The Trailblazers Kuwaiti sisters Nora, Sarah and Dana Al-Ramadhan founded Apotheca Beauty in 2013 and have since paved the way in the beauty space in the GCC Can you talk us through your career journey? All three of us have backgrounds in the financial industry. My [Nora’s] background is in Consumer Retail Products, Investment Banking and portfolio analysis. I worked in New York City for two-and-a-half years after receiving a finance degree in Los Angeles. Sarah received her MBA from London Business School and has a background in Mergers and Acquisition, while Dana spent five years at HSBC Corporate. Our professional experiences have provided us with the fundamental analytical and technical skills required to run a business such as ours. Naturally, we each have very different personalities, styles, and different ways of working. However, our common interest and ultimate passion has always been beauty. Having all three grown up in a household of women, it was only natural to share and develop our beauty secrets with each other throughout our lives. As sisters, what inspired you to go into the beauty business collectively? We stumbled across distribution through a close connection to an A-list dermatologist in Los Angeles who wished to sell his products in the Middle East. We spent a couple months studying the GCC market, and soon realized that there was a serious gap for premium, niche beauty brands. From then on, our mission has been to supply a curated collection of these high-growth beauty brands to consumers in our region, while offering an unmatched level of support to these young brands we believed to have tremendous potential. We envision ourselves as extensions of the brands we represent in the Middle East and go through great lengths to service both our brand partners and customers. Prior to 2008 I cannot say that I would have specifically imagined all three of us
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working together. However, when the idea of Apotheca came to mind, the process of working together was natural to us. We all had a passion for beauty, and throughout our lives would constantly share discoveries of various beauty trends. We also each had a background in finance, yet we had very different professional experiences that allowed us to bring unique perspectives to the Company. How has Apotheca Beauty evolved since it launched in 2013? We have been fortunate to partner with a variety of fantastic skincare, cosmetics, and haircare brands over the years, and have evolved to carrying beauty tools and ingestible beauty and wellness supplements. As our portfolio evolves, so have the areas of distribution that we cover. We successfully expanded Apotheca Beauty into the UK and EU in 2018 and continue to grow our distribution business overseas. In addition to distribution, in 2013 we also had a single Apotheca Beauty boutique in Kuwait City and followed with our e-commerce store (www.apothecabeauty. com) a couple of years later. Given the success experienced from our dedicated retail channels, we then opened our second store in October 2019 in Nakheel Mall, Dubai. Our primary focus within our Apotheca boutiques is skincare, skin-tools, and facial treatments. Our stores carry one of the most extensive skincare offerings within the GCC, while our Kuwait store offers a variety of facials, LED treatments, Oxygen infusions, VISIA facial scanning, and scalp treatments. We are excited to soon offer similar services within our Dubai store later this year. This year, we are excited to be opening our third store in the Middle East – and what will then be our second store in Kuwait; While our ecommerce business continues to
develop and cater to more countries within the Middle East. It is our ambition to constantly evolve in an effort to provide the best level of service to both our brand partners and Apotheca clientele. Can you talk us through what it’s been like working together over the last eight years? As sisters, we often are willing to challenge each other further than normal business partners might. We set ridiculously high expectations for ourselves and demand nothing but the best. This allows us to grow faster as individuals, while continuing to benefit our business. There is never an option of quitting or walking away, and therefore you are pushed to always find a solution. Naturally, there are challenges when working with siblings, one being the ability to separate work and family life, which tend to intermix quite often. It has always been difficult to set boundaries and switch off work. There is always one of us ready to take a call, answer emails or do research in the middle of the night; and of course, we cannot help but share then and there with our sisters. With that, working with family definitely brings us closer together. Being able to share achievements and success with my sisters only makes it that much more special and rewarding. We trust each other blindly, and that allows us the peace of mind to focus freely on our individual roles within the business. In terms of beauty, how does the Middle East differ to other regions? We are seeing an exciting shift take place in the beauty landscape within our region – not just in relation to what customers are buying, but how they are buying and where. With people spending more time at home, customers are becoming more comfortable with shopping online and more specifically shopping from their mobile phones. The local clientele has always been very tuned-in to mobile social network platforms – arguably more so than other regions, which has paved the way for the incredible growth being witnessed across digital shopping and even virtual skin consultations. While the Middle East differs in terms of how people shop beauty, we are also unique in what our customers look for when shopping beauty. It is no secret that make-up and fragrance have dominated the beauty industry in the Middle East, yet skincare continues to gain in market share. More specifically, scientifically advanced skincare products with a credible dermatologist or facialist behind the brand outperform in our market. These founder-led brands tend to have products with powerful formulations that address real skin concerns such as acne, sensitivity/redness, hydration, loss of elasticity and pigmentation. When it comes to working with big beauty brands – how do you go about this? More
IMAGE: SUPPLIED
WORDS: OLIVIA MORRIS
BEAUTY
5/30/21 1:52 PM
