• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, August 11, 2015

Sephora is reportedly diving into the subscription beauty-box business, with Women’s Wear Daily reporting it will introduce Play!, a competitor to Birchbox. And while it’s already a crowded field, experts say it’s a logical next step for Sephora, in the same way it makes sense that Birchbox has begun opening physical stores.

“This is just the way of the world now, where multichannel has morphed into omnichannel, and now we’re just calling it all retail,” says Barbara Kahn, director of the Jay H. Baker Retailing Center at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. “There are apps. There’s a lot of webrooming and showrooming. And it just shows that people are now agnostic to channels.”

While Sephora may be late in joining the subscription box party, it’s coming in at the top of its game. In its recent half-yearly financial results, parent LVMH says Sephora has hung onto its double-digit organic revenue growth, with especially strong results in the U.S., France and the Middle East. In addition to gaining market share, it says mobile and online sales grew “remarkably.” 

And Sephora has another edge, compared to its competitors: LVMH’s corporate portfolio also includes such cosmetic brands as Benefit and Make Up For Ever, and fragrances from Parfums Christian Dior, Givenchy and Guerlain. (That segment is also on a roll, with LVMH reporting a sales jump of 22% in the half, compared with the first half of 2014.)

For a brand like Sephora, the subscription box, which WWD says will cost $10 and debut first in Boston and Ohio before expanding nationally, makes good sense. “Cosmetics is very much a business driven by sampling, and people want to touch and feel products before buying them,” Kahn tells Marketing Daily. “Not only does it get people to experiment with things that they often go on to buy, then you get all this data about their preferences.”

But just as Sephora is getting ready to go to boxes, Birchbox is stepping up its store strategy, with TechCrunch reporting it will open two more stores next year. And this summer, it’s opened pop-up shops in Gap stores in seven different markets.