Iman Review and Profile

Iman no longer appears to be active as a direct sales company.

IMAN Beauty is no longer active as a direct-selling opportunity. The former program was a division of Color Me Beautiful that allowed consultants, salon operators and mall-kiosk owners to sell IMAN Cosmetics. IMANBeauty.com now directs visitors to Color Me Beautiful’s current Careers in Beauty program, which no longer includes IMAN among its promoted brands.

Original Npros business profile for Iman, preserved below for archival purposes:

IMAN Cosmetics was founded in 1994 by Somali-American supermodel Iman Abdulmajid after years of struggling to find foundations suitable for darker skin tones. The company developed cosmetics and skincare for Black, Latina, Asian, Middle Eastern and other multicultural consumers. The original collection launched with 16 foundation shades and reportedly generated approximately $12 million in sales during its first year.

The product line included liquid, stick and cream-to-powder foundations, pressed and loose powders, concealers, blushes, bronzers, lipsticks, lip pencils, eye makeup, moisturizers, cleansers and other skincare products. IMAN was primarily a conventional retail cosmetics brand rather than a company created around multilevel marketing. Its products were sold through department stores, mass-market retailers and international distributors.

Color Me Beautiful expanded into cosmetics for women of color by acquiring the IMAN, Flori Roberts and Patti LaBelle beauty lines from IVAX during 1998. At the time, Color Me Beautiful operated through department-store counters and more than 1,000 independent beauty consultants who conducted personal consultations and home demonstrations. Approximately 90% of Color Me Beautiful's business was retail, while about 10% came through direct marketing.

Under Color Me Beautiful, IMAN Beauty was promoted as a direct-selling and small-business opportunity. Participants could sell products from home, through salons, from mall kiosks or as international distributors. IMAN products were offered alongside Color Me Beautiful, Flori Roberts, Adrien Arpel, Gale Hayman and other company-controlled or licensed brands. IMAN Beauty therefore operated within Color Me Beautiful's broader consultant organization rather than as an independent MLM company with its own corporate management and compensation plan.

In 2007, Color Me Beautiful advertised a $99 home-consultant Career Pack and an approximately $8,000 mall-kiosk package that included $5,000 in opening inventory. The company said consultants could earn retail income and build sales organizations, while kiosk owners operated conventional retail locations. Those promotional materials cited several unusually successful participants, but no IMAN-specific income disclosure or complete surviving compensation schedule was identified.

The IMAN brand's distribution arrangements changed over time. In 2005, Procter & Gamble and Impala Inc., the company then identified as manufacturing IMAN and I-IMAN Cosmetics, announced a multiyear licensing agreement covering product design and distribution in six international markets. The agreement expanded conventional retail distribution and did not create a separate P&G network-marketing program.

The IMAN Beauty consultant listing was removed from MLMRankings after May 31, 2012