NEW YORK (AP) – Sephora closed all of its U.S. stores for an hour Wednesday to host “inclusion workshops” for its 16,000 employees, just over a month after R&B star SZA said she had security called on her while shopping at a store in California.
The beauty retailer said the training had been in development months before SZA’s experience, which undermined the company’s efforts to cast itself as a champion of diversity. Sephora, which apologized to SZA last month, said the incident “does reinforce why belonging is now more important than ever.”
In addition to the store closures, the company said it would close its distribution centers and corporate office for the workshops to discuss what it means to belong in the context of “gender identity, race and ethnicity, age abilities and more.” The stores will open to customers following the training.
Sephora provided few details about its workshops, which were closed to the public. The company said there would be more training in the future for employees but did not answer questions about what would be taught, who would conduct the workshops and or how they were designed.
Employees at a Manhattan location gathered at the front the store Wednesday wearing black T-shirts with Sephora’s new tagline “We Belong to Something Beautiful,” helping themselves to Starbucks coffee as they listened to a speaker. Employees would not speak publicly about the session.