Sephora’s recent biannual sale snafu carries two good lessons.

It may be time to rethink the mass drop model since serve scaling is expensive. Ticketmaster has been getting blasted for the same thing. But if you’re going to drop, at least have decent messaging ready for when things crash.

Maybe sales can become brand holidays instead of just accounting exercises. Sephora runs two sales a year and shoppers plan for them. They don’t need to align with a shopping holiday, they are a shopping holiday for the stans. And that’s much more valuable.