Caribbean Export OUTLOOK 2016 - 2017

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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 opening a
Exporters’ Insights
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