OUR FOUNDER OF THE WEEK – Every Tuesday, Founder of the Week looks at how a successful member of Egypt’s startup community got their big break, asks about their experiences running a business, and gets their advice for budding entrepreneurs. Speaking to us this week is Mayar Soliman (LinkedIn), co-founder of Locken.

My name is Mayar Soliman and I’m one of the co-founders of Locken, a hair and skin cosmetic brand. Before Locken, I worked in marketing, after graduating with a bachelor’s degree in Business Marketing from the American University in Cairo.

I began my career working in Vodafone for four and a half years in the marketing department where it felt like a learning experience and I had the chance to explore different functions of the marketing department.

I also have a side venture calledMy Closet, which is an Instagram page I started in 2016 where I sell imported makeup like Huda Beauty, Kylie Cosmetics, SKKN by Kim Kardashian and more.

I realized that the demand for beauty cosmetics was high no matter how much I priced my items. So I kept thinking what if I was actually able to meet those demands and create products that were affordable to people and create high quality goods that meet international standards — with cool packaging to round it all out.

I had a really big issue with buying products in Egypt. Every time I would buy something from the local market, by the time I got home something about it would break, whether it be the bottle being broken or the pump would just snap. That experience made me want to create something that looked visually pleasing and was a good product.

It all started with my co-founders Hana Ghoneim and Amr El Kaissy (LinkedIn) who I met from university. It was a random day by the beach and we talked about the whole high-demand situation with the beauty products that I import. Hana had by that time amassed a huge follower base on Instagram, TikTok, and Youtube and advised me to capitalize on it and do something in cosmetics because there’s a huge gap in the market.

A couple of months later I made the sacrifice of quitting my job. I made this leap of faith while trying to figure out what I was going to do. Hana was with me every step of the way, and Amr joined as well, and that’s how Locken was born — we wanted to penetrate the local market with international standards in terms of everything.

It was not a lonely journey at all; I’ve met more people the past three years than I have met during my time in Vodafone, which had 10k employees. New suppliers, trying to form collaborations with other brands — there’s also so many startup events that I’m always attending to network with other people to expand and develop.

In terms of financing and long term plans, we’ve been bootstrapped from the start until now but we’ve started seeking investments to really grow regionally, not just in Egypt. So the plan is to become a global cosmetics brand, to be placed in international chains like Sephora, Selfridges, and Harrods to represent the high capabilities of Egyptian and Arab products.

We’re currently challenged by international payment limits on Egyptian credit cards, which aren’t enough to cover our media buying and website renewal fees. That’s why it’s important for us to start exporting to bring in foreign currency revenues.

My family is actually really proudthat I have my own brand and they love that when they go to the supermarket or the hair salon they get to see their daughter’s brand sitting on the shelves. Their excitement makes me happy.

In my freetime I love kickboxing — it’s one of my favorite activities to do in general. It really releases all your negative energy and it’s a good full body workout as well.

I do many things to get inspired: I’m always tracking new trends globally to see where that market is heading even if it’s not cosmetics related. It could literally be anything and it always reflects on every industry — usually, when there is a specific trend whether it’s on TikTok or it’s a trend where people are doing something specific or if they’re boycotting specific items — so you’re always trying to capitalize on different activities that people are doing.

Staying current and innovative is what I look for. I also like seeing what other cosmetic brands are doing, especially abroad, because they are more developed than the Egyptian market. I look at how they take different types of products and kind of merge them together.

The toughest thing about starting a business in Egypt is the currency fluctuation, especially when a lot of your raw materials are imported and you’re charged in USD. But at the same time you need to strike a balance between maintaining your prices in the local market to provide affordable prices, while maintaining margins.

If I didn’t have Locken I would’ve tapped into the real estate industry. I would’ve started a prop-tech type of thing, just because the real estate market is really blowing up in Egypt given the economic situation. People are looking for different forms of investments and one of which is real estate.

A startup that I really admire and is successful is Lucky One, a B2C loyalty app, because I was in charge of loyalty in Vodafone and one of the projects I’ve worked on with the people who founded Lucky One was another B2B loyalty company, Dsquares.

The biggest strength for startups in Egypt is that it’s so unsaturated there’s still so much you can do, name any industry in the market and you’ll find a gap.

The biggest challenge to startups in Egypt is the labor force and most of the factory suppliers are not as skilled and not that attentive to detail. As a business owner you need to be very attentive to detail to get them on board and convince them to do things that are not within their scope of knowledge and experience — they’re usually capable of doing these things but they’re not used to it — they don’t want to disrupt the market with any faults in the product.

My advice for anyone thinking of starting a business would definitely be to find a product that you like and go for it, especially if you’re in Egypt — the market here is massive with an appetite to match and will surely absorb new products, services, applications, and tech products.

The economic crisis is also making local high-end reasonably-priced products more appealing as all imported products have just become ridiculously expensive. Plus, if you mass produce you should be able to maintain an affordable price.

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