Indie Pioneers Podcast – ‘Representing the underrepresented’: Founders of Shade M Beauty on catering to diverse Muslim consumer base

The Dubai-based brand was founded by Jolie Nubani and Nour Khalife, who have between them 18 years of experience in the beauty industry working with brands such as Yves Saint Laurent Beauty and Giorgio Armani Beauty.

Their experience working with global beauty brands led them to launch a brand that could cater to the ethnically diverse group of consumers within the niche but growing halal market.

“Our identity was almost non-existent and completely not represented. We are a part of a pool of almost one billion women in the world so it’s quite inconceivable for us to be misrepresented and underserved in the beauty space,”​ said Khalife.

Despite the large population, Khalife still considers halal beauty as a niche category globally.

“From a regulatory perspective when it comes to the halal certification when applied to cosmetics, you can really see there's no clear set of guidelines. For me that's quite an indication that it's still perceived as niched.”​

The brand believes halal beauty will eventually be the next mainstream trend in the cosmetics industry.

“The demand is here and will be growing. We believe that halal will become normalised. It's like modest fashion – it starts as a trend, but the reality is that it’s a lifestyle and it’s here to stay. It’s just a matter of time for the market to catch up,” ​said Khalife.

After almost two decades in the beauty industry, Nubani and Khalife saw that the industry was not doing enough to represent minorities.

“A lot of what you see is [a brand] putting a face up… but the product is not made for the women with darker or more yellow undertones in their skin, as an example,”​ said Nubani.

As such, the brand set out to change this misrepresentation by creating products that could truly suit everyone and all skin tones.

“Aside from making sure that all of our visuals and the women we worked with were 100% inclusive... we also wanted to make sure the products themselves had the right level of pigmentation and coverage. We worked with real women to make sure the pigmentation of the product genuinely gave full coverage across all skin tones,” ​said Nubani.

To learn more about Nubani, Khalife and Shade M Beauty, check out the podcast above or on Apple Podcast.