How Sacha Cosmetics rewrote beauty standards | Local Business

SATYAKAMA Maharaj was born and raised in San Fernando, one of five children in a family that often struggled to make ends meet.

“As they say, rock bottom teaches you things that mountaintops never will,” Maharaj said.

“With five children, my parents worked hard, and so did we. My mother was Madame Maharaj, who owned a beauty salon near Naparima College, where I went to school. After class, I’d help out by sweeping floors, running errands, and manning the front desk,” Maharaj said as he delivered the feature address at UTT’s The Leader in YoU.TT Event last week.

Maharaj said what felt like chores to his siblings fascinated him.

“It wasn’t the hairstyling that caught my attention, it was the make-up. No matter how beautifully my mother styled a client’s hair, the moment she applied make-up, the transformation unravelled. The products simply didn’t work on women of colour. Foundations left them looking mask-like. Powders turned ashy. Colours disappeared on deeper skin. Some of Mom’s clients looked like frosted doughnuts, others like Casper the Ghost. The darker the client, the harder my mother tried. But no matter what she did, the results were never quite right. And each time, I asked myself: Why isn’t anyone fixing this?” he said.

Maharaj said at first, he believed it was just a local issue.

“Surely, I felt, in more developed countries, better options existed. But when I moved to Canada to attend university, I was shocked to find the same problem,” he said.

“Women of colour still wore mismatched foundations, chalky powders, and invisible colours. Many had to extend foundation down their necks or even to their shoulders just to avoid looking two-toned. What I witnessed in Trinidad and later in Canada wasn’t isolated, it was everywhere. This wasn’t a minor inconvenience. It was a global problem hiding in plain sight. That realisation lit the first spark. I began wondering if I could build a brand to satisfy this unfulfilled gap in the market. It wasn’t about business. It was about solving a problem that the cosmetics giants could not be bothered with,” he said.

Maharaj said after returning to Trinidad from university, he became a high school math teacher, but the make-up problem remained on his mind.

“While I loved teaching, it didn’t light a fire in me. I had seen a problem I wanted to solve and I could not unsee it. The problem was I knew nothing about making cosmetics and had no idea how to get started in the business. While mulling over this, one day I learned of a cosmetics company that had gone bankrupt and decided to approach them to take it over. Fortunately, the buy-out sum was small and I was able raise the money to take over the company,” he said.

‘They thought I went raving mad’

Maharaj said when friends and family heard that he wanted to leave a secure job to do something he knew nothing about, they all thought he was crazy.

“When I told them that my intention was to build a premium brand to compete with the filthy-rich, giants of the cosmetics world, on a shoestring budget, they thought I had gone stark raving mad,” he said.

“What I wanted to do made no sense and I had no option but to agree with them. These were the top US and European brands, and no brand from any developing country had ever dared attempt to compete with them. Despite recognising this, I couldn’t stop thinking about the problem. I knew that if I did not fix it, chances were that no one else ever would and our women would continue to be marginalised by the cosmetics industry. That, more than anything else, was my primary motivation,” Maharaj said.

Maharaj said he had no science background, no lab, and no funding.

“But I had something far more powerful. I had a reason. When your reason is strong enough, you figure out the rest,” he said.

“I studied ingredients, ordered samples, failed, and tried again, not to build a business, but to build a solution. Every time I saw a mismatched face, I thought of my mother. Every time someone said, ‘This is the closest shade I could find,’ I felt it as injustice. That injustice became my call to action. I realised this wasn’t just about make-up, it was about dignity, visibility, and representation,” Maharaj said and so on his kitchen table in Freeport, Maharaj started Sacha.

Maharaj felt the beauty industry hadn’t merely failed women of colour, it had erased them and he said that’s when his passion turned into purpose.

“From the beginning, Sacha wasn’t created to be just another beauty brand. My mission was to build a world-class company, one that could stand shoulder to shoulder with the giants, not as a niche player, not as a regional brand, but as a serious global contender,” Maharaj said.

