Huda Kattan wants businesswomen to learn from her mistakes in her beauty empire

Huda Kattan certainly knows the business of beauty.

In 2010, the Iraqi-American make-up artist, who grew up in the States, decided to launch a blog called Huda Beauty, sharing her top make-up tips and tutorials. Three years later, she launched a range of fake eyelashes, after realising she could make better ones than were available in stores in Dubai, where she lived. The eyelashes sold out upon their launch, and became a firm favourite with Kim Kardashian. Fast forward to 2019, and Huda is worth $550 million (£445m), with her company Huda Beauty having an estimated worth, according to Forbes, of $1.2 billion (£971m).

Most businesspeople would want to boast about that value, but not Huda. Not only do she and Huda Beauty Global President Mona – Huda’s sister – still refer to the company as a ‘baby brand’, but she decided to show the company potentially going bankrupt for reality TV.

Huda and Kattan launched their Facebook Watch series Huda Boss last year, and in season two, in the midst of product launches and family announcements, viewers get to see inside the boardroom when things aren’t going so great.

Speaking to Metro.co.uk, Huda said: ‘I feel like season one was a bit of a challenge, because we were getting used to people filming a show while we were doing our day jobs. Season two has been really interesting because we could tell the production company “guys we want to show not 10% of our personality, but 100% of our personality”. There’s been a lot of honest conversations, a lot of 360 dialogue, whether that be about the brand or the personal lives. And our brand and our personal lives overlap. 

‘There’s a tug of war with me personally, trying to be a working woman, a working mom, a boss, a personality, trying to “have it all”. It’s an interesting look into what it means today to create an online business as an influencer, is it really possible. We talk on the show about potentially going bankrupt because we didn’t do things correctly. I think people should be watching with a pen and paper and taking notes. I hope people wanting to start their own businesses watch and learn from our mistakes and learn from the strategies we show.

‘I hope people understand why the business wasn’t do well. We’re human, we make mistakes. For me personally, I’m an open book, so I have no shame. I don’t think there’s any problems with showing that.’ Laughing, she added: ‘I’m not sure if our investors like it, we’ll have to check with them.’

‘The beauty industry isn’t going down as much as people think it is, but the opportunity is everywhere to find things in different places, so it seems like some places are taking a hit,’ explained Mona. ‘But really people are getting their things from different brands.’

‘There are so many more players,’ Huda agreed. ‘We were starting from the bottom three years ago so we had nowhere to go but up. We still have large numbers of gross percentages each month, but some companies that have a lot of products don’t experience that, and it makes sense, depending where they are in their stage of the brand. We’ve been having great success globally because of that.’

Huda Beauty covers all bases when it comes to make-up, offering everything from foundation for $40 (£32), lipsticks from $20 (£16), Huda’s infamous lashes from $18 (£14), eyeshadow palettes, highlighters, body shimmers, brushes and even perfumes. And the brand is only getting bigger.

‘We’re launching skincare, which is the most exciting thing for us right now,’ Huda said. ‘People have been thinking of us as only a make-up brand, and I’m hoping they start to see us as a big player. 

‘We want to be this generation’s Estee Lauder, ultimately. It’s a big goal, we’re nowhere near it yet. As much as we see the industry softening a little bit, our numbers are clearly not softening because we’re a baby brand. So there’s tremendous opportunities for us.’

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Huda and Mona were born to Iraqi immigrant parents in Oklahoma, and lived in Tennessee and Massachusetts before moving to Dubai in 2006. Growing up as a Middle Eastern girl in smalltown America gave Huda an insight into the make-up available for brown skin girls in different parts of the world – and when she realised that, at the time, was not a lot, she got into blogging.

She told us: ‘When I started out, there weren’t many bloggers with brown skin. My goal was to represent for brown skin girls, and at the beginning, it was very regional – it was in the Middle East, what products do we have here, what are we loving here, how can I bridge the West with the Middle East. Then obviously that grew. Our goal was to help girls with brown skin and how they deal with acne scars, pigmentation, etc.’

But Huda’s Middle Eastern upbringing does pose challenges in the beauty world as well, as Mona, who has just got engaged to her partner Dominic, who is from Leeds, suggests. 

She said: ‘I feel bad for Dominic, he has to integrate into his crazy Middle Eastern family where there’s lots of restrictions. But I think that will resonate with a lot of people with Middle Eastern or Asian backgrounds, because there’s a lot of cultural differences. They’re conservative.’

Huda quipped: ‘I love to do photoshoots, and sometimes they’re provocative. We are Muslim and I definitely want to make sure that I respect the culture, but it is challenging sometimes when you have grown up in America. I get lost in the moment, I want to be half naked dripping in gold, and then I’m like, wait a second, my mom who wears the hijab will get upset with me, so let me reel it back. Sometimes I forget when I’m shooting and later I’m like, oh s***. 

‘It’s challenging because we respect our culture but we are very artistic and creative and get lost in it. We just want to make sure we do right by everyone as much as possible while still expressing ourselves.’

New episodes of Huda Boss are available every Tuesday and Wednesday at 5pm on Facebook Watch followed by a make-up tutorial on Thursdays. The finale episode on 23 October.

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