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Sunday, February 16, 2025

CEO Kama Maharaj: Sacha brand's a hit in Beverly Hills

by

20111115

Sacha Cos­met­ics' en­try in­to the elite Bev­er­ly Hills mar­ket-Amer­i­ca's "beau­ty cap­i­tal"-rep­re­sents a big break­through for a lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­er and its pre­mi­um brand."Af­ter years of frus­tra­tion try­ing to gain en­try in coun­tries in Latin Amer­i­ca and fed up with non-tar­iff bar­ri­ers and their mañana men­tal­i­ty, we took the de­ci­sion to fo­cus on po­si­tion­ing our brand in the US mar­ket. We de­cid­ed to do so in Cal­i­for­nia, the beau­ty cap­i­tal of Amer­i­ca," said Ka­ma Ma­haraj, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Freeport-based Sacha Cos­met­ics Ltd.

Ma­haraj was speak­ing on No­vem­ber 3 at the Caribbean In­dus­tri­al Re­search In­sti­tute (Cariri) two-day fo­rum on Cre­at­ing Glob­al­ly Com­pet­i­tive Busi­ness­es for De­vel­op­ing Economies at Crowne Plaza Ho­tel, Port-of-Spain.Sacha Cos­met­ics, which was cre­at­ed 33 years ago, is dis­trib­uted in 23 coun­tries, among them Puer­to Ri­co, Cu­ba, Sene­gal, New Zealand, Aus­tralia, South Africa and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic. In North Amer­i­ca, it is sold on­line and dis­trib­uted through a dis­tri­b­u­tion fa­cil­i­ties in Flori­da.

The brand has been the of­fi­cial line of cos­met­ics used by Miss Uni­verse, Miss USA and Miss Ja­maica pageants.In 1998, T&T's Wendy Fitzwilliam, wore Sacha Cos­met­ics, and brought home the Miss Uni­verse ti­tle.

Bev­er­ly Hills

Ma­haraj com­mis­sioned a study in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia in Feb­ru­ary 2010 ask­ing beau­ty pro­fes­sion­als to com­pare Sacha Cos­met­ics to MAC, the lead­ing make-up brand in the US."At the end of the study, testers over­whelm­ing­ly re­port­ed that they found Sacha to be su­pe­ri­or in var­i­ous cat­e­gories in terms of qual­i­ty, colour and ap­pli­ca­tion," Ma­haraj said.How­ev­er, there were rec­om­men­da­tions that were made.

"While the qual­i­ty of the prod­ucts could not be fault­ed, testers rec­om­mend­ed that we up­grade our pack­ag­ing which we have done over the last year. Hav­ing done this, we re­cent­ly launched the brand in Bev­er­ly Hills, Cal­i­for­nia, with both prod­uct and pack­ag­ing re­ceiv­ing rave re­views."Ma­haraj de­scribed this as "tremen­dous break­through" for his com­pa­ny.

"It is a tes­ti­mo­ny to our enor­mous po­ten­tial to mar­ket Sacha as an ul­tra pre­mi­um brand in one of the most so­phis­ti­cat­ed and qual­i­ty con­scious mar­kets."He spoke of elite sa­lons in up­scale Bev­er­ly Hills that now use the Sacha line."A num­ber of high-end sa­lons, in­clud­ing the celebri­ty Louis Sa­lon on the fa­mous Rodeo Dri­ve, Bev­er­ly Hills, have made Sacha their ex­clu­sive make-up brand. For the first time, they now car­ry one line, con­fi­dent it will look equal­ly beau­ti­ful on all their clients, re­gard­less of skin colour."Ma­haraj's au­di­ence at the Cariri event in­clud­ed of­fi­cials of the Min­istry of Fi­nance, the Em­ploy­ers Con­sul­ta­tive As­so­ci­a­tion and the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank.

Spurred on to grow

Not one to rest on his lau­rels, Ma­haraj has plans for ex­pan­sion.In the new year, we will be ex­pand­ing our dis­tri­b­u­tion in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, fly­ing the coun­try's flag high. As luck would have it, in Cal­i­for­nia, ex­ot­ic skin is now more the norm than the ex­pec­ta­tion. A grow­ing num­ber of Cau­casian women want to look more ex­ot­ic and are fas­ci­nat­ed by what they have dubbed our 'sun-skinned' foun­da­tions."