“Unlike the legacy brands, we didn’t treat inclusion as an afterthought. For us, it was the foundation. Where they designed for a narrow definition of beauty, we created for the full spectrum. We weren’t trying to be just another brand on the shelf. We set out to raise the bar and redefine the standard,” he said, but, Maharaj said he knew ideas weren’t enough.

“Dreams are easy. Execution is hard. If I wanted to change the narrative, I had to build something real, something the world couldn’t ignore,” he said.

“Sacha became more than a brand. It became a disruptor, born in a small Caribbean nation, proving that beauty has no borders, that representation is not a trend, and that even from a small island, we could compete globally. And win,” Maharaj said.

‘Persistence keeps the fire burning’

Maharaj said while ideas are exhilarating and may make you feel unstoppable, the truth is, having the idea is the easy part.

“The hard part is bringing it to life through uncertainty, exhaustion, and rejection,” he said.

“Passion starts the fire. But only persistence keeps it burning. What it takes is relentless discipline, courage to leave comfort behind and the will to keep going long after the excitement is gone,” Maharaj said.

He said one of the hardest lessons he learned early on is if you’re not stubborn about your vision, you won’t survive the first storm.

“And the storms came. Progress was painfully slow. Over the years, I took the hardest Mike Tyson punches over and over and always got back up. Failure is not getting knocked down, it’s not getting back up,” he said.

“I left a stable teaching job during an economic collapse to enter an industry I knew nothing about. I could’ve played it safe. I could’ve scaled back, repositioned Sacha as a discount brand, and settled for local survival. But that was never the plan. The problem we saw was worldwide and if we wanted to solve it, we knew we would have to build a high-end global brand right here in Trinidad,” Maharaj said.

But the odds were stacked against him, he said.

“I had no experience, no capital, no connections. I often wondered: Why me? Why not someone better equipped? Quitting would have been easier. Safer. And yet, I kept going. Because doubt is part of the journey. So is fear. But they’re only permanent if you let them be. Real dreams don’t whisper, they roar. They stretch you, shake you, and pull you far beyond your comfort zone. As John A Shedd once said, “A ship is safe in harbour, but that’s not what ships are built for.” Neither are we,” he said.

“Sacha was built on a bold idea, brought to life through sleepless nights, deep faith, and the refusal to give up. It wasn’t glamorous. It was hard. But when your vision truly matters, you don’t fold when it gets tough. You double down and build it anyway,” Maharaj said.

Today, Sacha is the best-selling brand locally, sold to wholesalers in 50 countries and also online.

“Sacha is also the only brand in the world with a Holy Grail product, Buttercup Powder. Buttercup is one of the most purchased beauty products by women of colour worldwide, with over 10,000 five-star reviews on Amazon. One of the major challenges we face is the millions of fake Buttercup Powder sold especially across Africa. Imagine people making fakes of a product made in our little T&T,” Maharaj said.

“Sacha is also the only brand in the world that is certified cruelty-free and halal. It is also one of the rare brands that have been the Official Cosmetics of both the Miss Universe and Miss USA pageants, the highest beauty forums in the world. Imagine, a brand made in little T&T,” he said.

The founder and managing director of Sacha Cosmetics, Maharaj said: I’ve spoken at multiple forums like this and launched the Facebook page Young Entrepreneurs TT. The group has amassed nearly 15,000 members in under two years. On May 7, Maharaj was sworn in as this country’s Trade, Investment and Tourism Minister.

TEN TIPS FROM MAHARAJ

1. Don’t compete in the mass market. You can’t outspend the giants.

2. Find a niche they overlook. For us, it was women of colour. Focus your resources there and sell globally—especially to the diaspora.

3. Don’t try to compete with China. You won’t win on price.

4. Focus on value, not cost.

5. Price for the problem you solve, not what it costs to make. Niches support higher prices.

6. Quality is the price of admission. If it’s not world-class, don’t launch it.

7. Differentiate in ways that can’t be copied. Think secret formulas, proprietary methods like Angostura, Coke, or Buttercup Powder.

8. If it can’t be run from your phone, don’t do it.

9. Solve a real problem. The bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity.

10. Learn business by working in one. My advice to you is that if you want a crash course or short cut learning everything about running a business, get a job working at McDonald’s.