2017 Summer Sephora recruited James Heintz as the CEO
Work Experience
We’ve all been there. You have a summer job and nothing else is going on, so you sign up for a day of summer sephora to get some work experience. Sounds like a great idea, right? Well it turns out that the casual nature of the job is actually pretty intense:
In many ways, this job is the opposite of sephora: while they’re not making the exact same products, they are in different business segments and have different funding models. This means that if you are looking for work experience, you are going to be dealing with a whole lot more people than sephora does; and people often aren’t super friendly.
Also:
The amount of time required to do your project will also vary according to your industry/project — as well as to how much experience you have. In general, it takes longer than at sephora to learn all the ins and outs; but on average it takes about an hour. The experience-based compensation aspect is also more variable than at sephora (particularly since most projects are only one or two days long), though this can vary by industry (in fact, I’m currently working on a project at one company where we earn $0 as compensation).
So here’s my advice:
If you want work experience — go somewhere else!
Education
I’m a huge fan of summer sephora and have been following it since it was called “summer sandal” (hence the name). I was actually surprised to learn that it’s both in its 20th year of business and still growing (in fact, the company is now larger than when I first started following them in 1999).
The entire summer sephora experience is about what you can do with products you already own. It’s about giving back to people who need a little more from their beauty routine. And it’s about helping keep small businesses afloat. Summer sephora has certainly earned my loyalty for more than 20 years; I will continue to support them for as long as they keep doing good work.
But, maturity comes with responsibility:
There are a lot of things that summer sephora can do better than other companies…
Interests and Activities
Sephora has a simple mission: to bring beauty and comfort to women with the power of their own, natural hair. They do this by creating the perfect hairstyle for every woman, from their first day in school to their wedding day.
The company is based in New York City and the product is sold exclusively online at sephora.com .
The company has been described as an “unsung hero” and a “startup to watch” by Forbes , The Wall Street Journal , Inc. and TechCrunch .
So, what does it do? It allows women (and men) to create customized color-treated wigs (which can also be styled with heat styling tools) using the same technology found in their hair straightening products. The hair straighteners are plugged into computer servers which are controlled via webcams on the website — hence the term “sep” — and they can be adapted to any head shape or volume that you want by using text messages or a mobile app (the latter allows customers to customize their hair while they are out of town).
Each week, new products are added as well as seasonal promotions (such as Christmas ideas). The company has been called “a $3 billion-a-year business without even a single investor” by Forbes.
It is interesting that there have been so many investors who have missed on this opportunity, even though it is clearly one of the more intriguing startups out there right now. In fact, there have been several exits listed on CrunchBase over the years — despite its lack of an established revenue stream — including SEOR Capital Partners , Megaline Capital Partners , and Daymond John’s Unilever Ventures . I would be surprised if there isn’t more than one exit listed from Severn Troyer herself! This suggests that it isn’t just VCs who may not have understood what this was about back when she started it all up! But now Severn Troyer has made her fortune off of something that was very much worth her while:
Professional Goals and Achievements (Optional)
Summer is a great time to look back on your professional achievements. Even though you may not have a ton of accomplishments, you can still use the momentum of the summer to celebrate your accomplishments and get to know yourself better.
This post aims to help you think about some of those accomplishments. It’s not meant as a comprehensive list of everything you’ve done and achieved, but rather as a quick list of things that have been particularly meaningful to you.
I strongly suggest reading this post (and this one) first before writing down anything . And in addition, I recommend that you put your letter grade for each accomplishment on a separate sheet, so that there’s something tangible for yourself.
References (Optional)
In the past, I have picked up on a few of the arguments that have been put forward in favor of making summer sephora a real contender. Namely, that it requires significant innovation to be successful and that it cannot compete with the likes of Mary Kay or L’Oreal skin care.
I disagree with both of these points.
The first one is one I took personally; a challenge to my ego to make sure I wasn’t being knocked off my perch by someone who just started out. But if you look at this from a position of strength, you can see why it is true. If all your products are great, you (like most people) will keep buying them. And if all your products are great, no competitor can threaten your market share unless they level up too (which is why many companies focus heavily on brand).
The other argument against me is that though summer sephora has been around for years and has something meaningful behind its brand, it might not be enough to compete in today’s market as a whole without some major changes (like acquiring better marketing assets or investing in product design). I am under no illusions that this will happen; but I do think if we can make the product better, we can communicate the change clearly and help our customers understand why they should buy from us instead of someone else.
These two points about product uniqueness and competition should be enough for us to stand on our own two feet here. If we can take our products seriously as unique entities even if we don’t overcome current competitors head-on — then I think we have a chance to succeed. So let’s review what we have so far:
Summer sephora is—summer sephora is
Different than any other skin care line on the market . The only reason most people know about summer sephora is because they associate it with their favorite sun screen lotion or hair dye — things they use regularly every day and because they want them to stay healthy looking year round (the first part at least). In fact, there are very few other lines out there like ours right now (especially compared to L’Oreal), which means that everyone knows about us before they know anything else out there — which means when they do learn about something new out there, they are usually likely to forget about it immediately after using it as their go-to sunscreen or hair dye again — which