Ma­haraj said a small coun­try like T&T should not want to man­u­fac­ture cheap prod­ucts to sell cheap­ly."We are com­mit­ted to build­ing a qual­i­ty brand rather than mak­ing and sell­ing low-priced prod­ucts. In our view, man­u­fac­tur­ers lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly, could nev­er win the price war with Chi­na and we ought to ac­cept that. We can build pow­er­ful niche brands that can suc­cess­ful­ly be mar­ket­ed world wide."

Be­yond Cari­com

Ma­haraj hailed the In­ter­net as one of the main tools that has pro­mot­ed his busi­ness in­ter­na­tion­al­ly."We launched our com­pa­ny's Web site 13 years ago and, to­day, it is one of the most re­spect­ed and high­ly ranked cos­met­ics on­line, at­tract­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of vis­i­tors a year. To dri­ve more vis­i­tors to our main site, we built ad­di­tion­al Web sites such as, www.ap­ply­make­up.com, that ranks num­ber one in every search en­gine for the im­por­tant term, 'how to ap­ply make-up'."Ma­haraj said that world wide, Sacha Cos­met­ics sells at prices four to five times what is re­tailed lo­cal­ly.

"Our op­er­at­ing mar­gins are ex­cel­lent since we sell from man­u­fac­tur­er to US re­tail at pre­mi­um prices. If you want to en­joy high mar­gins, then hav­ing a niche prod­uct that sat­is­fies an un­ful­filled mar­ket need is the way to go. Com­pe­ti­tion dri­ves down prices but, in nich­es, there is so lit­tle com­pe­ti­tion, so you can com­mand high­er prices."Ma­haraj said hav­ing an in­no­v­a­tive prod­uct is not a guar­an­tee of suc­cess.

"Brands like Black Opal and Black Ra­di­ance tar­get a specifics sec­tor of the mar­ket and have very lim­it­ed ap­peal. To en­sure our prod­ucts are em­braced by all, we mar­ket Sacha to women with 'ex­ot­ic skin' which is a tremen­dous crossover con­cept."For a small is­land state, Ma­haraj be­lieves lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers must look be­yond Cari­com.

"We have to ac­cept the re­al­i­ty that that T&T is a small mar­ket, as is Cari­com, and if you want to ex­pand your mar­ket, you have to ex­port ex­tras re­gion­al­ly."He be­lieves the pos­i­tive con­di­tions out­weigh the neg­a­tive."While there are chal­lenges be­ing a lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­er and, yes, we do get frus­trat­ed at times. We have in­stead fo­cused on lever­ag­ing the ad­van­tages we do en­joy."

Ma­haraj list­ed a num­ber of ad­van­tages which makes T&T an ide­al lo­ca­tion for man­u­fac­tur­ing."We speak Eng­lish-the uni­ver­sal lan­guage of the In­ter­net-we are in close prox­im­i­ty to the US, the largest con­sumer mar­ket, we are in the same time zone with them, we have beau­ti­ful weath­er, we have po­lit­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty, the cost of fu­el and util­i­ties is low, and we have an ed­u­cat­ed and skilled pop­u­la­tion," he said.

Ode to moth­er

On the Web page Ma­haraj de­vel­oped, www.root­sof­ca­lyp­so.com, which is ded­i­cat­ed to Madame Ma­haraj's in­flu­ence on her son, Ma­haraj wrote:"This page is ded­i­cat­ed to my moth­er, the late Madame Ram­doolar­ie Ma­haraj from Trinidad and To­ba­go. She had a great in­flu­ence in my life and a sup­port­er of my ca­lyp­so re­search."On the page, Ma­haraj list­ed his moth­er's achieve­ments in bul­let points, chief among them she re­ceiv­ing the Hum­ming Bird Medal (sil­ver) in 2000), from then Prime Min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day.

Oth­er no­ta­bles were:

• 1940-2000: Mom owned her own hair­dress­ing school and sa­lon in Trinidad. There she ed­u­cat­ed and grad­u­at­ed more than 5,000 stu­dents in the field of hair and skin cul­ture.

• 1960: Bach­e­lor's of Beau­ty de­gree in Las Ve­gas, US

• 1962: The ti­tle of "Madame" was be­stowed in France

• 1996: Di­vali Na­gar Award for beau­ty cul­ture, train­ing and ed­u­ca­tion

• As­so­ci­at­ed and helped to de­vel­op Sacha Cos­met­ics (Trinidad)


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