When Canadian make-up brand Nudestix launched in Dubai, I couldn’t scroll past Instagram stories without someone I follow mentioning how excited they were about it coming to the region.
That’s a pretty good indication that they’re doing something right. When Gulf News tabloid! spoke to two of the founders — mother-daughter team Jenny and Taylor Frankel — it was easy to see why this relatively small and young brand had beauty junkies in the UAE ready to swipe their credit cards.
Not only were the duo approachable and kind, they were confident and proud of their creation, the idea for which took shape when Taylor and her sister Ally, the third co-founder, were only 17 and 14, respectively. Being business owners wasn’t on the agenda as teenagers, but along with their mother they felt could create something fresh in a market saturated by full-on glamour. The USP of Nudestix is the easy to use stick format used for lipsticks, eyeshadows and complexion products — all in neutral and subdued shades.
“My daughters Ally and Taylor, they inspired Nudestix, and that was actually one of the things that I saw, going back to 2011,” Jenny, 46, said. “They were just teenagers at that time and they were actually struggling with beauty and when I talked to them about it they were like, ‘there’s nothing out there for me.’ When I started looking at beauty through their eyes I realised that the beauty industry was talking about artistry… like so much colour… they you have these girls who were like ‘mom, I’m never going to wear colour. I just want to look like myself but a little bit better.”
A co-founder of global beauty brand Cover FX and a former product developer for Mac Cosmetics, Jenny’s next idea was right in front of her.
“[They said] I’m only going to wear shades of neutral. That was always part of what the brand DNA was about, which is why the name of the brand is Nudestix. And it’s not just nude for [one skin tone]. There’s no such thing as one shade of nude… we create nudes for fair tones, medium tones and deep tones, for that global girl,” Jenny added.
One thing both Jenny and Taylor are serious about is bringing Nudestix to people all over the world. So the UAE was a natural fit for them.
“I love Dubai. I feel like the people are so welcoming... I think it’s a really interesting market for beauty,” Taylor, 21, said. “We went to The Dubai Mall for the first time, [the] Sephora, and I was in shock at how busy it was and how chaotic it was… just for beauty products. I think that Nudestix will resonate really well here because I find that Nudestix really resonates with the global woman, the woman on-the-go, that doesn’t have time and wants easy and fast and effortless beauty products but yet still wants all shades of neutral to look like herself or better.”
Even though women in the region are known for being all about a full face of make-up, Taylor thinks her easy-going brand will still find takers.
“In Dubai, I’ve seen two extremes. I’ve seen ‘the nothing’, that girl who doesn’t have time in the morning, who would rather sleep in an extra 10 minutes... And then you have the woman who’s invested in beauty. She’s a beauty junkie. She loves product, loves spending extra time on her make-up… so what’s really interesting for us is that we’re able to enter a market where there’s not necessarily that in-between,” Taylor said.
Jenny chimes in with her own theory: “[There are women with a] reputation in Dubai to be very glam, full coverage, but even her tones are very neutral. They might be full coverage but you don’t really see a lot of colour, you don’t see blues and purples. So Nudestix, because we specialise in neutrals, I think they will definitely love specific products.”
When Nudestix first started out in 2013, they were trying to offer a minimalist approach to make-up. Now, in 2018, the minimalist is the mainstream and neutral tones, clean-looking skin, and a natural glow is what people want.
“I think people are realising that they just don’t have time,” Taylor said when asked about why there’s a shift in trend. “They’re realising that they’d rather have other focuses in life than just spending an hour on their make-up… they just want to look like themselves but better. And not only that, you’re also seeing trends coming from the runways, coming from red carpets… a lot of celebrities now are transitioning from that full glam make-up everyday to natural effortless glowy looking skin.”
The connection between social media and modern beauty has also driven trends into a more realistic space, Taylor said.
- TAYLOR FRANKEL | Co-founder, Nudestix
“I think through social [women] have curated an authentic lifestyle, so before back in the day, six to ten years ago, you would see imagery and advertorials and billboards... and you’d see Photoshop and really edited pictures,” she said. “Now what’s happened is people are exposing their authentic selves. And people are showing, like, ‘how do I do my make-up in five minutes in the back seat of an Uber’. ‘What’s my everyday make-up look’. ‘This is actually what I really wear on a day-to-day basis’. Before social, nobody really had access to that. So I think by creating this lifestyle approach to beauty it’s created this full movement where women and girls are empowering one another to have a less is more approach to beauty.”
