The Middle East’s beauty opportunity is not simply about international brands entering a fast-growing market. The region is increasingly shaping what the global beauty industry sells, how it sells it, and where the next generation of brands originates. That was the central theme to emerge from BeautyMatter’s latest webinar, Middle East Beauty Market: GCC in Focus, which brought together Ravi Ramchandani, Event Director of Beautyworld Middle East; Brooke Bergé, Division Manager of Beauty Distribution at Ali Bin Ali Beauty; Jessica Hanson, Global President of fragrance house Kayali; and Amna Abbas, Senior Consultant at Euromonitor International, alongside BeautyMatter CEO and founder Kelly Kovack.
The conversation accompanied BeautyMatter’s latest report on the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) beauty and wellness ecosystem, examining the region’s growth potential, changing consumer dynamics, retail infrastructure, and increasing influence on the global beauty market. While the global beauty market grew approximately 6% in 2025, the Middle East and Africa grew 16% in current value terms, according to figures shared during the webinar. Euromonitor valued the wider Middle East and Africa beauty market at approximately $45 billion in 2025, while the GCC economy itself is worth roughly $2.3 trillion. Saudi Arabia and the UAE account for approximately 77% of the bloc’s GDP.
The region’s growth story is unfolding against geopolitical uncertainty. However, the panelists distinguished between uncertainty surrounding the market and a fundamental weakening of beauty demand. Abbas said Euromonitor has observed some softening following regional conflict, including an impact on tourism, but not the dramatic decline that might have been expected given the circumstances. The company’s longer-term outlook for the region also remains solid.
From a distribution perspective, Bergé similarly characterized the biggest impact as uncertainty rather than a significant decline in demand. Brands are paying closer attention to freight routes, lead times, and rising logistics costs, while retailers are becoming more cautious around inventory commitments, forecasts, and launch timing. "The opportunity is actually still there," she said, stating that navigating it now requires greater agility and more disciplined inventory management.
The international beauty trade fair Beautyworld Dubai offers another indicator of continued international appetite. Ramchandani said surveys conducted between April and August among approximately 2,000 prospective visitors for Beautyworld Dubai found 71% were planning international travel to attend, and 53% were decision-makers. While he anticipates some decline in overall exhibitor and visitor numbers this year, he expects a highly business-focused audience. Fragrance participation, meanwhile, is larger than last year.
The GCC population currently has a median age of around 30, while markets such as the UAE combine large expatriate populations with highly traveled local consumers. Abbas described consumers as familiar with not only established international brands but also Arab, Asian, and regional beauty concepts, with high digital adoption accelerating their exposure to global launches and trends.
But global awareness does not mean consumers want beauty stripped of local relevance.
“Traditional and transformation [are] happening simultaneously,” said Bergé. Government investment across tourism, hospitality, retail, and technology is accelerating modernization, while digital connectivity gives consumers almost immediate access to global trends. Yet cultural relevance has become more, rather than less, important.
Fragrance provides the clearest example. Oud, musk, incense, and fragrance layering are deeply embedded in regional beauty rituals, but those traditions are now increasingly informing global luxury fragrance too. As Bergé put it, the GCC is no longer just consuming global beauty; it is helping create it.
The panel warned against treating the six GCC markets as interchangeable. The UAE and Saudi Arabia illustrate why. The UAE offers an international, highly developed beauty market, a diverse expatriate population, and substantial exposure to global brands, making it a useful entry point for companies looking to establish themselves in the region. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, provides a significantly greater population scale and a younger, more locally concentrated consumer base.
Saudi Arabia accounts for approximately 40% of GCC beauty spending, according to figures shared during the webinar, and has around three times the population of the UAE. But scale does not make a larger version of the Emirati opportunity.
Hanson explained that Kayali operates with different teams across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar, adapting education and execution to each market. Saudi consumers are generally younger, more digitally native, and more locally concentrated than the UAE’s heavily international consumer base.
“You cannot treat each part of the region exactly the same,” said Hanson. Bergé echoed that distinction, warning brands against assuming a successful UAE strategy can simply be replicated elsewhere. Brand positioning may remain consistent, but retail channels, partnerships, investment, and execution need to reflect individual markets. “One regional strategy is a must, but with two very distinct market approaches,” said Bergé.
