Sephora opened its first store in the region in 2007 and has grown exponentially through a joint venture with the Chaloub Group to 66 stores in five markets (UAE, KSA, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait). The flagship store in Dubai Mall ranks as the number one store worldwide.

Sephora is a meaningful incubator for indie beauty brands. Huda Beauty launched with a simple selection of false lashes in Sephora’s Dubai store in 2011 and has since grown into a global beauty powerhouse. Many founders have followed suite, trading exclusivity for the ability of leveraging the retailer’s infrastructure, logistics, and retail footprint to expand into international markets.

In early 2020, Akash Mehta launched Fable & Mane, an Ayurvedic-inspired haircare brand, with his sister Nikita Mehta, launching exclusively with Sephora in North America as the first Ayurvedic and sibling-founded brand. Last year the brand made a big splash when it entered the Middle East with the retailer.

Sephora offers the stage, but Akash spent time understanding the nuances of the market to ensure they built a strategy that would create a solid foundation for growth. In fact, the brand is using the market to test retail animations concepts before deploying them in North America or Europe.

What is the opportunity you see in the region to justify the investment of launching in the Middle East?

The Middle East is an emerging and growing market in beauty, and we saw that opportunity many years ago. It was important for us to build the foundations of Fable & Mane in the right way, so we wanted to find the market leader in beauty—which was Sephora—to work on understanding how to launch it in a way that was relevant to its local culture and speaking to its hair concerns and hair types (i.e., heat, humidity, lifestyle habits). So, we spent a lot of time deep diving into how we should launch with them. We found it was an incredible fit for us because the Middle East is built on rituals, heritage, passed-down traditions—much like Ayurveda in India. It was a perfect match. Investment is needed, especially for a young start-up, but only if it’s done in the right way by building a community and loyalty and going slow and steady.

You did a big marketing push in Dubai at the launch, but you also focused on Saudi Arabia. What interests you about the Saudi beauty market?

Saudi Arabia is a very important market that’s experienc- ing tremendous growth from all types of verticals—retail and beauty, tourism boards, its efforts in inviting influencers and entrepreneurs, work opportunities. It’s growing quickly, but we want to make sure we’re doing it justice as well; not just in Dubai and Saudi, but all Gulf Coast countries—Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain. They are individual countries, and you have to view that region in its entirety rather than focus on just Dubai. There’s a lot of cross-pollination between them, so you’ll make a bigger impact by focusing on them all. Beauty is becoming a huge focus for consumers there, and we’re seeing trends stem especially in Snapchat and TikTok. What are some of the things brands need to contemplate when entering the market?

Think about local relevancy, invest in education and language/translation, understand their way of life, and respect it. For example, in Saudi, I don’t perform head massages during my masterclasses to respect their religion and beliefs. I make sure a woman is doing them, and I educate from afar. You need to look at each region and adapt; you can’t just copy and paste in the Middle Eastern world. What they’re looking for is feeling like they’re spoken to and not just told. I spent a lot of time understanding each market and visited a lot before launch. It takes money, time, and energy to build and grow there, but it’s so worth it!

What have been some of your learnings?

The market is growing incredibly fast. What you know from two months ago will probably be different in some way to now. Be agile, prepared to adapt, and what you think you know, you don’t know. The region is a driver of trends and influencing my decisions in product and market strategy globally. Lastly, it surprised me how diverse the region was with people—lots of different hair types, so many expats; it’s becoming a very cosmopolitan area, which adds to the growth.

What sort of regionalization have you had to do?

We’ve hosted quite a few regional events like local store trainings in Arabic and local dialects. We’ve hosted intimate events that are co-hosted by influencers who speak to their own communities. We make sure to adapt our masterclasses per region, and this is important because what’s interesting in Saudi can be different to what they like in Dubai or Kuwait.

Anything else you want to share?

The Middle East market has been a good pilot playground for us to test retail animations concepts before deploying them in North America or Europe. For example, the build created for our Dubai Mall windows or the Sephora Middle East’s PR events were opportunities for us to establish proof of concept before replicating or amplifying them in the rest of our markets. There are incredible high-quality vendors that work quickly in Dubai, which makes creating such experiences in the Middle East easier than anywhere else.