On Tuesday, Sephora closed stores for 2 hours to educate employees about racial bias — here's how the cosmetics giant is proving its fight against discrimination is more than just lip service

• Sephora is making concerted efforts to halt discrimination at its stores and within its corporate offices as the retail industry continues to experience a reckoning for a history of racist behavior.
• The cosmetics giant closed its stores for two hours during Blackout Day on Tuesday in order to hold a company-wide training on racial bias in retail and to discuss the results of a study on the topic it recently commissioned.
• "The goal of this study is to identify the prevalence, nuances, and impact of racial bias in retail, and implement policies that will combat it," Deborah Yeh, Sephora's chief marketing officer, wrote in a statement to Business Insider.
• Sephora was also the first major retailer to support the 15% Pledge, a call for brands to dedicate at least 15% of their shelf space to Black-owned businesses.

For two hours on Tuesday, Sephora closed its stores, using the time it would normally spend selling lipsticks and eyeliners to instead talk to employees about the dangers of racial bias.

As the retail industry faces a continued reckoning in the wake of nationwide Black Lives Matter protests, Sephora is taking concerted steps to show its efforts around race are more than just lip service. In June, the cosmetics company was the first retailer to publicly support the 15% Pledge, a call for brands to dedicate at least 15% of their shelf space to Black-owned businesses. Now, Sephora is looking inward, with an increased focus on internal education around racism and discrimination in the beauty industry and beyond.

During its Tuesday shutdown — held in tandem with Blackout Day efforts which encouraged spending only at Black-owned businesses — employees across store and corporate teams gathered to discuss racial bias and identify ways to halt insidious discriminatory behaviors like racial profiling.

The discrimination training is Sephora's second forum of this nature, after first closing stores for an hour in June 2019 following a racial profiling incident involving the Grammy-nominated singer, SZA. In a tweet, the artist alleged a Sephora store in Calabasas, California, called security on her to ensure she wasn't stealing.

Around this time, Sephora commissioned what it called a "first-of-its-kind" national study on racial bias in retail, an effort led by Dr. Cassi Pittman Claytor and Dr. David Crockett, experts on race in discrimination within commerce. The study was part of a larger campaign and "renewed commitment to building a more inclusive beauty community," Deborah Yeh, Sephora's chief marketing officer, wrote in a statement to Business Insider.

The first phase of its findings were the primary topic of agenda during the Tuesday meetings, during which Sephora leaders discussed the specific ways that racism manifests in a retail environment and methods in which it can be perpetuated such as gatekeeping, marketing, and customer service.

"The goal of this study is to identify the prevalence, nuances, and impact of racial bias in retail, and implement policies that will combat it," Yeh said. "The first phase of the study is complete, and we are already using these findings to map out the areas we want to focus on as an organization."

During the process of working on the study, Sephora enlisted the help of a group of third-party experts and notable figures to consult on the direction of the research and larger company efforts. Among them include April Reign, the activist who created #OscarsSoWhite; David Johns, executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition; and Leah Daughtry, pastor of The House of the Lord Church in Washington, DC.

Looking ahead, Yeh said the next phase of the study may involve pilot programs and experiments with new policies designed to curb racial bias and discrimination that could potentially be rolled out across all of its stores. As it moves forward, the company plans to continue research including interviews with shoppers and employees across the industry to gather a representative range of experiences.

"We are training both our corporate and field staff on these concepts, so they know how to design and implement better client experiences," Yeh said.