Dashl

Dashl is a female-founded Swedish beauty company based in Stockholm. It began as a digital booking platform and a chain of "Beauty Bars" offering nail, lash and brow treatments, and later expanded into its own vegan colour-cosmetics line, Dashl Beauty. The brand pairs clean, plant-leaning formulations developed with makeup artists with a Scandinavian aesthetic built around quick, glowy, minimal looks.

The company dates its founding to 2017 on its own about page [2], and that year is also recorded on its LinkedIn profile. Editorial coverage gives earlier dates: Who What Wear places the founding in 2016 [10], and Swedish funding outlet Nordic 9 reports 2015 [11]. An ELLE Sweden interview frames the timeline as a concept that took shape in London around 2013 and a launch in Sweden in 2016, after the founders relocated from London to Stockholm. The differing years appear to reflect the concept and first booking-platform stage versus the registration of the corporate entity.

Dashl was started by Arbilina Nissan and Nina Akbari, two friends who, according to an ELLE Sweden feature, had known each other for roughly eight years and once shared a flat [9]. The pair met in London, where Nissan was studying and found salon services expensive and stylists sourced through classified ads unreliable. That frustration became the seed of a digitised beauty marketplace. The founders quit their jobs, moved from London to Stockholm and built the business from scratch, framing their ambition as disrupting beauty the way Klarna had banking or Uber had taxis.

Sources differ on attribution: ELLE Sweden and Who What Wear consistently name both Nissan and Akbari as co-founders, while the company's LinkedIn profile lists Nina Akbari Madani as the founder [8]. The brand describes itself as "female-founded," wording compatible with more than one founder.

In its early years the company operated a booking platform alongside physical Beauty Bars, including locations inside Åhléns department stores and H&M, and built a presence in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö. It also acquired an existing makeup-artist school, which it rebranded as a training academy under its own name [9].

Dashl raised external capital during its platform phase. Nordic 9 reports a round of about 13 million Swedish kronor backed by investors including Uequity and H&M's CO:LAB, with an earlier round drawing H&M Co:lab and Nordic investor Cristina Stenbeck [11]. The same coverage notes board involvement tied to H&M and reported sales of roughly 10 million kronor in 2020.

In 2022 the company launched Dashl Beauty, a dedicated colour-cosmetics line developed in-house with beauty professionals and makeup artists. The range spans eye and lash products, brows, lips, nails, face products and tools, with signature items such as the Read My Lip Liner, the Glow Obsession Skinstick, the FabuLash Mascara, the Brow Boss Pomade and the Juicy AF Lip Oil.

Positioning centres on what the company calls "The Scandi Routine" — a "glowy, fresh, natural" look described as ready in five minutes. The brand philosophy is summarised by the tagline "Yourself, but better," and the company says it aims "to förhöja, inte maskera" (to enhance, not mask) natural beauty. Distribution is primarily direct-to-consumer through dashlbeauty.com, with shipping listed to more than 30 countries, alongside the Beauty Bar treatments operated under the dashl.se identity.

Dashl markets its formulas as "100% vegan" and cruelty-free [6]. The company maintains what it calls the "Dashl Blacklist," a set of excluded ingredients that it says covers more than 1,600 EU-banned substances plus a proprietary list including parabens, talc, phthalates, PFAS, formaldehyde-releasing preservatives, palm oil and animal-derived ingredients [6]. It highlights ingredients such as castor oil for lash and brow conditioning, jojoba oil, cocoa butter, cranberry biopeptides for nails and pro-vitamin B5. The company states no third-party certifications such as Leaping Bunny or the Vegan Society on its ingredients page.

Dashl's products and salons have drawn press and editorial attention. In a review of its Beauty Bar at the H&M flagship on Regent Street in London, Who What Wear praised "both the beautiful colour and attentive yet speedy service," placing the salon "firmly near the top of my list for best salons in Central London" [10]. The brand's press page lists features in magazines including OK!, DONNA, Grazia, Glamour and the German weekly Für Sie, clustered around 2021 and 2022. In 2026 the company announced that its Glow Obsession Skinstick had been nominated for the Swedish Beauty Awards 2026 [12].

Dashl remains active. Its most recent visible activity is a March 2026 news post announcing the Swedish Beauty Awards nomination, and the company continues to operate across Nordic markets and the United Kingdom under the same brand identity, with a German-language site and German press coverage indicating a wider European reach.