Meet KIKO Milano: An Italian make-up company that went from family firm to Burj Khalifa advertiser

“The entire region of the Middle East starting from the UAE has always been very important for us and we have enjoyed quite a successful growth in the last year. In this year we will end the year with almost 85 stores in the region, almost doubling the number of stores we had last year,” Simone Dominici, global CEO of KIKO Milano told Arabian Business.

“It’s not all about the number of stores it’s the sales that we are generating, fantastic growth close to 50 percent, also gives us concrete evidence that the work we have done on the brands, on the customer journey, has worked,” he added.

KIKO Milano was established and founded in 1997 by Antonio Percassi and implemented by his son Stefano, the brand is currently led by Simone Dominici, global CEO of KIKO Milano.

Dominici explained that the elements that makes the brand successful in the region includes focus on brand relevance, attaining the right awareness and focus on unique positioning globally, which is a premium service targeted to and accessible to everyone.

“We believe that everyone deserves to be delighted, everyone deserves a premium experience, everyone deserves to enrich their confidence, their self esteem and this is our purpose,” he said.

The transformation of the brand was moving from a chain of stores to a global beauty brand. “When you’re a brand, you need a purpose and our purpose is to enrich the self-esteem and confidence of the people and want to make it available for everyone. High quality, premium products but available to everybody.”

The way that KIKO Milano products are made accessible to everyone is a combination of high-quality products, almost 100 percent of which is made in Italy. Alongside high-quality products, the brand also focuses on top notch beauty advisors in the stores. Intercepting this concept has proved to be successful for the brand.

Dominici highlights three things that KIKO has that other brands don’t; the first being that the brand is the largest and the most successful ambassador of the Italian culture of beauty. The Italian culture of beauty is a combination high quality product, style, design, craftsmanship, innovation.

The second one is a combination of premium experience high quality products combined with top notch advisors and having that service accessible to the general public, “and I feel like this one is something that disrupted the rules. The rules before was either you were luxury or you were for everybody. What KIKO did is that everybody deserves a luxurious experience and not just in the Middle East but everyone in the world.” Dominici highlighted.

The way the brand tries to make it accessible to everyone is by cutting out the wholesalers and take the products to the customers directly through the direct to customer (D2C) model.

Dominci explained that the reason for the vast expansion of stores is to make it more accessible, the brand is aiming at 140 stores next year and 250 stores in 2025 in the Middle East and Africa region alone.

E-commerce is another element of accessibility for the brand, currently present in the marketplaces like Namshi, seeking to establish their own direct-to-consumer e-commerce platform next year.

“Everyday there are hundreds of thousands of clients in Dubai Mall, by listening to them the beauty advisors feed the management and the marketing about what is the next product that will create desirability, that’s the beauty of the KIKO business model. We want to become the brand of choice in the Middle East, Africa and also globally and I think we are on the right track to go there, we have clarity on where we want to go, clarity on the purpose, clarity on the mission and vision, clarity on the strategic pillars. We are never happy about what we have done, we are always excited about what we can do,” Dominici concluded.