Every issue, GRAZIA USA highlights Game Changers who inspire, educate, and celebrate individuality, beauty and style. Meet Sheena Zadeh-Daly, the founder of the beauty brand Kosas, whose passion for makeup propels everything she creates.
Sheena Zadeh-Daly grew up watching her mother work behind a beauty counter, and the experience made her fall in love with makeup at a “really young” age, she says. “At age 8 or 9, makeup was something that I spent a lot of time experimenting with,” Zadeh-Daly tells GRAZIA USA. “I would play and get to know all the different brands and all the different colors. And actually, not much has changed for me in terms of what I actually spend my time doing.”
Even though makeup has been a constant source of fascination for the entrepreneur, she didn’t initially set out to create a beloved beauty line. In fact, first she studied three different subjects and got majors in biology, business and fine arts first. Zadeh-Daly utilized all of her skills to bring a well-rounded approach to her beauty line, Kosas, which she launched in 2015 with four lipsticks.
At the beginning, she remembers, “everything was a challenge because the industry is so specific.” She adds, “Beauty is a very small industry. It was hard to get really great people, like manufacturers for example, to work with me at that time because they’d be like taking a bet. I couldn’t get anyone to call me back in the early days because I had no promise to them.”
The next issue Zadeh-Daly had to solve was where to send the product. “Figuring out where to actually sell the makeup was also really challenging and took a really long time,” the founder recalls. She started working with fashion boutiques and saw interest from specialty retailers like goop and Credo. Two years later, Kosas launched in Sephora.
Today, her line is filled with products across every category, from face, lip, eyes and brows, with suncare and bodycare, plus makeup tools. “I have such a desire to be able to provide every tool that anyone would need,” she shares. “I want to be able to create everything, in every format, for great-looking makeup to create your favorite version of yourself.”
Her latest two launches were in the sun and lip categories. In an effort to create a sunscreen that doesn’t clog pores and actually helps moisturize and brighten the skin to enhance makeup application, she came up with DreamBeam, a “comfy smooth” mineral sunscreen. Fans will also find new shades of Weightless Lip Color, plus an expansion of her loved Wet Lip Oil product with the new Wet Stick, for a plumped, hydrated lip look.
One of the biggest “pinch me” moments she’s had in her entire journey happened pretty recently. About six months ago she moved Kosas headquarters (which was inside her house) into an official office space. “It was like absolutely time, but there’s something about this tangible, physical location of an office that when I first walked in there, I was like, ‘How?’ I kept saying, ‘Are we allowed to have this?'”
Through any road block or frustrating set-back, it all comes down to the love of makeup for Zadeh-Daly. “I still love to do my makeup every single day.”
Read GRAZIA USA’s Summer issue featuring cover star Priyanka Chopra Jonas:
