IE Hosts the Sephora Challenge

IE Business School hosted the Sephora Challenge on January 12th in which selected participants were invited to take part in the case challenge “Sephora Spain: Continuing to innovate & Enhance the Retail Customer Experience”. Irma Ugarte, Marketing and E-Commerce Director at Sephora and Jose Esteves, Associate Dean of the International MBA, presented the challenge to participants.

“The IE Sephora Challenge was a great opportunity to gather first hand input on how the new generations perceive the role of retail vs online and what constitutes from them great experiences in current context. It was a fantastic opportunity to witness the great strategic and communication skills the groups displayed in their pitches and how they managed to work so efficiently in such short time to come up with a strong aligned recommendation” - Irma Ugarte

Among 255 applicants, 50 participants were selected to take part in the challenge, representing 52 different nationalities. The participants varied in their experience level, with both young profiles and executive profiles, which enabled teams to have different perspectives when working on the challenge.

“The initial idea of this challenge was to allow people from outside of IE, who are not current students to have what we call the IE experience, which groups four pillars of IE. The first one is international diversity. The second one is teamwork. The third one is practical learning. And the fourth one is innovation,” explained Joseph Freiha, IE Director of France & Monaco.

After a presentation introducing the case challenge, the participants were then assigned to mixed-nationality teams mentored by IE alumni. Teams had one week to develop their projects before the final pitch held on January 19. All teams presented in front of a Jury of Sephora and IE University Directors and Professors.

“It was a really fun experience, and I loved working with my group. Besides being an excellent experience for me personally, I also enjoyed gaining more insight into Sephora and the existing challenges.”
Emily Drabek, mentor of the winning team

A total of six scholarships were handed to the winning team and also to individuals who stood out in their communication and leadership.

“I was absolutely honoured to have been given the opportunity by IE to participate in the challenge. It was such an immersive and educational experience, connecting with incredible like-minded people, and I could not speak more highly of the IE alumni who guided us through the challenge,” said Max Buchanan, winner of the Leadership award.

The challenge was received with positive feedback from participants, praising the experience.

“It was an honor to participate in this innovative challenge proposed by IE Business School in conjunction with Sephora. I had the opportunity to do group work with other women of different nationalities and develop a project together! Together as a team we managed to win first place as the project that best fit the requirements,” said Maria do Mar Bruschy.