Selimhan Usta and his brother have always been entrepreneurs and already founded a few start-ups. With NIQA Cosmetics, they have set out to dive into the beauty industry as well.
Since they are Muslims, they have always wondered why there are no “halal brands” available at the big beauty retailers in Germany as well as in Turkey, for example. “We are a faith community of 2 billion Muslims and there is no high quality beauty brand that produces halal.”
Therefore, they decided to create their own halal beauty products — with NIQA cosmetics.
For Muslims, the term “halal” means that something is permitted. Most people are familiar with this concept in connection with meat. There, halal meat is considered pure.
We want our brand to be associated with purity. But since we want it to be accessible to everyone, we didn’t want a Muslim name. We actually just typed “purity” into Google Translator and had it translated into Arabic. That’s when NIQA came out. We liked it right away — it sounds universal, has a meaning for us, but you can’t see the Muslim background directly.
The difference between fair and sustainable natural cosmetics and halal beauty is actually greater than you might think. The founders of NIQA always thought that natural cosmetics was the high end in terms of purity in cosmetics: “Unfortunately, we quickly discovered that there is no uniform regulation within the industry. Many natural cosmetic products are still full of alcohols and chemicals. Our products, on the other hand, have the characteristic of being halal certified. We were aware that we wanted to be a lot better. Halal Beauty should set high standards for the industry.”
The passion behind NIQA Cosmetics is captivating and inspiring for us and we look forward to our future collaboration. Welcome to the #SQINfamily!