Jenny added: “Most women get beauty inspiration through either a digital magazine, or social media or a blog. Women have so much access to this content, so you’re seeing so many [shades] of nudes... And authentic beauty is now aspirational... [even] huge social icons are celebrating wearing less make-up. People just want less. They want life to be easier and beauty falls into that.”
Apart from minimalism, one thing that is being done differently in beauty is inviting every skin tone to the party, something that wasn’t a priority for some mainstream brands until just a few years ago.
Nudestix’s range includes shades of lipsticks, eyeshadows and face products for a wide range of skin tones, and for Taylor being inclusive was never a question.
“As a brand who speaks to solely nudes, it’s obviously extremely important. We also live in a city — Toronto — that is one of the most multi-cultural cities in the world and so, for us, it was innate. Because when we think of nudes and neutral, we think of all skintones,” she said.
“We’re going to talk about nudes, but what is a nude? And that’s what you have to define. Jenny calls it nudeology. A nude on a deeper skintone is very different from a nude of a fair skintone... Also, social media has created a global demand and a global market. No longer are you just speaking to the US, or just Canada, you are speaking to a global client.”
Taylor said that 50 per cent of Nudestix’s business comes from outside the US, Canada and Mexico. They have a presence in Europe, South East Asia, China and Australia.
“And then there’s GCC and we’re launching in India... So we really look at the global girl and as Nudestix, I think because we launched only three years ago and the [beauty] world became global three years ago, we’ve never thought of the Nudestix girl as anything but a global community,” Jenny added.
She’s right about the beauty world opening up in a big way in the past three years. There has been an explosion of new make-up companies, almost all of them starting off as online-only, and using social media and clever marketing to attract the attention of millennials in a way that major legacy brands could only hope for.
“I actually feel social media has given young brands a platform to have a voice. In the olden days, It was very difficult,” Jenny said. “Now you can do tutorials, you don’t need a big production... And if you’re creating content and are talking about products that are relevant, that are authentic, they’re gonna be following you.”
In the midst of our conversation, it comes up that Taylor and Jenny seem to work with a mostly women team back home. It’s unique in an industry that is targeted at women but almost always dominated my men in the top ranks.
“Firstly, as a mom and two daughters we surround ourselves with women because we truly feel like we support each other,” Taylor said: “We’re all as passionate about beauty together... We can trust each other. I think that naturally [it’s become that] in our office, we just hired women.”
It’s refreshing to see this mother-daughter team work effortlessly together, all while travelling the world and keeping an eye on the future of the brand. But Taylor says this could have only have happened because of her mum.
“My sister being 14 and I was 17 at the time, and Jenny, who has over 20 years of beauty experience, we were really able to create something special together. Jenny really trusted our vision and trusted our voice, [otherwise] we wouldn’t have Nudestix today. I think it was about having each other to really create this unique brand story,” Taylor said.
“I did not think I was going to be a business owner at the age of 17. I was in my last year of high school. I did go to university for a few years studying business and I was so passionate about the brand that it came to the point where I took a sabbatical from school in order to travel to different markets to launch new products,” she added.
Jenny admits she had a part to play in getting her daughters so interested in beauty.
“I started CoverFX when Ally and Taylor were just babies. Ally was nine months old and Taylor was two and a half. I actually think because I was always this busy bee entrepreneur I actually brought my work home without realising it and they probably heard about beauty their entire lives. When it comes to beauty they’re very intuitive, so they have really bright insights and really bright ideas. So I actually call them beauty babies,” Jenny said with a laugh.
One beauty mum, two beauty babies and one growing company borne out of passion and a love for make-up — that’s what the future of the industry should look like.
Go get yours
Nudestix is available at Sephora stores.
Get the Taylor look
“Every single day I start with my concealer pencil... then I use my Brow Stylus — it’s a three in one, so it has an eyebrow pencil, a spoolie with gel on the other end. Then I go with my Luminous Eye Colour. I’ll use typically a bronze luminous tone or a gold tone as a wash of colour all over the lid. And then I’ll use our Nudies All Over Face Colour, which are my holy grail products. They are your three-in-one multi-taskers that are your lip colour, cheek blush and eyeshadow. Then I’ll [apply] a lip [color], mascara and I’m out the door.”
Get the Jenny look
“I’m always travelling, I’m always tired... so I never leave home without concealer. I never leave home without my brows too, I just feel like they frame and lift my face. And then highlight, because I’m 46 and find because I travel so much my skin’s really dehydrated. So, I find that by adding glow I just look more beautiful. I actually looked like I just stepped out of the spa, because I have no time to go to the spa. I always have a bold lip in my bag too.”
