Optimizing Passion Projects

Believing that anyone can turn a passion project into a successful business, Bina Khan and Madiha Chan have done just that with Just B Cosmetics, a cosmetics company centered around helping empower consumers to enhance their natural beauty.

1. Tell us about yourselves. When did you both first know you were interested in the world of beauty/cosmetics?

BINA: Strangely, I gave myself permission to own my interest much later in my life as a working professional. As a self taught makeup artist, I always felt like anyone could be where I was with some persistent practice and interest. Only when I bumped shoulders with people whom I idolised did I realise that I matched their intensity and passion. When I think about it, I remember designing a lipstick ad when I was about 6 and my earliest memory is watching my mother getting ready for a fancy dress New Year’s Eve party when I was about 4.

MADIHA: For me, the interest in beauty and cosmetics came in when I became independent enough to be able to pay my bills. However, my passion for solving problems in a systemic way has been part of how I think and do things for as long as I can remember. After I finished college and starting working full time, I understood how much better I felt about myself if I took some time in the morning to look polished. It didn’t mean I had to put makeup on, it simply meant giving myself some time to get ready for the day. I enjoyed makeup and after buying product after product that often didn’t deliver or didn’t look good on me, I was finding that an activity that should be for myself and that should give me joy was causing me to worry. I was worried that color didn’t look right on me. I was worried I didn’t have the confidence to wear a bright red. That’s what led me to realize that it’s not me, it’s the product that needs to change. And I joined hands with Bina to do something about it — so girls like me who have worked hard to build something for themselves do not feel worried about how they look.

2. What does innovation mean to you?

BINA: To genuinely think from a space of need and also from a vacuum. When we are designing products at Just B, I don’t have to struggle to come up with something. There are so many ignored needs! Then as a working artist, you innovate all day long. So bringing that to every level of your work is not only necessary but that’s where the fun is!

MADIHA: Innovation to me is about thinking about a problem from a different perspective. There is a saying that if you ask horse riders what they want, they will ask for a faster horse, not a car. That’s how I perceive innovation. What if a horse was not part of the equation? If you ask a beauty company how to be inclusive, they may add 50 shades to their line but that might not solve the problem for the customer. Does each customer need to stick to one shade? Should one shade just do one thing? I am after the car, not the fast horse.

3. How do you / your team generate new ideas?

BINA: We are constantly talking! Incidental chats lead to huge ideas that keep getting honed. Then we sit down and crystallize our ideas. I feel like Madiha (Chan) and I are such a good duo, I try and translate my ideas, artistry and experience in to a form that makes sense to the consumer and she thinks from the lens of the consumer. So we come at it from two different angles, which is why we ended up creating one of our tag lines “we see you, we’ve got you, we ARE you!” I think our team works really well!

4. How do you identify trends? What resources do you use to spot trends and consumer insights within your industry?

BINA: I look to the great makeup artists whom I admire and see what they’ve got cooking. They tend to trigger my own creative process just by watching them flex their muscles. Social media has made it simple to see what people are doing themselves, if you can tune out the noise.

5. What is the biggest challenge you face when innovating within your field?

BINA: Translating new ideas to the customer. Luckily, I think people are hungry for information, but at Just B, we do come from a truly unique place. You can’t go wrong with the products but once you understand what they can do it’s the difference between driving a normal car and a Formula 1 machine.

MADIHA: Delivering a simple system that solves a problem that our customers have been facing all their lives. Our product has to do much much more for our customers since it has to go past years and years of skepticism and hurt. Every past product that didn’t work for brown girls makes our job more exciting but also harder. We have to do more to get our customers to try our products and believe us. On the flip side, when they try, they fall in love and that’s incredible to see!

6. Has there ever been an instance where another industry has influenced your work?

BINA: I think the food industry and chefs have always felt like a close parallel to makeup. I feel like we speak the same language and have the same job; communicating joy to people, that elevation of the daily to art is always fun to see and achieve. Everyone cooks, but watching a chef play with ingredients is so joyous. The same is true for makeup. Everyone uses it, but its wonderful to try and communicate the joy, the whimsy, the story telling. It’s the shift in that lens that I find similar and inspiring.

MADIHA: Absolutely the tech industry! How people communicate with us is so much more in real time thanks to social media. How we speak to our customers to make their experiences instant and more realistic (e.g. VR) is also heavily dictated by technology. I can’t wait to use more machine learning to influence our next set of products.

7. Looking to the future, how will Just B Cosmetics continue to be a leader in innovation?

BINA: We don't really look to industry trends I am proud to say, we are genuinely unique, we genuinely design from our own little vacuum. We have a voice, we have something to say, we have a conscience, we have artistry, we have skills….we are just so busy trying to pack all that in to an elegant, easily digestible product form and I think that means you will be original. And if you are original and designing from a place of truth then you are going to innovate.

MADIHA: We continue to stay in love with the problem and not the solutions that are available in the market. We unwrap and peel layers of the problem statement to get to the heart of the issue. And then we make our way up to the solution always going back to the key problem. I think that’s how we make sure we aren’t bringing another version of something that already exists. What’s fun about that?