Zaron At 15: The Incredible Women Behind the Vision

Fifteen years is a long time to build anything. I know because I was there in Nigeria when Zaron began. I remember the brand at the beginning, when what we now recognise as Zaron was still new -an idea finding its place in a Nigerian beauty industry that was itself becoming something different. There is something particularly interesting about looking at a brand you witnessed at its beginning and returning to it 15 years later, not simply to ask how much it has grown, but what it took to remain.

Because 15 years is long enough for an idea to become a business, a business to become a brand, and a brand to begin contemplating something even bigger: legacy. It is also long enough for life to happen in between. Careers evolve, responsibilities shift, people come and go, economies change, markets are disrupted and the certainty with which you once made decisions eventually gives way to a different kind of wisdom: the understanding that longevity often has less to do with having all the answers and more to do with knowing how to adapt.

For Zaron, the Nigerian beauty brand founded by Oke Maduewesi, the past 15 years have been all of those things. And perhaps that is what makes this anniversary particularly compelling to me. I remember Zaron when it was starting out. Now, a decade and a half later, I am sitting with the women who have spent those years building it, asking not simply how did you grow? but something far more interesting:

What does it really take to keep something alive for 15 years?

The answer, it turns out, is not simply great products or beautiful campaigns. It is people. It is systems. It is knowing when to change course. It is having someone willing to carry 70 per cent when you only have 30 to give. And, perhaps most importantly, it is having people around you who are still willing to tell you the truth. This is the story of Zaron at 15 -but it is also the story of the women, relationships and quiet agreements that kept the ship moving.

Today, it is easy to encounter Zaron through the finished product: the makeup, the skincare, the hair care, the campaigns and the increasingly ambitious footprint of a beauty company born in Africa. But behind that polished exterior is the less visible machinery of building a company - people, systems, difficult decisions and relationships that must somehow withstand the pressures of growth.

At the centre of that machinery is the partnership between Oke Maduewesi, Zaron's Founder and CEO, and Mary-Jane Ohobu her COO, two women occupying very different seats but united by the responsibility of keeping the same ship moving. Looking back at 15 years, however, the emotion isn't centred on revenue, products or expansion. It is people.

I caught up with Mary-Jane Obohu, who reflects on 15 years of building alongside founder Oke Maduewesi - a journey shaped by resilience, friendship, difficult decisions and a working dynamic that has helped two women steer the ship through changing tides with equal measures of grit and gratitude.

“When I look at Zaron today, I don't just see a company that is 15 years old,” Mary-Jane tells me. “I see the lives, dreams and contributions of so many people who have been part of this journey.” There were those who believed when Zaron was still an idea, the teams who gave years of their professional lives to building it, partners who took a chance on the business and customers who continued choosing the brand.

“Fifteen years of Zaron is not the story of one or two people; it is a collective story,” she says. “Different people have carried different parts of the dream at different times.” It is an important acknowledgement, particularly in an era in which companies are often reduced to the personalities of their founders. Zaron may have begun with Maduewesi's vision, but the business it has become was built by considerably more hands. And those hands have not always been equally strong at the same time.

Fifteen years of business is also 15 years of actual life. There have been personal responsibilities, losses, health concerns, exhaustion and periods when simply turning up required more than usual. There have been seasons when Maduewesi needed those around her to carry more and others when she was the person doing the carrying.

That experience appears to have changed their understanding of partnership.

“Things aren't always 100 per cent even though we always want that,” she says. “Sometimes it is 70/30. Sometimes one person simply has more to give. The important thing is knowing that when the roles reverse, the other person will be there.”

There is something refreshingly unsentimental about that admission. The strength of a partnership isn't necessarily found in perfect balance. Sometimes it is found in its ability to survive imbalance without keeping score. That philosophy also extends to the way the women work.

Maduewesi is the founder. The vision ultimately belongs to her, as does the responsibility attached to it. But the relationship between founder and COO is not built around unquestioning agreement.

“My role as COO is to help translate that vision into something commercially and operationally viable,” she explains. “She doesn't expect me to simply agree with her. She expects me to challenge things when necessary.” That permission to challenge appears to have travelled beyond their own relationship and into the wider culture of Zaron. The team, she says, is encouraged to question the status quo, bring forward ideas and push back when necessary. And sometimes the founder simply doesn't get her way. “A lot of times, our beloved founder does not get her way when the team is on the other side of things,” she says with a laugh.

It is perhaps an unexpected insight into the internal workings of a founder-led company. Strong leadership is frequently associated with decisiveness, but Zaron's longevity suggests there can also be power in creating enough room for the person at the top to be challenged.

