Sephora And JC Penney Roll Out Kiosks In Cross-Branding Effort

JC Penney is on a roll with its collaborations recently, and the brand's latest venture merely adds to the accumulating snowball: The department store has teamed up with Sephora to create standalone kiosks.

This development comes only three years after JC Penney introduced in-store Sephora counters, a plan helmed by then-CEO Mike Ullman.

"Our customer spends approximately the same amount each year as the typical Sephora customer,” said Ullman. “She has the desire and the wherewithal to shop Sephora as it exists today.”

Mr. Ullman also used to head LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, which owns Sephora.

The store-within-a-store concept created in 2006 is found in 150 JC Penney locations, and considering that there are just over 1,000 JC Penney stores in the US, Sephora plans on testing out beauty vending machines in 20 of the those non-participating stores. The vending machines, operated by ZoomSystems, will include 50 of Sephora's most popular product lines, including Korres, Dior, Bare Escentuals, and Philosophy.

The addition of such a strong brand allowed JC Penney to enter the cutthroat business of the high-profit cosmetics -- which it had failed to do since the 1980s -- while broadening its customer base.

For Sephora, the deal offered the opportunity to expand its brand, one kiosk at a time.