These anti-slip hijabs will keep your hijabs neatly in place all day, every day

You’re a career woman, a working mother with a lot on her plate. But you’re also a devoted Muslim who dons a hijab before leaving the house. Putting on the inner and outer scarves, wrapping it, inserting all the pins (and possibly damaging the fabric), attaching a brooch – that takes up to ten minutes. As you go about the day, there’d also be the time spent rushing to the toilet to readjust your slipping hijab. 

Meanwhile, your husband puts on a cap and instantly walks out the door.

Sarah Zulkifli wanted to rectify that convenience gap. “I created this brand, Elmodesta, to shorten the process of wearing hijab,” she says. 

Here’s how: Instead of two sweltering layers, her hijabs are one piece – and don’t need pins to stay in place. Instead of pins, she offers magnets. Instead of brooches, she offers magnet bars. Instead of having slipping hijabs that necessitate hurried rewrapping in toilets, her hijabs come with anti-slip silicone bands. 

These little innovations, while simple, are effective in differentiating her brand from conventional offerings. “I think this is something to do with my background in science,” says Sarah. Prior to starting her business, she was a writer involved in science communication. “When you’re in science, you’re always troubleshooting, always thinking – I feel like I’m always trying to think outside the box.

So for example, the small magnets – they’re already out in the market. They’re good to place under the chin to fasten smaller pieces of cloth, but it’s not going to be enough for large amounts of scarf. You’d need a longer or bigger magnet to put it in place, and that’s what I offered. I tested out in the market, and the market will do its work.”

Creating novel products is one thing – generating demand is another. The hijab business is already quite saturated: Established Kampong Glam businesses, celebrity-endorsed brands and even other online entrepreneurs. 

To build demand, developing an online presence was a must. With her products targeted at millennial working women, Instagram was the natural platform to build a profile on – but how?

For Sarah, the answer was authenticity. “I shared with people my stories related to motherhood. I tell them my pain points, what my son did, how these commitments take too much of my time, and how I need to figure out something to lessen that burden on me.

People relate to those stories, they see that I’m a mother of one with a very young son. As I share those kinds of stories, my captions on them would be long too. I got my followers to relate to me and my hardships as a mother, and in the process I got people to recognise how my hijabs alleviated those time constraints.”

Conveniently, this approach also meshed well with Instagram’s algorithm then. “Back then, Instagram liked to have people stay on your post for a few minutes and read your captions – it’d push your post for more people to see”, she says. The long videos and audience interaction helped her along.

“Your niche audience, once you have the trust with them, they’ll come back to you,” Sarah notes. That personal brand, one born from relatability and trust from shared experiences, forms a symbiotic relationship with the company values and branding as well.

That loyalty cannot be taken for granted however. For Sarah, that means constantly trying to design new products and reaching out to more people.

When Sarah began, juggling product design and marketing wasn’t easy, especially since she was taking care of a young child. “I’d have a few hours of sleep every night”, she says. “After putting my son in childcare, on my way to work and on my way back, that one-hour commute will be focused on my designs or using Instagram to my advantage.” 

Now though, she has a team to support her, from a small group of packers to a tailor to a freelance designer. As a self-described plain-Jane, she didn’t have experience with making the patterned designs that are more popular amongst younger hijabis nowadays – and having others helping her plugged those gaps in her skillset.

As an online startup still predominantly driven by one person, there’s only so much time she has in a day, and so much she can do in that time. She mentions TikTok as a gap she wants to fill soon.

I ask her about what keeps her going – running a small business isn’t easy for anyone. “I just keep on doing what I feel will benefit all of the Muslim women because we go through the same thing together,” she says. “I don’t need this stuff to make me super rich. That was not my vision at all.

She speaks about the benefit her products have given to Muslim women in areas without similar offerings. “I have customers, who say that in Indonesia there is no such thing as the magnet brooch for example, or in Brunei there is no such thing as the anti-slip hijab.”

These small little improvements in the mundane lives of Muslim women keep her chugging along. 

Shop Elmodesta at the link here.