A French-born executive with a rare combination of financial acumen and creative sensibility, Raouf Farhat spent eight years at Byredo — the Stockholm-based cult fragrance and beauty house overseeing the Scandinavian markets while also stewarding the brand’s creative studios and their distribution. Under his watch, that regional business grew from EUR 2 million to EUR 9 million in revenue. What made that growth meaningful was not just the numbers: it was the perspective Raouf Farhat developed by operating simultaneously at the intersection of distribution and brand creation.
“Luxury is not about exclusivity for its own sake. It’s about conviction — the conviction that beauty should be crafted with intention, and felt by everyone”.
Where distribution meets brand creation
Few executives in prestige beauty have held a position that bridges financial oversight and creative distribution in the way Raouf Farhat did at Byredo. Managing both the commercial performance of a territory and the operational reach of its creative studio gave him a complete understanding of how luxury value is actually built — not in isolation, but through the constant dialogue between what a brand makes and how it reaches the world.
That dual vantage point proved decisive when Raouf Farhat was appointed to the due diligence team assembled to prepare Byredo for its 1 billion euros acquisition by Puig.
Melyon: a new vision on luxury
In 2021, Raouf Farhat co-founded Melyon alongside business partner Roger Dupe. The Swedish brand was born from a simple but powerful observation: the luxury beauty market, for all its sophistication, had long struggled with genuine inclusivity. Melyon set out to change that.
The brand marry the craft and sensibility of high-end luxury with a core philosophy of beauty for all — a direct expression of everything Raouf Farhat built at Byredo, applied to a more expansive vision of who luxury is for.
Since its launch, Melyon has established a global retail footprint with some of the most culturally credible names in the industry: Saks Fifth Avenue, Skins, Luisa Via Roma, SSENSE, Browns, and Magazine and opening distribution markets (Middle-East, Estonia...).
In 2025, the brand extended its range with the launch of a body collection — a strategic move that responded to rising consumer demand at the intersection of luxury beauty and wellness. The collection opened new lines of business, most notably in hospitality, where Melyon began partnering with high-end properties seeking premium, values-driven amenity brands.
A global vision, a Scandinavian soul
Melyon is a Swedish company, rooted in the clean, design-forward sensibility that has made Nordic brands so influential in global luxury. But Raouf Farhat’s vision for it is unambiguously international. Drawing on his years of navigating markets across Scandinavia and the Baltics, and the global exposure that came with Byredo’s rise, he has built Melyon to speak to a worldwide audience from day one.
That global-local tension is not a contradiction. It is, for Raouf Farhat, precisely the point. Luxury beauty has always drawn its power from the collision of influences, and Melyon is no different.
An expert voice in a transforming industry
Raouf Farhat represents a new generation of luxury beauty executives: operators who have worked at the highest levels of the industry, who understand both the craftsmanship behind building a brand and the discipline required to execute it, and who are now using that knowledge to build something new.
His eight years at Byredo culminating in one of the most significant M&A transactions in prestige beauty has given him a perspective that few possess. He has seen how a brand becomes a billion-dollar business. He has been in the room where that value was negotiated and defined. And now, with Melyon, he is applying those lessons to a brand with a mission that goes beyond prestige: to prove that luxury and inclusivity are not opposites, but complements.
In an industry undergoing rapid transformation, where consumers are demanding both quality and authenticity, and where the definition of luxury itself is being renegotiated that expertise is not just valuable. It is essential.
