Huda Kattan’s New Products Mirror Her Transparent Leadership Style

To ideate her brand’s next chapter, Huda Kattan is going back to her roots.

The super influencer, who reassumed her role as chief executive officer of her eponymous beauty brand Huda Beauty earlier this year, is bringing her no-holds-barred ethos across the business’ functions, which has resulted in a total rebrand, as well as a new complexion launch.

“I came back into so many positions, from leadership to creative, and it feels like the soul is back in the business,” Kattan said in an exclusive interview with WWD. “When we had another CEO and a senior vice president of product development, I felt like more of a coordinator, getting everyone to agree to things and align on a goal.

“We were afraid to speak about the really important things, and it wasn’t effective,” Kattan continued. “When I came back, I was like, f–k this. I have to get people to believe in the vision, we were all on a journey together to one goal, and I learned a lot about leadership.”

Most notably, that’s started with product development, where Kattan is back in the lab.

“When we split from our senior vice president of product development, I didn’t want artificial harmony,” Kattan said. “One of the first meetings I had with the team, I asked what they thought about a product and they said it was OK. When they said our products could be better, I felt that was exactly what I wanted to hear.”

The culmination of that has been the brand’s Easy Blur franchise, which encompasses the Easy Blur Natural Airbrush Foundation and Easy Blur Silicone-Free Smoothing Primer. Prices range from $29 to $37, and they will bow at all Sephora doors as well as on Huda Beauty’s website on Sept. 2.

The primer features milk thistle extract and glycerin, in addition to pore-blurring polymers, to control oil and blur pores. The foundation incorporates 1.5 percent niacinamide and silica, offering medium yet buildable coverage in 29 shades.

“We’re very forward-thinking, but we work backwards,” Kattan said. “We often don’t think about how much money we can make when we go into something; it’s about what we want, and what I personally want. Sometimes it’s a commercial opportunity, but many times, it’s not.

“There are a lot of cool brands doing that, too, and a lot of the bigger conglomerates don’t do that,” Kattan said of that product development approach. “We got stuck in asking what we had to do as a business, and we had already worked on this foundation. It was already approved because everything was attached to a calendar date. Now products don’t get approved until the product is ready and the calendar is built around the product.”

Personal need states and commercial viability, as it turns out, don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Industry sources said year-to-date, the brand has raked in more than $300 million in sales. As reported, last year’s net sales were said to have come in around $200 million.

The foundation follows the backbone of Kattan’s makeup routine: “Prime, blur, bake,” she said. “That’s it, it’s exactly what I do.”

Existing heroes, such as the brand’s Easy Bake Loose Baking and Setting Powder, have a cult following of their own. “I just found out it’s the second top product in all of makeup in the U.K.,” Kattan said. The Easy Blur franchise represents a new aesthetic direction for her, though.

“We were definitely full-cake, full-face, and it was heavy. You could almost scrape it off. During COVID, we were all in a different place. I hated the fact that filters were taking over, we didn’t feel confident enough to show our real skin. The beauty standards of everybody’s face have gone up, and I felt I had to match it,” Kattan said. “Back in the day, we would have a thick foundation. This one is serum-like, and it’s what we’re calling a buildable blur. You only need three drops for a really natural look, and you can go up from there.”

That jibes with what Kattan considers her superpower — and content strategy — which is marked by transparency.

“I am a very raw founder, in every sense and internally, in every meeting,” Kattan said. “The community appreciates that rawness and realness. The community has appreciated me not using filters, talking about tough issues. The amount of connection I made with my community through DMs, WhatsApp and Messaging, they’re struggling with these things, too.”

The strategy is striking a chord. CreatorIQ data shows the brand’s earned media value increased 86 percent — and the brand climbed 11 ranks — in the past year. Therefore, it’s translating into how she speaks about her business, too. “Just in speaking to my failures as a founder, too, it’s important to be real,” she said. “Everybody sees all this beautiful stuff all the time, you can see that anywhere. Sometimes, you need to take all of that away and just be human.”