field note .02

how do you like them apples?

27th August 2026

Have you ever tried to convince your customers that your apples are greener than the store right across the road?

That's what happened when low-cost airlines changed aviation.

Suddenly, flying became accessible to a much broader audience and price became a far more powerful part of the customer's decision.

Established airlines couldn't simply become easyJet.

They had to become much clearer about why customers should choose them — network, convenience, service, comfort, loyalty, luxury.

Because ultimately, a seat gets you from A to B.

So what makes your seat worth choosing?

And aviation isn't unique. Financial services has faced the arrival of Monzo, Revolut and other digital-first challengers. Even something as commoditised as fuel requires retailers to give us a reason to pull into their forecourt rather than the one down the road.

Different industries. Same question: why you?

Last week, amid much fanfare, Sephora opened its doors in Scotland with its first stores in Glasgow and Edinburgh last week. Around 5,000 square feet of beauty heaven, enormous queues and no shortage of excitement. There is something seductive about an American brand that took its time coming to the UK. Those synonymous black and white stripes are slowly making their presence felt.

Being Edinburgh based, I became very curious about the opening.

Not particularly about the stock — which I'm sure is fantastic.

I was curious about the market it had just walked into.

Retail continues to wrestle with its own identity, but at the heart of it remain two rather simple things: product and customer.

And the need to keep the two aligned.

How do you persuade the customer to buy your product — from you?

There is now a cornucopia of choice for beauty customers in Edinburgh. H beauty, Space NK, Boots, John Lewis and now the newcomer, Sephora. Just outside the immediate shopping district sits the newly acquired Harvey Nichols. All competing for the same customer in a small corner of the city.

Sounds fabulous.

And for the consumer, it is.

But it raises a rather interesting question.

What happens when everyone starts selling the same apples?

The propositions vary, of course.

Boots has been steadily moving further into premium beauty while retaining the accessibility and familiarity on which it built its reputation.

H beauty brings the Harrods association with luxury into a beautiful, experience-led environment.

Space NK has built its reputation around discovery and a more curated collection of brands.

And now we have Sephora.

A global beauty powerhouse bringing enormous brand recognition, social currency and a different kind of beauty experience to Scotland.

Perhaps more importantly, its arrival could become a catalyst for change in an already crowded and hot market.

Beauty now faces a version of the same quandary.

What happens when they are all selling essentially the same apples, while working increasingly hard to convince the customer that theirs are greener?

Do you compete on price?

Loyalty?

Experience?

Exclusivity?

Service?

All of the above?

Beauty is an inherently experiential category. We want to touch it, smell it, try it, talk about it and discover something new.

Retailers have invested heavily in exactly that.

But what happens when experience becomes something everybody offers too?

And when differentiation becomes difficult, incentivising the customer becomes incredibly tempting.

20% off.

Double loyalty points.

Member events.

Flash promotions.

Gifts with purchase.

The danger is that eventually we teach the customer something we never intended: don't be loyal. wait for the offer. A loyalty programme can reward loyalty. It cannot create a reason to be loyal.

Which brings me back to some deceptively simple questions.

Who is your customer — and are they still yours?

What do they come to you for?

When the same brands are available elsewhere, why should they choose you?

How creative are you in giving them a reason?

And once you've made that promise, how consistently can you deliver it — across every store, every colleague and every interaction?

Most importantly, can you do all of that commercially, without buying loyalty through increasingly aggressive promotions?

Great organisations understand what made them successful in the first place.

But they also recognise a principle Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Fran Horowitz spoke about recently "what got us here won't necessarily get us there".

Sephora doesn't answer any of those questions for Scottish beauty retail today.

Its arrival simply makes them harder to ignore.

As consumers, abundance feels wonderful. More brands. More stores. More experiences. More choice. But underneath all that choice, a quiet battle for relevance is taking place.

Markets don't stand still.

Customers don't stand still.

And the things that made a retailer worth choosing yesterday won't necessarily make it worth choosing tomorrow.

Sephora has arrived in Scotland.

The queues suggest plenty of people like its apples.

The more interesting question is what everyone else does now.

Because when everyone sells the same apples, telling us yours are greener probably isn't going to be enough.