Huda Kattan is back at the helm of her eponymous beauty brand – and she has a new roadmap.
After working behind the scenes in recent years, Kattan hopes that by resuming the company’s leadership role, she can get the company back on track.
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Kattan was hailed as a super influencer in the 2010s, building her massive Instagram following into what was once valued as a $1.25 billion company. Her baking and contouring products flew off the shelves and led to the launch of several sub-brands, including skincare label Wishful. , makeup line Glowish and fragrance play Kayali. In 2017, the company received a minority investment from private equity firm TSG Consumer Partners, which has backed brands such as Smashbox and It Cosmetics.
But multiple factors — including leadership changes, the pandemic, increased competition from brands like Makeup by Mario, Charlotte Tilbury, Patrick Ta and Summer Fridays and the rise of TikTok — have hampered the company in recent years. Most recently, Kattan’s comments on the war between Israel and Hamas led to calls for a boycott of Huda Beauty.
“Financially we always had a very healthy company, but we really started to fall [in 2021]. Our sales dropped dramatically,” Kattan said during an interview with WWD, adding that 2022 was a particularly bad year.
That is now changing, according to Kattan, who stepped back into the CEO role with her husband Christopher Goncalo as co-CEO in 2021, replacing Nathalie Kristo who left the company after just six months as CEO. Previously, Kristo served as president of the company’s North American division since 2018.
Kattan declined to share sales figures, but sources told WWD that net sales in 2023 were about $200 million. According to sources, retail sales would have been around $400 million.
WWD previously reported that revenue in 2021, 2020 and 2019 was estimated to be approximately $250 million.
Rebuilding the company meant tearing down the parts that were out of step with Kattan’s glamorous brand and rebuilding the pillars of growth, like makeup.
Last month, for example, Kattan announced via YouTube that she had returned as CEO. She also revealed that a new logo, redesigned packaging and new products are coming to the brand. At the same time, 40 percent of the current lineup is on the way, including Glowish – a range aimed at infusing makeup with skin care to give users a no-makeup makeup look. The brand was a launch in the COVID era, when people were wearing less makeup.
These plans call for Kattan to become the centerpiece of the brand and Goncalo to take on a more behind-the-scenes operational role as co-CEO.
However, that does not mean that Kattan will not be operational. “I surprised myself at how much I became operational in the last few years in really understanding how to unite an organization toward one goal,” she said, describing her previous leadership style as “sh–ty.”
She was equally candid about the toll the changes in management took on the company, and the tension that arose when a founder’s vision didn’t necessarily match that of an investor.
“It almost killed our company in so many ways,” she said, referring to the CEO changes. “I never want to say anything bad about anyone because everyone shows up and tries to be the best they can be. And I’ve probably mishandled a lot of situations where people came in to do their work, but maybe didn’t understand how to get people to work properly.
“But the company was divided,” she continued. “We had one direction and we had another direction, and I was just inexperienced and maybe foolish.”
Now the brand, which started with false eyelashes, is going back to its roots. While Kattan showed off a more natural makeup look in both the YouTube video and this interview, she told WWD that Huda will always be full of glamour. “Our customer is the glamorous social media user who likes to experiment,” she says.
As far as launches go, first up is Faux Filler, Huda’s new lip gloss, which launches globally on Wednesday.
This year there will be more new products across the board and a change in design and visual merchandising, but at the same time many existing items will disappear. And with Glowish on the verge of being taken private, Wishful’s fate still hangs in the balance.
“We’ve thought about different ways to keep it going, but deep in my heart I feel like it’s time to let it go. My sister Mona doesn’t want to let it go,” Kattan said, referring to her sister Mona Kattan, founder of Kayali and co-founder of Huda Beauty. Their other sister, Alya Kattan, is the head of social media at Huda Beauty.
Retailers were not told in advance that the product range was undergoing such a major shift. “I don’t think anyone knew I was going to post this video,” Kattan said.
Huda Beauty’s geographic footprint could also become more focused.
“We are reviewing some of those things,” she said when asked about the markets. “It really is a new company. Huda Beauty was a start-up. Now we say it’s the restart. It is the new birth. So everything is on the table.”
Then there is social media. Kattan has 4.1 million followers on Instagram, while Huda Beauty has amassed 54.1 million. Huda Beauty has 9.3 million followers on TikTok.
Instagram will always be Kattan’s personal favorite. “I’ll be honest: I don’t spend as much time on TikTok as I do on Instagram. My team does. I love TikTok, but the algorithm doesn’t notice me.’
But nevertheless, she will be expanding her presence on TikTok as she plans to share clips from her new upcoming podcast on the app. The launch is scheduled for April and it will be more about life than makeup.
“I started the work in 2021, but it didn’t take off because once I said goodbye to my CEO, I just had to immerse myself in the business,” she said. “I’m so excited to finally get the opportunity because I feel like the team is working in a really great space.”
According to CreatorIQ, Huda Beauty generated $286.9 in earned media value in the US in 2023, up 10 percent from 2022. EMV assigns a unique value to a piece of content based on the engagement it receives from users (likes, comments, shares, views), as well as the platform on which this content is published (Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, etc.), and assigns that value to the brands mentioned in this content.
Huda Beauty ranks third in total EMV among influencer-founded beauty brands CreatorIQ tracks, behind Rare Beauty and Fenty Beauty, and 18th in annual growth rate.
“While maintaining a high-ranking EMV, 17 brands are growing much faster [year-over-year]” says Leah Spector, communications director at CreatorIQ.
For example, Hailey Bieber’s beauty brand Rhode grew 248 percent year-over-year, and Summer Fridays, founded by Marianna Hewitt and Lauren Ireland, saw 109 percent growth over the same period.
When publicly expressing her support for Palestine on social media, Kattan said it has affected her in good and bad ways.
“I was very stressed during this period because it is always a difficult situation. You feel certain ways in your heart, but it is also very complicated. “I really struggled with how I communicated and sometimes I just wasn’t thinking about the brand when I was communicating,” she said.
“I would say it has definitely affected us in some negative ways, but also some positive ways. I think a lot of new people have come to the brand as well. So some people burned our palettes, some people bought them. I don’t know the long-term effect yet.”
All the changes in recent years have left investors, Kattan said, “worried.”
“How are we going to solve this if we don’t have the right leadership?” she said. “But I think they have a lot of self-confidence now. I’m not sure. Ultimately, investors look at numbers and numbers speak for themselves… I can say that the company is becoming very healthy.”
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