Sephora gears up for Salt Lake City DC

Sephora gears up for Salt Lake City DC San Francisco-based Sephora, the nation's largest cosmetics retailer, said it will open its first western U.S. distribution center in late summer.
   The retailer, a division of French luxury products group Mot Hennessy Louis Vuitton, is looking for more than 500 workers to staff the 350,000-square-foot distribution warehouse in Salt Lake City.
   Sephora, the leading retail beauty chain in Europe with more than 515 outlets in 14 countries, has grown rapidly in the U.S. market since becoming the exclusive cosmetics store-within-a-store vendor for J.C. Penney Co.’s 1,000-store chain in April 2006. Since, 1998 it has opened 126 branded outlets in North America.
   The firm had been looking for a western U.S. distribution location for some time, considering other locations such as Reno, Nev. before deciding on the Utah capitol for geographic and workforce availability reasons.
   Within one-day trucking distance of markets in California, Seattle and Oregon, the Salt Lake DC will serve Sephora’s customers west of the Mississippi. Sephora's western U.S. customers have been served by a DC in Maryland.