Dive Brief:

• Building out its DTC and clean beauty assortment, Sephora has partnered with Vegamour, a direct-to-consumer hair care brand, to feature the Vegamour Gro line on its website, the brand announced on Tuesday.

• Designed to combat early signs of hair loss, the Vegamour Gro collection features a shampoo, conditioner, a scalp detoxifying serum, hair foam, dry shampoo, lash serum and brow serum, the company said. 

• Jennifer Lucchese, Sephora's vice president of hair care merchandising, said in a statement that the partnership with Vegamour is part of the beauty retailer's efforts to provide "the very best in quality and product innovation, as well as supporting all hair care needs."

Dive Insight:

Sephora has been trying to get further into clean beauty for the past few years.

In 2018, the beauty retailer launched its Clean at Sephora label and in 2019, expanded the list of ingredients banned from that designation to prohibit more than 50 ingredients such as mercury, carbon black, aluminum salts and lead. That same year, the brand had 68 brands within its "Clean at Sephora" product selection, up from 61 brands the year prior. According to Coresight Research, Sephora had over 1,600 products in the label as of February, making up about 4% of its total assortment.

In addition to Vegamour, Sephora recently partnered with Merit, a high-end, clean DTC beauty brand, to offer the brand's products across more than 500 stores in the U.S. and Canada, and online. Merit will also be sold with the retailer's "Clean at Sephora" label, per a February announcement. Lucchese said in a statement that the retailer plans to work with Vegamour to "jointly innovate and educate around this important, emerging category of hair wellness."

Both Sephora and Ulta have pursued deals with up-and-coming DTC brands and attempted to build out their clean beauty offerings. In 2019, both rolled out DTC-focused initiatives, with Sephora using end-caps to highlight new brands and debuting a skincare trend wall, and Ulta launching Sparked at Ulta Beauty to showcase DTC brands online and in stores. In the hair space specifically, Ulta formed a partnership with Madison Reed in 2019 to feature its products in more than 1,200 stores and online. 

"Sephora has always led the way in supporting innovation in the beauty and wellness space with an emphasis on developing extensive customer education programs around new products and categories, so they were our obvious choice as a retail partner," Vegamour CEO Daniel Hodgdon said in a statement. 

Sephora's partnerships with DTC brands come as the company also expands its brick-and-mortar footprint. Earlier this year, the retailer announced plans to open 260 shop-in-shops in Kohl's this year (part of a plan to eventually sell in 850 Kohl's stores) and feature more than 125 brands in those locations.