Princess Diaries
hahnaz Husain is larger than life. And that has been the beauty secret of her brand of Ayurvedic products that promises to not only care but also cure. It’s not just the imposing figure she cuts, with her sweeping Louis Vuitton robes, lion mane of hennaed hair and the massive diamond studding her nose. It’s not just the bowing servants calling her Princess, the house decorations fit for royalty and the photographer and videographer trailing her at all times. It’s the fact that at 65, Husain is still spending 20 hours a day rushing from press conference to factory to office to press conference again (often in other countries) with the same gusto and conviction, despite the younger generation clawing to take over.
“If it bears my name, it catches on,” says Husain, the lady who turned her teenage passion into a Rs. 250 crore a year company, Shahnaz Husain Herbals (SHH). Today, branded Ayurvedic products are dime a dozen, but in 1970, Husain was the first to take age-old beauty treatments largely practiced at home, and sell them across the counter. Over the past four decades, she has franchised out 400 beauty parlours where well-heeled women gather for beauty treatments made from extracts of diamond, gold and rose petals.
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Image: Amit Verma
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“If it bears my name, it catches on,” says Husain, the lady who turned her teenage passion into a Rs. 250 crore a year company | |
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She never advertised but made sure no product went without her face. SHH expanded to more than 100 countries as a result of Husain’s constant wooing of the media around the world.
But today, after being synonymous with beauty care for four decades, Husain’s business is showing signs of greying. The things that made SHH work — niche, expensive, unadvertised brand — might now be the chinks in its armour.
On the one hand, international brands such as Clarins, The Body Shop and L’Oreal are taking away the attention of the younger generation. On the other, beauty treatment has spread beyond the elite and embraced the mass market. But SHH has stuck to the formula it developed in the 1970s and 1980s. Its old world charm is not able to attract new-age customers. Ask Husain about it and she brushes off her competitors: “We don’t have any competitors. Dabur is into health. Clarins doesn’t do cures. No one does cures but us.”
But her salons in Delhi are populated by ageing women who are ever in need of her anti-wrinkle cream, and are noticeably absent of teens who might use her kajal. “The company is losing its sheen, whether Shahnaz is around or not. There are now so many mass market products and so many options. It needs a more focussed way of getting to the consumer,” says Sonam Udasi, vice president, research and group head - consumers at Brics Securities.
The Right Mix
In 1958, when Husain got engaged, she was all of 14. By 16, she had her daughter. The young mother was quite bored and wanted to do something new. “Mr. Husain was posted far away. So I started mixing in my house…” For about 10 years, she ran the business informally from home. But when she saw the success of a friend’s parlour, which she had help set up, she wondered why she couldn’t do the same.
In 1970, she opened a small salon in Delhi. Funding was not a problem as she came from an illustrious family. “My father and grandfather were chief justices. On my mother’s side they were commander-in-chiefs,” says Husain. But it was not the money that made it work; it was the idea of branding Ayurveda. The potions she had concocted at home established her as one of the most well-known brands in India. That was the situation until now.
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