Sephora To Shut U.S. Store Doors For Inclusion, Diversity Training

SAN JOSE (KPIX 5) -- The personal care and beauty store Sephora is shutting its doors for an hour on Wednesday morning to train its employees on inclusion and diversity.

"An hour is not much, but it's a step in the right direction," said Sephora customer Sarah Yassin. "We'll have to see if this has a positive impact. Obviously, they didn't do a good enough job in the training in the first place."

The store-wide shutdown comes after the April 30 incident when R&B singer/songwriter SZA tweeted that an employee at a Calabasas Sephora location had called security and accused her of stealing.

Sephora apologized via Twitter and wrote, "We take complaints like this seriously." It was then announced that the store planned to train its employees on inclusion. But some felt it was a little too late.

"If I was accused, I would be shocked, I would be upset, I would be angry," said Seeta Bhandari, who shops at Sephora occasionally.

However, Sephora staff said the June 5 workshop was already in the works months before the SZA incident to coincide with its new campaign called "We Belong to Something Beautiful." The company added that the workshop is just one of many diversity training workshops it holds for its 16,000 employees.

It has been widely reported that SZA used to work for Sephora.

"I support any step in the right direction, we'll see where they end up," said Yassin. "Shutting down an hour will impact their business, so at least we know they're going to hurt for what they did, and I'm sure they lost business as well when she tweeted that."