This is why Nigerian beauty brands need to fix up already

We need our local beauty brands to get their shit together already. Our reasons are simple and I’m just going to go straight into it, the same way we hope they get straight into fixing their brands up.

Firstly from the bottom of our dear old hearts, we honestly want to buy Nigerian, and not just because the crazy foreign exchange rate has doubled the prices at which we buy products made by the usual international brands -ok mostly because of this,- but because we feel a certain sort of pride, buying a Nigerian product we are sure is worth it -like Cabin biscuit or Golden Morn.

Yesterday I walked into CasaBella to replace my regular eyeliner- Maybelline Collosal Kajal-, which everyone already knows is a pretty great liner. I pick it up and whip out my card to pay, when the attendant informs me that the eyeliner now costs 1,700 naira, up from 800 naira! I thought the 50% increase was ridiculous, and I honestly wanted to return the eyeliner, but the truth was I couldn’t think of any other liner just as good that fell even within the new price range, especially not from our local brands. Even though buying the same kind of liner from a local brand might have been cheaper, it would not, to be very honest, have been as good.

I’m not trying to say that beauty products made by Nigerian beauty brands are always inferior to the international brands, I mean House of Tara’s eyebrow pencil is the only brow pencil I ever use. But there is a distinct difference in quality that is hard to ignore, and although it might seem unfair to point it out considering how much harder it is to run any sort of business in Nigeria, as compared to the rest of the world, here is just way too much room for improvement, for it not to be pointed out.