Ramchandani recalled that a decade ago, many of the fragrance businesses exhibiting at Beautyworld Dubai were focused primarily on producing cost-effective products and selling volume across the Middle East, Africa, and India. Social media and the subsequent viral success of Arabian fragrance brands in Western markets changed the equation. Brands manufactured in the UAE began attracting buyers from Europe, the US, South America, and elsewhere. Ramchandani said the US was among Beautyworld Dubai’s top 10 visitor markets in 2025. At the same time, international fragrance houses have increased their investment in the region, including opening regional and creative facilities in Dubai.
The UAE has consequently become one of the world’s top 10 perfume-exporting markets, according to figures discussed during the webinar. “Made in Dubai,” once an unlikely competitor to the cachet of “Made in France,” is increasingly becoming a selling point in its own right.
The relationship between the GCC and India adds another dimension to that ecosystem. Around four million Indians live in the UAE, according to figures cited by Ramchandani, making them the country’s largest expatriate community. He pointed to the longstanding trade corridor between the two markets and the role Indian entrepreneurs have played in building some of the UAE’s major fragrance businesses. For successful Indian beauty brands, the UAE can also provide a logical first international expansion market due to its proximity and substantial Indian diaspora.
Brands entering the region also need to rethink how beauty is marketed. Hanson shared that Western beauty marketing frequently organizes consumption around occasions, holidays, seasons, or promotional periods, whereas beauty and fragrance in the GCC are much more closely tied to everyday rituals.
"You're not really creating the demand," she said. Instead, brands are competing for attention and trust from a consumer who is already highly engaged with beauty. That raises expectations for education, service, and physical retail experiences.
Fragrance house Kayali experiences those expectations firsthand with its Kayali Café activation at Dubai Mall. The concept originated in Dubai before traveling to Paris and the US, but Hanson said the scale of the original activation reflected the particularly high benchmark for retail experiences in its home market.
Outside fragrance, Euromonitor identified skincare, hybrid products, skinification, color cosmetics, suncare, and haircare as categories presenting opportunities. Abbas also highlighted longevity, digitalization, and the rising influence of Asian beauty as forces reshaping the market, alongside consumers increasingly viewing beauty products as investments in both their appearance and broader well-being.
The retail infrastructure supporting that demand is changing, too. Sephora has operated in the region since 2007, while Ulta Beauty began its own GCC expansion in November 2025 through a partnership with Alshaya Group. The arrival and expansion of major international beauty retailers is giving brands more routes to consumers.
Bergé said the role of distributors has evolved considerably during her more than two decades working in the region. Where distributors once focused primarily on importing products, securing doors, and managing inventory, they increasingly operate as strategic partners involved in market entry, positioning, retail strategy, marketing, education, and sometimes e-commerce.
"Distribution gives you access, but doesn't automatically create demand," she said. As competition increases, success is less about accumulating doors than selecting the right retailer, channel, and partner while continuing to invest in education and brand building.
The panel ended by dismantling some of the assumptions that continue to surround the region. Abbas emphasized that openness to international brands should not be mistaken for indiscriminate demand: consumers expect product to add value, requiring brands to understand current needs, distribution, logistics, and the market itself.
Another mistake is that higher purchasing power gives brands license to inflate prices. Bergé advocated maintaining recommended retail pricing as consistently as possible across markets rather than automatically passing every additional import and distribution cost to GCC consumers. Kovack noted that increasingly borderless consumers can readily compare what the same product costs elsewhere.
The broader myth is that beauty innovation continues to travel predominantly from West to East. Arabian fragrance has already demonstrated the reverse: regional ingredients, rituals, and brands are finding global consumers, while locally developed beauty companies increasingly compete with international incumbents at home.
For international brands, the GCC’s growth rates make the opportunity difficult to ignore, but capturing it requires moving beyond the idea of the Middle East as a wealthy, homogeneous export market. The region’s consumers are young, digitally connected, and deeply engaged to understand the cultural, retail, and product nuances of individual markets. The GCC may be one of global beauty’s fastest-growing opportunities, but increasingly, it is also one of its most sophisticated.
