The photo shoot is in two hours’ time, so it’s a rare chance to meet the real Mona Kattan.
Forget the ultra-glamorous ever-changing hairstyles and outfits that she showcased on the Netflix series Dubai Bling. Forget the speculated half a billion dollars of wealth she has accumulated before even turning 40, thanks to a string of successful ventures the former investment banker is behind. And forget the fame that comes with millions of followers on social media, hanging on her every word (and picture).
No, no. This is the real Mona Kattan, dressed in a black track suit, fluffy Balenciaga sliders, wearing an Apple watch. She is sitting inside her huge pink and beige office that comes equipped with an exercise bike and free weights. The girl from Oklahoma would probably rather just be the girl next door. Except that is, with a killer instinct.
“Maybe when I am in my fifties, I will be more willing to calm down, but right now I have so much fire in me and so much appetite to disrupt, innovate and take risks. I like to hustle,” she says.
The hustle has led to serious muscle. The fragrance brand KAYALI she launched in 2018 is growing at 100 percent each year and can be found in 1,750 stores across 30 countries in four continents. By the end of the year, KAYALI will be in 2,715 stores. It is already one of the top ten fragrance brands in Sephora US, is taking Europe by storm and set to enter China for the first time.
“My plan is to create another multi-billion-dollar empire,” she says.
As co-founder of Huda Beauty, she already has form. What started as a blog in 2010 led three years later into the creation of false eyelashes that would go on to be sold in Dubai Mall. With her sisters Huda and Alya, Huda Beauty was born.
A minority stake sold to TSG Consumer Partners put a $1.25 billion valuation on the company in 2017. With 54 million followers on Instagram and over 140 products, Huda Beauty is likely to be worth a huge amount more today.
Can she do it again? The odds look good, given the global fragrance market is already worth around $40 billion and forecast to generate nearly $60 billion in revenues by the end of 2024. For the rest of this decade, even the most pessimistic forecasts suggest an annual compound growth rate of over 6 percent.
The biggest chunk of revenues, nearly $9 billion, is expected to come from the US – exactly where KAYALI is performing best.
“We took some time to get here, but post Covid we started disrupting in the industry. When I first presented the idea of layering your fragrances, having a wardrobe of fragrances in your home, all the retailers laughed at me. People buy one fragrance on average per year – in terms of high-volume frequency it was very low before Covid.
“That’s why the brand was really struggling to take off initially. People didn’t really understand my mission is to make you feel your best self and to create your mood through the power of fragrance,” says Kattan, adding: “They challenged it, they said I was very ambitious to think I could get people to buy more than one fragrance a year. I didn’t think it was a bad idea.”
Clearly it wasn’t. KAYALI rolled out 10 new fragrances between 2022 and 2023 and is now into it’s 21st fragrance. The perfumes are manufactured in France and shipped out across the globe.
It is a highly complex and sophisticated operation, one that has already caught the eye of outside investors. Kattan does have an undisclosed amount of private equity players holding a stake in the brand, which usually only leads to one of two endings: Sell out or do an IPO. Could she? Would she?
“I am open to it (selling) because we have private equity already, and once you have that, the pressure for growth becomes intense, so I think for that reason I would be open to it. If I ever did sell, it would have to be someone who can take better care of it than I could,” she says, before suggesting LVMH would be an ideal suitor – but adds she is not planning on selling anytime soon.
Or, for that matter, is sprinting to the stock market. “What I like about private equity is they are still giving you some parameters to take risks. I keep getting asked about doing an IPO by all the regional markets. But personally, I’ve never been a fan of it. I don’t think I could handle the pressure, and the fluctuation of your stock price could cause a lot of stress that I don’t need,” she says, adding: “I want the brand to live on beyond my years. I’d rather have less money and see the brand move on than more money and see the brand destroyed.”
There can be little doubt that Kattan has “made it” again – a Europe and North America tour in May saw thousands of fans line up for a glimpse of her. It helped that she had a starring role on Dubai Bling – which largely featured the launch of KAYALI and was effectively a free $10 million marketing campaign on Netflix.
However, Kattan is also quick to admit that building a fragrance empire hasn’t always been a journey smelling of roses.
“We were online in so many markets and didn’t meet expectations. People weren’t ready for the concept. You either put in $5 million and say this is the investment on day one, or you have to be patient. We didn’t do either. Did I make mistakes? Yes, so many, and I still do.”
But surely the Kattan name opens a lot of doors?
“We had no favours. There were no doors that were opened. No, no doors were ever opened for us. People have a misconception of us maybe they think we have it easy. Initially, the Kattan name added pressure because there was such a high expectation to deliver results immediately. Which was not realistic. We learned that the hard way,” she says.
Born in the US to Iraqi parents, she moved to the UAE in 2003. After high school at the Sharjah American International School, she graduated in finance at the American University of Sharjah, before initially working as an investment banker.
Along the way, Kattan says she has changed herself as a leader. Her track record of mixing the corporate world with entrepreneurship, and fame with finance, means she is undoubtedly hugely inspiring to work for, but equally, unlikely to suffer fools gladly.
“The biggest mistake I made in the past was firing slow, trying to make it work, give people too much benefit of the doubt. You can’t have too much empathy, you are only as great as your weakest link; it is my responsibility to keep the standards high,” she says.
As for fame, she says it can cause “more scrutiny and can cause people to try and pick a fight with you for attention, we have seen that. But we wouldn’t be here without social media and the amount of awareness it created.”
With fame and fortune comes a bandwagon of critics, especially on social media where there is no shortage of people offering their opinions on all things Kattan related. Does it bother her?
“I care very little, I get very negative comments all the time, there was a time when I thought that hurts. I’ve never met a happy person who likes to bring people down. When I see negative comments about me, I just send them a prayer, wish them luck, block and delete.”
With KAYALI on a roll, there is little chance of anyone blocking and deleting Kattan.
Photography Vladimir Marti
Styling Laura Jane Brown
Styling Assistant Florence Webber
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