Shahnaz Husain talks about her extraordinary successes at MIT.
By Niharika Mookerjee
NEW YORK: If a face could launch a thousand ships, so could it pioneer a voluptuous multi-billion dollar beauty empire, with some 300 salon franchises, 53 beauty schools, 3,000 employees and nearly 375 products.
We are referring to none other than the sensational Shahnaz Husain, the baroness of beauty and cosmetic industry, who claimed in a past interview direct descent from a Mughal lineage.
For 40 years, the iconic visage embossed on beauty and herbal care bottles with those heavily kohl-lined eyes, bearing a regal expression, transformed the way women cared for their looks and appearance back in India, which traditionally was not as image-centric a society as its western counterpart.
Recently, Husain was invited by MIT to deliver a speech on women empowerment and the positive impact of innovative entrepreneurship that has consistently marked her flagship enterprise. A class act in itself, her brand has, for decades, been synonymous with quality and dependability.
The key components of her speech spun around the impetus to dream, her singular entrepreneurial skills imbued with an unswerving social commitment and her remarkable journey from one herbal salon into a global network of franchise ventures.
It all began with a dream in childhood: to make a difference in the world with a grit to pursue it despite all odds. “I started in a small way, but I always thought big. I always thought that nothing is beyond me. I had the relentless determination to excel,” she declared in her speech.
Lending wings to her dream was the imperative need for freedom and the ability to translate ideas into an enterprise where she would follow her own lead.
“My innovations and creativity needed expression and the right environment to grow and flourish. This can only happen if one becomes an entrepreneur, because then the sky is the limit,” she inferred.
In the stiflingly competitive world of the beauty industry with new cosmetic products reaching sky-rocketing sales every single day, it was by a stroke of fortune that her entire consignment of Ayurvedic beauty products sold out in three days at the prestigious Selfridges store in London, breaking the store’s existing cosmetic sales record.
“With beauty empires pumping billions of dollars into a hysterically mad cosmetic industry, selling youth and dreams in bottled jars…there to sell a civilization in a jar was not easy,” she said.
Since then, there has been no looking back. The Ayurvedic beauty treatments that she introduced through her ground-breaking organic product innovations such as Platinum range and Telomere products, using break-through anti-aging elements, filled a market place need and guaranteed her success in a highly competitive business.
She has also been credited for ingenious treatment of specific skin and hair problems, like acne, pigmentation, scars, premature hair loss and dandruff.
Along with her exceptional product line, she leveraged marketing strategies that defied every single norm taught at business schools. Customer satisfaction was the watch word of her business scheme that relied entirely on word-of-mouth rather than commercial advertisements.
So impressed was L R Hayes from Harvard School of Business with her simple yet revolutionizing techniques that he invited her to share her business acumen with other leaders in the field.
A careful and meticulous building up of the Shahanaz Husain brand, second to none, was the key to the status, she said in her speech. While there could be alternatives to Lancome or Estee Lauder, nothing could ever closely resemble the Husain brand.
“This is the USP of the brand. The client will have to go back and return for the product. Such is the strong brand loyalty of Shahnaz which is today the undisputed market leader and the last word in Ayurveda.”
She pointed out that until the 1990’s there were no retail markets for her merchandise, with clinics and salons operating as the only outlets which determined the growth of product evolution.
A carefully marshaled distribution of products through the franchise system was also at the core of her success. Thus, from a localized chain selling herbal cosmetics, it metamorphosed into a world-wide chain selling in over 100 countries with exclusive products.
Cultural and ethical influences such as women empowerment played a distinctive role. Since financial success was the key to a woman’s independence, she encouraged young women to start beauty salons.
“I believe that there is no greater dignity for a woman than financial independence. So, very early in my career, I began to motivate ordinary housewives to start beauty salons in their own homes, in a small way, the way I had done,” she observed.
This furnished them with the added flexibility of developing a career while tending to the needs of their families. Through strong brand-building and profit incentives, she became a reckoning force behind the blossoming of shy, submissive housewives into confident entrepreneurs.
“I knew I could not change the culture and thinking of a nation by advising housewives to leave home and go out to work. Instead, I decided to empower them by training them in professional beauty care and later offered them the Shahnaz Herbal franchise,” she said.
“Business ability is without gender. Given the same opportunities, women can be as good as men in business. Women are not inferior in any way when it comes to managing a business and making it successful,” she observed.
With signature salons and retailing already in place at UAE, the road map for the future includes opening up international retails and global franchises in USA, Canada, Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore and other countries.
Riding along with retail and franchise expansion, is a proposal to open treatment and de-stress centers at hospitals for people to help relax and rejuvenate themselves.
“We also plan to supply our Chemoline products for skin and hair care to top cancer hospitals all over the world. The Chemoline products have been especially designed to help alleviate the side effects of chemotherapy and radiation,” she informed the audience.
However, in the midst of the razzle-dazzle of her success, social causes remained a pivoting factor that kept her knitted to her philanthropic work. From providing free beauty training courses, such as Shasight and Shamute, to girls who are physically handicapped to empowering those challenged by fate, she endeavors to live out her childhood dream of contributing meaningfully to society.
She summed up by saying that being true to her spiritual ideals is central to her and has helped translate what began as a fledgling dream with $ 300 into a giant industry.
“I have been given one life to live and I am trying to make every minute, every second count, so that I fulfill my dream of being someone who makes a difference,” Husain said.
To contact the author, e-mail: niharikam@americanbazaaronline.com