New Brand Calling Refreshes Face Mist For On-The-Go City Girls

Prior to launching Calling Beauty, Sabah Yaqoob spent a year calling upwards of 150 women to learn about what they want out of the products they spend their money on—and named her brand after the process. She says, “Calling is a manifestation of those phone calls in both product and our budding community.”

Through her phone conversations with a diverse array of women, it was apparent to Yaqoob that what they really cared about is clean formulas, inclusivity and transparency, and they yearn to have their voices heard. Armed with that consumer intel, London-based Yaqoob launched Calling last April with a single product, a face mist dubbed Face Fog, and a commitment to calling upon its community to guide product expansion. Priced at $48 for an 86-ml. size, the face mist features hawthorn and orange blossom waters, rice germ and white tea extracts, and argan and hemp seed oils.

It took over two years to perfect the face mist, which is intended to combine the hydrating effects of a face oil with the benefits of a serum and the refreshing skin-prep functionality of an essence. Formulated to improve dryness, irritation, pigmentation and fine lines, Yaqoob describes Face Fog as “your calm in the city girl storm.” One of Calling’s taglines is “clean beauty for city girls.”

So far, customers have given Face Fog their enthusiastic stamp of approval, and the brand was a gold winner in the Pure Beauty Awards in the Best New Beauty Brand 2023 category. Yaqoob says, “I wanted to take a category that was almost forgotten and breathe new life into it and actually create a formula that delivers and a user experience that elevates.”

Calling identifies its target customers as mindful millennials obsessed with skincare who demand brands that are authentically human rather than corporate automatons and gen Zers who challenge beauty norms. It communicates with customers in a WhatsApp community group entitled The Hotline and has hosted two in-person events since its launch last spring. It’s also held months-long pop-ups in partnership with Flying Solo and Raye in New York and London, respectively, to broaden brand awareness and community.

At an event last October, members of Calling’s community were provided sneak peeks of upcoming products they were influential in developing. Yaqoob has five new products in the works, two of which are slated to debut this year. She pegs Calling as category-agnostic, and it will cross categories with its future merchandise.

“I wanted to take a category that was almost forgotten and breathe new life into it.”

In addition to the WhatsApp community, Calling has embraced Instagram and TikTok. In fact, it’s already gone viral twice on the latter thanks to Yaqoob detailing the inspiration behind the brand’s autumnal aesthetic. She says, “This has given a wider context within which Calling can proliferate, discussing not only makeup, but fashion and lifestyle topics directed by our followers, who are actively engaging in my perspective as a founder.”

Hardly new to beauty, Yaqoob cut her teeth in the industry as an intern at Tom Ford Beauty while earning her master’s degree in fashion entreprenership and innovation at University of the Arts London before securing a job in strategic marketing at luxury goods retailer and distributor Chalhoub Group in Dubai. At Chalhoub, which counts Sephora as a major brand within their portfolio, she gained a deeper understanding of the business of beauty.

The idea for Calling didn’t come until her role in fashion buying at Harrods, though. During her time with the iconic British luxury department store in 2017 and 2018, she honed her brand management and marketing skills and enhanced her grasp on retail, financial planning and customer strategies.

Yaqoob is well aware that the beauty industry is crowded, but she thinks most markets are crowded—and yet consumers aren’t satisfied. “What I think there is room for is point of view, when you’re presenting a perspective that is fresh, in our case, a point of view that is built by our community around the tenets of clean and inclusive,” she says. “There is room to engage and carve a niche that must be supported logistically and with your business model.”

Yaqoob launched Calling with an undisclosed amount of personal savings as well as financial assistance from family and friends. She enlisted Heaz and WildHive Studio for design and packaging expertise, and FDRY Digital for the brand’s sleek website. Calling is kicking off in direct-to-consumer distribution.

For Yaqoob, achieving success with Calling will mean being in touch with the market and the brand’s customers and responding to feedback from them. Yaqoob says, “Call it conversational commerce, if you will.”