Huda Kattan Is Back as CEO of Huda Beauty, and She’s Redesigning Her Brand
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Huda Kattan is back as CEO of her eponymous beauty company and is gearing up to unveil a brand redesign.
A new logo, redesigned packaging and new products are coming to the Dubai-based brand. But some products such as Glowish — a range meant to infuse makeup with skin care to give users a no-makeup makeup look — are on their way out.
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In a video posted to YouTube Wednesday, Kattan revealed that when she announced she was stepping down as CEO in 2020, it was meant to be an inspiring and empowering moment, but in reality she was lying to herself.
“I had received advice from a lot of incredible people around me and they weren’t necessarily wrong with the advice, but they shared with me, ‘You don’t know what you’re doing running a business and you need to get some real people here in order to get the business to go from where it is right now to the place you envision it going,’” she said.
“They were definitely right about that. I needed to get some experts in place, but I think maybe some of that guidance was pushing me too far down one way. I did end up bringing in amazing people, but I also ended up not doing some of things that were so important to me,” she continued, noting that developing products and creating content are what is important to her.
“It has been one of the biggest regrets of my life because I didn’t listen to myself. I felt in the moment that it was wrong, but I felt that I didn’t know better,” she added. “The reality is the mistake took a lot out of me.”
In September 2020, Nathalie Kristo was named Huda Beauty’s new chief executive officer, having previously worked as the president of the company’s North American division since 2018. Kristo departed Huda six months later.
In 2021, Kattan and her husband, Christopher Goncalo, were appointed co-CEOs.
“I’m happy to say I’m back in the CEO position. I have been for a little while. I’ve been under the hood. I had to relearn the business. I had to relearn what it takes to be a CEO. What it takes to be a real CEO, because a lot of people carry the title around and I did for the longest time, but I had to really learn what it meant to be an operational CEO,” she said.
Last year, she once again began leading product development, which she hadn’t done since 2019. New products will launch soon, while others will be discontinued.
“You’ll be seeing the new brand at the end of this year — new logo, new brand identity,” she said. “I’m going to be delisting a lot of products from our catalogue — not because they’re not amazing. They’re great. But a lot of products I just don’t feel the connection with. Products like our Glowish line we will be discontinuing.”
In 2017, Huda Beauty received a minority investment from private equity firm TSG Consumer Partners, which has backed brands like Smashbox and It Cosmetics.
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