“Somewhere between those positions, we usually find what is right for Zaron.”

Finding what is right has not always been easy. Consumers experience beauty through its most seductive elements -colour, texture, imagery, transformation. What they rarely encounter is the machinery underneath it all: inventory, regulation, distribution, staffing, supply chains, foreign exchange and the thousand operational decisions required to put a single finished product into someone's hands.

For Zaron, one of the greatest challenges has been learning that the machinery itself must constantly evolve. “A business that works when you are small cannot operate exactly the same way when you become bigger,” Obohu says. Growth brings more people, more products, more markets, more inventory and considerably greater expectations. Building from Nigeria adds another layer of complexity. Foreign-exchange fluctuations, importation pressures and the rising cost of doing business mean decisions often have to be made against a backdrop that can change remarkably quickly.

There was no single operational crisis that transformed Zaron. Instead, there has been the continuous work of rebuilding the company to accommodate the company it is becoming. Those years produced one of the clearest lessons of the journey: passion may start a business, but systems are what allow it to survive and scale.

Then came COVID. Like businesses everywhere, Zaron suddenly found itself navigating a world in which established assumptions no longer applied. Consumer behaviour changed. Supply chains were disrupted. Businesses were forced to make decisions while having very little idea what the next few months would bring. For a company already accustomed to navigating economic uncertainty, the instinct was not to stand still. It was to adapt. Sometimes adaptation meant reviewing costs. At other times, it meant reconsidering products or distribution. And sometimes it simply meant making the decision to continue when retreat might have felt emotionally easier.

“Zaron has survived because we have never assumed that what worked yesterday must be what works tomorrow.” It is a deceptively simple philosophy, but perhaps one of the reasons the company is still here 15 years later. Longevity, after all, is not merely the ability to endure change. It is the willingness to change yourself. And yet, beneath all the systems, strategies and commercial decisions, the glue holding a partnership together for this long turns out to be something remarkably uncomplicated. Tell the truth. That is the unwritten rule. Not the comfortable version. Not necessarily what the other person wants to hear. But what you genuinely believe they need to hear.“There is very little value in having someone beside you for 15 years if that person becomes afraid to tell you the truth.”

Perhaps this is where the friendship and the working relationship become hardest to separate. Fifteen years beside another person can create extraordinary familiarity, but familiarity can also make honesty more difficult. You know where the sensitivities are. You know which conversations might become uncomfortable. You know when silence would be easier. Their agreement appears to be that silence cannot become the price of longevity. Trust, in this partnership, isn't simply knowing someone will stand beside you. It is knowing they are willing to stand opposite you when necessary. Now, after 15 years of building, surviving, adapting and occasionally disagreeing their way forward, Zaron is looking beyond longevity towards scale.

The next chapter, they say, is about “scale, innovation and legacy.” There are ambitions to deepen the brand's international presence and continue innovating across makeup, skincare, hair care and beyond. But perhaps the more interesting ambition isn't measured by the number of markets Zaron eventually enters. It is about what seeing Zaron in those markets might mean.

There is a particular future they imagine: a young African woman walking into a beauty store anywhere in the world and seeing Zaron sitting alongside the biggest global beauty houses. No special introduction. No qualification. No sense that an African brand occupying that shelf is remarkable. “I want her to see Zaron on the shelf beside global brands and not consider its presence unusual,” she says. “I want her to know that a brand born in Africa can belong on any global stage.” It is an ambition that reaches considerably further than beauty.

Because perhaps the greatest marker of progress will not be the moment African brands are celebrated simply for arriving on the global stage, but the moment their presence there becomes entirely ordinary.

Fifteen years ago, Zaron belonged primarily to the imagination of its founder. Over time, other people picked up pieces of that vision and carried them too. “What began as Ms. Oke's vision became something the entire team dedicated a significant part of our lives to building,” she says. “Today, it belongs to an even bigger community.” And there is something fitting about that evolution.

The longer something survives, the less it belongs exclusively to the person who started it. Fifteen years later, the women behind Zaron are still building. The difference is that they now understand the scale of what they are trying to leave behind. Something bigger than a successful beauty company. Something capable of outliving them.

Zaron recently marked its 15-year milestone in Lagos with a flamboyant celebration that brought together some of the city’s most recognisable faces across beauty, fashion, entertainment and culture. Click here to see highlights from the celebration.

To further commemorate the anniversary, the brand has also announced a global sale, giving beauty lovers around the world an opportunity to shop Zaron products as part of its 15-year celebration. Click here to shop the anniversary sale.

Interview by Franka Chiedu - Editor in Chief -Blanck Magazine