Tengku Chanela Jamidah and Didie Nasir: DIDA Cosmetics

DIDA is a cosmetics company founded by Tengku Chanela Jamidah and Didie Nasir: two entrepreneurs and best friends. Known for their liquid lipsticks, DIDA cosmetics is a business that aims to sell products while empowering women worldwide. Read on more to find out about Tengku and Didie and their company DIDA Cosmetics: 

Can you tell us more about DIDA Cosmetics and how does it help empower women? 

The whole idea behind DIDA Cosmetics was to create an affordable luxury brand for women. We ensured that our price point was low, but the quality of our products was high.

Tengku and I have been best friends for a while, constantly encouraging each other through our professional and personal lives. We realized we wanted to collaborate and create a company that would not only benefit us, but empower all types of of women. That was how DIDA cosmetics was born. Even the tag line for our company is “By women for women”.  Essentially, we wanted to create a makeup brand that could be worn by all types of women. Every woman feels beautiful when wearing makeup, and we designed our products to enhance beauty rather than recreate/mask the individual.

What is so special about DIDA Cosmetics and how do you compete against other big cosmetic brands? 

I think both Tengku and I are heavily involved in the company from the product development side to attending events. Every end product that you see on our website has been tested and approved by the both of us.

What makes our brand special is that it is catered towards the Asian market. Big cosmetic brands like MAC or NARS are great, but don’t necessarily offer the shades suited for Asian skin tones. We differentiate ourselves because we are an Asian brand with a global mindset. Although a large percent of our consumers are from Malaysia, many of our other customers/followers are from countries like Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, etc.

You both also run your own fashion labels. How did your experience with fashion help create DIDA Cosmetics? 

With fashion and beauty, the processes are basically the same. In fashion, you must start with the sketching of the piece and deciding the details such as the fabric. Same goes with beauty. You start with a vision of the end product, and then decide what needs to go into creating that. Our experience in fashion translated into our current experience with manufacturing beauty products.

How do you leverage your social media platforms to market/brand DIDA cosmetics? 

We noticed that a huge percent of our sales come from Instagram so we invest heavily in content creation for that. Although we have a Facebook page as well, our crowd is young and so we really try to leverage our Instagram page.

 How are you planning to expand DIDA Cosmetics? 

This June we are approaching our 2^nd anniversary of DIDA Cosmetics and we are excited to take it the next level. We were one of the first original local brands, initially just launching our velvet creme liquid lipsticks in five shades. Today, we are proud to say that we have a line of lip glosses, lipsticks, and eyeshadow palettes. Next month we are launching our range of highlighters. I am excited that our expansion involves more product range for our customers and opening more physical stores to increase our presence and brand name.

Tengku and Didie are such inspirations for female entrepreneurs, and we wish them the best of luck as they continue to expand DIDA Cosmetics. Check out DIDA Cosmetics here: https://www.didaforwomen.com/