Welcome in, today is Wednesday, October twenty-first, and we begin with Sephora closing its French stores, per Cosmetics Business. Sephora closed its stores in France after weekend demonstrations turned violent, a staff-safety call that interrupted trading in one of the retailer's core European markets. Cosmetics Business reports that Catherine Spindler, the LVMH-owned retailer's President of Europe and Middle East, said in a LinkedIn post that stores shut from five p.m. Saturday, with the entire city-centre network kept closed the next day. In that post she said several French stores were ransacked, and that people on her teams faced situations of violence, fear and great tension. No business consideration, she wrote, will ever weigh more than the safety of teams and customers. Global Cosmetics News reports the closures covered the full French network, against an estimated one thousand five hundred retail businesses affected by the protests nationwide. Neither account states how many stores closed, or for how long. A recurring thread in industry reaction puts the cost of a forced closure well beyond lost sales, counting downtime, payroll, repairs, stock write-offs and rising insurance premiums. Also today, China's online beauty market contracted six percent in September year on year, according to Jefferies' China online beauty tracker, as reported by Investing.com. That follows our earlier report on foreign brands holding their stronghold in China, and the firm notes the decline lands against a nine percent comparison from September last year. Per that tracker, skincare fell six point one percent and colour cosmetics five point two, categories that together are over eighty percent of the market. Online ran weaker than the five point four percent retail sales growth the National Bureau of Statistics reported for September. Most multinationals were soft, with L'Oréal down five percent and Estée Lauder group down eight, while Beiersdorf and Galderma grew. Local brands Mao Geping and Grain Rain were the largest share winners. That is the read for anyone whose growth guidance still leans on Chinese demand. Reaction is split: some observers point to a gradual recovery in premium and luxury beauty, framing the softness as concentrated in mass online channels. Separately, beauty deal activity accelerated in twenty twenty-five while the median deal value fell against the year before. That finding is from a new Kearney study, reported by WWD Beauty. More transactions at smaller typical values points to bolt-on buying rather than large platform acquisitions. The same reporting does not break out the deal counts behind that median. Industry reaction leans toward reading volume up and value down as buyers narrowing rather than retreating, with recurring commentary pointing to science-backed skin health, longevity positioning and medical aesthetics as where capital is concentrating. A recurring view among deal advisers is that in a cautious market the premium shifts from headline multiples to provable earnings quality and clean, diligence-ready data. Ownership is changing hands on the supply side too. Chanel has sold its majority stake in Capsum, the contract development and manufacturing firm, to Motion Equity Partners, with the founding chief executive and management team retaining a minority share. That is per WWD Beauty, whose account is brief: no price and no timetable. The effect is that manufacturing capacity used by beauty brands moves into financial-sponsor hands, with the founders still holding equity. Now, a few more headlines moving the trade today. Global Cosmetics News reports luxury retailers in Milan have closed stores after two days of civil unrest, with the Italian government preparing to deploy five hundred more troops. The same outlet reports Vinted has removed listings suspected of containing stolen goods and stepped up monitoring, following looting of French beauty and luxury retailers. Cosmetics Business reports skincare remains the most active beauty subsector for deals in twenty twenty-six, with buyers favouring science-backed skin-health and longevity products, per new DC Advisory data. Beauty and cosmetics was Amazon's most-purchased category during Prime Big Deal Days, bought by thirty-two percent of shoppers against twenty-two percent last year, per Market Defense's own report, carried by CNHI News. And finally, Mikayla Nogueira's POV Beauty has secured a fifteen million dollar Series A led by Silas Capital, earmarked for its Sephora business and TikTok Shop, Cosmetics Business reports.