Caribbean Export OUTLOOK 2016 - 2017

Exporters’ Insights

purchased a floundering small cosmetics business. With amere US$1,000 in savings and seven times more required for the purchase, he headed to the bank to present the idea and returned a day later to collect the capital. Ordering inputs from New York, Maharaj began his pioneering experiment to find the right blend for women living in the tropics. “There was a lot of trial and error in the beginning, because there was nothing out there for women of exotic skin. The brands coming out of the USA and Europe were all for women with light tones and dry skin. In the Caribbean and Latin America, our women have oily skin and darker tones, so they always ended up looking shiny or ashy and nothing matched,” he recalled. Facing the uphill task of competing with internationally recognised brands like Maybelline, Revlon, Max Factor, L’Oréal and CoverGirl, he knew that the quality of his product had to surpass all expectations.

With Trinidad made up of 40% African, 40% Indian and 20% mixed ethnicities, Maharaj ensured that the fledgling company’s focus was on being the number one cosmetics supplier locally – a strategywhich proved successful throughout the years. “We ship everywhere, fromLatinAmerica, Africa, and throughout the Caribbean, and our competitors are in all these markets, so if we cannot beat them at home we cannot beat them elsewhere, and the fact that we dominate them so well here gives us the confidence to compete in other markets.” Since the strategy was to market Sacha as specifically tailored for exotic skin, the interest was immediate; word began to spread and the product soon started to fly off the shelves. With Sacha now a household name across the twin- island republic, holding 80% of the homemarket, the green light was given in the late 1980s for export of the product to Barbados. There was little surprise that the cosmetics brand soonmade

a name for itself in the 166-squaremile ‘NewYork of the Caribbean’, which had been chosen for its location and middle and high-end markets. “Trinidadians and Barbadians are like family. I love the country and so we made the decision to send our products there to see the response, and it was wonderful.”With the success inBarbados, exports all along the island chain quickly followed. The Trinidadian brandmade its way into Saint Lucia, Dominica, Antigua and Barbuda, and Jamaica, until Sacha cosmetics was being supplied tomost CARICOM countries. It was in Cuba, however, that Maharaj found his largest market. As technology began to take over the world in the late 1990s, the intuitive entrepreneur saw a potential opportunity and struck gold with the bold move. Already commanding the niche market in exotic skin cosmetics, the company made history with the launch of SachaCosmetics.com, opening a

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