Sephora announces Sydney store location

Yes we are all counting our lucky stars in Sydney as the Makeup giant Sephora has finally seen the value in the Australian Beauty market, and has picked Sydney for the first location (that’s right, there will be more, possibly 25 more!).

While several reports have said that this shouldn’t start a price war, numerous reports has said that Sephora will be using the American prices and not adding the typical Aussie markup we’ve had to suffer for years.

What many people don’t know is that both Myers and David Jones have been working over the last year to roll in “price harmonisation” which in simple terms means that the brands they carry will be at the same price as overseas!

This is a historical moment as it is the first major move towards removing the abnormally high Australian markup, as these two industry leaders make the move everyone else will follow.

While this is exciting news, as delivering a more fairly priced product to Australians is the main reason Redefining Beauty was started, it will no doubt be quite some time before beauty buyers actually get lower prices.

There is another side to the difference in pricing the consumers don’t often realise, and that is the exchange rate and gst and duty, with the no too distant GFC (Global Financial Crisis) the Australian Dollar soared and was even above the Us Dollar, its now around 92 cents to the dollar, but has been as low as 84 cents.

This one thing alone means a product that goes for $85 US could cost $100 Australian, and then there is gst and duty and customs fees which adds another 15% to the price.

So while we will start to see the prices become more reasonable, having the same dollar figure as US prices is simply not a reality.

Redefining Beauty will be attending the IMATS in Sydney hope to see you there!