At a time when many of its in­dus­try peers have strug­gled, Sacha Cos­met­ics, which is head­quar­tered in Freeport, has ral­lied and has come out with a unique achieve­ment: it is one of the old­est sur­viv­ing cos­met­ic brands for peo­ple of colour in the world.

Ka­ma Ma­haraj, the founder and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of the com­pa­ny, told the Busi­ness Guardian that while at­tend­ing a fo­rum, he was in­formed his brand was list­ed in a McK­in­sey re­port as one of the old­est brands made for, and owned by, peo­ple of colour in the world.

“I was a pre­sen­ter at an in­ter­na­tion­al fo­rum host­ed by Cariri (Caribbean In­dus­tri­al Re­search In­sti­tute), with speak­ers from all over the world. And on my ta­ble is the head of en­tre­pre­neur­ship at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, and he said, ‘You know, I have some­thing in­ter­est­ing to show you,’ Ma­haraj said, “What are you got­ta show me? You know, you say hey, you’re list­ed as the sec­ond old­est black brand in the world. I said well who is num­ber one? He showed me Fash­ion Fair. I said but they de­clared bank­rupt­cy. He said well that’s the sit­u­a­tion.”

Ma­haraj said, “As it stands un­less they are re­vived, Sacha is the old­est brand made by peo­ple of colour for peo­ple of colour.”

Ac­cord­ing to the McK­in­sey re­port, Sacha is in­deed the third old­est cos­met­ic brand es­tab­lished for peo­ple of colour fol­low­ing the cre­ation of the hair care prod­uct com­pa­ny, Afro Sheen, in the 1960s, and Fash­ion Fair which was cre­at­ed in 1973, six years be­fore Sacha Cos­met­ics was cre­at­ed.

Fash­ion Fair filed for bank­rupt­cy in 2018 but start­ed mak­ing moves to restart op­er­a­tions in 2022. Afro Sheen en­dured a 20-year hia­tus be­fore un­veil­ing new prod­ucts in 2020.

How­ev­er, es­pe­cial­ly in the wake of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, Ma­haraj said he is pleased that his brand has not on­ly man­aged to stand the test of time but al­so stand its ground as well.

“We have been around for around 44 years and sur­vive and es­pe­cial­ly sur­viv­ing the pan­dem­ic, where you’ll see Revlon went bank­rupt and even Bed Bath and Body de­clared bank­rupt­cy on Mon­day. So, a lot of com­pa­nies didn’t sur­vive the pan­dem­ic. Iron­i­cal­ly, Fash­ion Fair de­clared bank­rupt­cy be­fore the pan­dem­ic,” he said, “As far as we’re con­cerned, we haven’t heard any­thing from them for a while and we were still go­ing strong.”

Sur­viv­ing this rough pe­ri­od, Ma­haraj said was due to the pop­u­lar­i­ty of its But­ter­cup pow­der, which has proven to be a must-have prod­uct across the di­as­po­ra and the African con­ti­nent.

How­ev­er, the suc­cess in these var­i­ous cul­tures is not sur­pris­ing to Ma­haraj as he said T&T’s di­verse cul­ture gives the com­pa­ny a dis­tinct ad­van­tage over oth­er make­up brands as they were not able to test their prod­ucts on var­i­ous skin tones.

Ma­haraj came up with the idea to de­vel­op the Sacha brand when he recog­nised his moth­er’s (hair­dress­er Madame Ma­haraj) clients of­ten did not have make­up that matched their com­plex­ion.

This, he said, has al­lowed Sacha to pros­per de­spite sev­er­al oth­er brands be­ing en­dorsed or in some cas­es de­vel­oped by celebri­ties.

“We have nev­er built a brand on piz­zazz and fan­cy mar­ket­ing and cre­at­ing a big celebri­ty buzz. We de­vel­oped our brand on high-per­for­mance prod­ucts, but you can­not de­vel­op a brand like this un­less you have these peo­ple to test it on. We could have nev­er de­vel­oped this brand ex­cept for how we did it in Trinidad. Be­cause we have all the skin tones present. For every batch you make, every prod­uct you make, you get to test it on light, medi­um and dark skin. If you’re man­u­fac­tur­ing in Chi­na, you don’t have that. If you’re in Amer­i­ca, Cana­da, Eu­rope you gen­er­al­ly don’t have that but we are sur­round­ed by peo­ple of colour,” he said.

He added that the brand was al­so boost­ed by the work of in­flu­encers around the world, who fur­ther el­e­vat­ed the brand.

“You will see these make­up in­flu­encers of colour do­ing a makeover, and then you (see them say), oh yes, and I’m go­ing to set it now. And you’ll see in there they have the Sacha But­ter­cup pow­der. So that has giv­en us some in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion plus via ex­pand­ing the line in­to a full But­ter­cup line. So in­flu­encers and But­ter­cup pow­der have giv­en us that kind of recog­ni­tion,” said Ma­haraj.

“Of course, we have beau­ti­ful stores lo­cal­ly and in Pana­ma. We have five stores in Pana­ma do­ing very well and in the pan­dem­ic, every­body closed down ex­cept us. So it shows the re­silience of the brand and the prod­ucts. Our prod­ucts per­form ex­po­nen­tial­ly bet­ter on dark­er skin than any oth­er brand in my hum­ble opin­ion. You know, it is a brand that peo­ple lo­cal­ly and the di­as­po­ra par­tic­u­lar­ly are very proud of, in fact, abroad It’s a cult brand, you know.”

Ma­haraj said the brand was plan­ning to build on its grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty and is aim­ing to en­ter in­to a fran­chise arrange­ment to push Sacha even fur­ther.

This ap­proach was both halt­ed and pushed by the pan­dem­ic, he ex­plained, as the com­pa­ny saw its in­ter­na­tion­al sales via glob­al com­pa­ny Ama­zon put to pause at the height of COVID-19’s im­pact.

“It was at a time when we are grow­ing rapid­ly. we de­vel­oped our fran­chise pro­gramme, we were ready to launch it. For decades, peo­ple bring fran­chis­es in and we de­vel­oped one, a fran­chise pro­gramme to sell fran­chis­es world­wide. Pan­dem­ic struck. Peo­ple wear­ing masks and not go­ing out. We are a make­up com­pa­ny. We were worse hit than any­body else. All the make­up com­pa­nies suf­fered. Some went bank­rupt, some strug­gled, some still strug­gling,” said Ma­haraj.

“As I said, you know, the great­est bot­tle­neck in busi­ness is dis­tri­b­u­tion and we have de­vel­oped a fran­chise mod­el of our stores and kiosks and we will soon be launch­ing our fran­chise pro­gramme. The first op­por­tu­ni­ty we’re go­ing to present lo­cal busi­ness­es that want to ex­pand glob­al­ly. If you’re hap­py be­ing a big fish in a small pond fine, but if you want to op­er­ate glob­al­ly, you can se­lect a mar­ket.

The com­pa­ny has al­so de­vel­oped a skin­care line, which was one of the few cos­met­ic prod­ucts which re­mained a hot sell­er dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Ma­haraj al­so added that he has en­sured that the brand has been cer­ti­fied ha­lal to al­low prospec­tive fran­chise hold­ers to en­ter Is­lam­ic mar­kets.