August 2019 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / 27“THE VISION OF THE COMPANY
IS DEFINITELY TO ALLOW
PEOPLE TO UNDERSTAND THEIR
CAPABILITIES, AND HOW FAR
THEY CAN GO.”
POWER POSE | BUILDING THE HUDA BEAUTY MEGABRAND OUT OF DUBAIAlya Kattan,
Chief Instagram
Officer, Huda
BeautyMona Kattan,
Global President,
Huda Beauty>>>
got pregnant, and could not take as many
makeup jobs, but then a Sheikha from
Abu Dhabi called me, and was willing to
pay for what I would normally charge for
a week, and it was then that I realized
that there was something in it, in my
blog. All of a sudden, and very quickly,
I was elevated, and people saw me as
somebody who knew something. From
then on, it did take some time for the
blog to become interesting globally, but I
will say that I have been very diligent and
very focused.”
Mona adds that another reason for the
blog gaining a huge amount of traction
and credibility is in Huda being vehe-
mently against advertising from day one
until today. Indeed, Hopper, an Insta-
gram scheduling tool, recently revealedthat Huda Kattan topped
Instagram's 2019 Rich
List in the beauty category,
with the ability to charge
$91,300 (Dh335,344) for
a sponsored post on the
photo-sharing app- if she
wanted to, of course. “I
was in PR at the time, and
people were chasing me
asking what Huda’s rate
was, and what they could
do to get her to review their
company,” Mona recalls.
“And I was like, ‘You need
to have a good product.’
She was super authentic
and genuine, and she really
cared.” Huda adds, “It was
weird, because, at the
time, bloggers were like, ‘We’ll go
to events across the world, and we
will party and get free products.’
And I would be the only one sitting
behind with a scientist.” Huda’s
particular work ethic has been in-
stilled in the Huda Beauty brand as
well, with Mona saying, “We really
want to revolutionize the beauty
industry itself, by giving the highest
quality products to the consumer
at a lower price, which will really
disrupt the industry, and will give
more to the consumer. Huda has
always been really firm about giving
back, and I think we have made
other brands think about that as
well.”
Huda can go deep on all of her
products, but we start with the very
first one- a series of false eyelashes
whose release in February 2013 by
beauty retailer Sephora at Dubai
Mall marked the launch of the Huda
Beauty cosmetic line. A year before,
in 2012, Huda took her beauty tipsto YouTube and Instagram, which, in ad-
dition to her blog, were the only market-
ing channels used to promote her first
product. Sephora Dubai Mall expected to
sell roughly 7,000 units of the lashes in
a year, after comparing them with other
brands in the lash category. Instead, what
happened was, the 7,000 units were sold
in a week. “They told us that we were
a no-name, but we blew the numbers,
we blew the established brands, and on
the first day only, I think, we sold 2,000
lashes,” Huda says. “There were not many
press who featured us back then, they
were all like, ‘You’re a blogger,’ because
at the time, no one knew what bloggers
would become. It was a weird time for us,
to be honest, because it was one of the
very first times that an influencer was re-
leasing a product, but Sephora MENA had
a great General Manager who was like,
‘Let’s do it,’ but then Sephora US said no,
Sephora Europe ignored us, and they kept
on saying no for years, which is crazy,
because now we are like the number two
brand in Sephora Europe.”