EXCLUSIVE: The Detox Market Enters Into the Middle East
Clean beauty marketplace The Detox Market will expand into the Middle East through a partnership with luxury beauty omnichannel retailer Faces. The partnership was managed by the luxury retailer and distributor Chalhoub Group, which operates an array of fashion and beauty brands, as well as retailers.
For The Detox Market, which has six brick-and-mortar stores and an online presence, the Middle East had been a key market the brand had been eyeing.
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“We’ve been looking at expanding into the Middle East for quite a bit of time,” said The Detox Market founder and chief executive officer Romain Gaillard. “We have quite a bit of traffic coming from that region, so we identified that there were clearly some appetites from the consumers in the Middle East for clean beauty. The second part was that there was a real lack of offering over there.”
Gaillard noted clean beauty has not been offered in a large scale format in the Middle East the way it has in other markets like the U.S. After thinking about scaling, Gaillard met with the Chalhoub Group and found they would be an optimal partner as they had a “similar train of thought in terms of what they wanted to do with clean beauty,” he said. “The Chalhoub Group is clearly the best suited for that type of objective, the most respected group when it comes to distribution, retail and partnerships in luxury in the Middle East.”
When it came to partnering, the Chalhoub Group felt the clean beauty space was the perfect market to expand into, according to David Vercruysse, president of managed companies at Chalhoub Group. “The beauty market in the Middle East is one of the fastest growing in the world,” Vercruysse said. “There is a huge untapped opportunity.…It’s a market which is set up for a tremendous growth.”
According to Vercruysse, Chalhoub Group maintains more than 50 percent of the beauty market share in the Middle East, and therefore the group felt it was their responsibility to build out the clean category. In doing this, The Detox Market will launch first on the Faces website and then will expand into brick-and-mortar locations in the second half of 2023 with a focus on the skin care category, according to Gaillard.
As part of the partnership, the brand will do selective brand launches on the site over time with an initial focus on the skin care category, with brands like True Botanicals and Odacité, to ensure they are able to properly introduce and educate consumers on their offerings. Chalhoub Group also plans to host online and offline activations in partnership with influencers to further The Detox Market’s presence in the Middle East.
With this expansion, the Detox Market expects the Middle East market to be a multimillion-dollar opportunity, accounting for an estimated 10 percent of sales in 2023 and 15 to 20 percent of sales in 2024. The Detox Market also anticipates the revenue to double between the first half and second half of 2023.
