Sephora Doors Aren't a Strategy: The Ami Colé Retrospective

Ami Colé launched at 270 Sephora doors and grew to 600 in sixteen months — then shut its doors in 2025 anyway. In the series premiere of The Retro, Tiffany breaks down founder Diarrha N'Diaye-Mbaye's closure through a project management lens: stakeholder misalignment, unmanaged scope expansion, and a funding environment with a single point of failure. Then, a comparison that changes the whole conversation — Phia, the AI shopping app from Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni, raised $43.5M in under a year on a cap table full of celebrities. And Emma Grede's own on-record comments about passing on investing in Ami Colé — before hiring its founder at SKIMS four years later. Capital access is a resource-planning input. This episode asks who actually gets to plan on it.