Nadaleen Singh

Oc­to­ber is the dead­line which Sacha Cos­met­ics Ltd (SCL) has set to launch in the Pana­ma mar­ket, said man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Ka­ma Ma­haraj.Al­ready, the com­pa­ny has part­nered with Latin Vogue mag­a­zine and would al­so be par­tic­i­pat­ing in sev­er­al fash­ion shows.The com­pa­ny, which be­gan 35 years ago, has four brands: Sacha, Arista, Rouane and Na­ture's Se­cret.

Ma­haraj spoke to Guardian yes­ter­day af­ter the pre-launch cer­e­mo­ny to sig­nal the com­pa­ny's in­ten­tion to en­ter Pana­ma. The cer­e­mo­ny was held at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad ho­tel, Dock Road, Port-of-Spain.

Ex­plain­ing the ra­tio­nale be­hind choos­ing Pana­ma, Ma­haraj said: "Pana­ma is the gate­way to Latin Amer­i­ca with the new (Pana­ma) Canal and with Co­pa Air­lines as an in­ter­na­tion­al part­ner. We thought that af­ter Cu­ba, that should be the next place to po­si­tion the brand. This mar­ket is about four mil­lion peo­ple, they wear a lot of make-up, it gives us ac­cess in­to all of Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and Latin Amer­i­ca.

"We are part­ner­ing with Latin Vogue mag­a­zine and the largest fash­ion brand in Latin Amer­i­ca, FA Stu­dio de­sign with a lot of their fash­ion shows, so it gives us a great en­try in­to Latin Amer­i­ca."

Asked what strat­e­gy is go­ing to be used go­ing in­to the Pana­man­ian mar­ket, Ma­haraj said: "It (Sacha cos­met­ics) might the of­fi­cial cos­met­ics at the Ms Pana­ma pageant, we did the big Ex­com­er trade show. We are do­ing a fash­ion show next week and we are go­ing Fash­ion Week in Pana­ma and then we are launch­ing. We are cre­at­ing a buzz be­fore we get in­to the mar­ket."

There are no lan­guage bar­ri­ers for the com­pa­ny en­ter­ing the Pana­ma mar­ket. In No­vem­ber 2013, the com­pa­ny an­nounced it had been ap­point­ed sole sup­pli­er for Tien­das TRD Caribe, the largest dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny in Latin Amer­i­ca with 2,179 re­tail out­lets in Cu­ba.

"It is an ex­treme­ly lu­cra­tive mar­ket. It is go­ing to be our num­ber one mar­ket in 2015, be­cause 11 mil­lion peo­ple, with no Amer­i­can brands on the shelves, We are the largest dis­trib­u­tor over there. We have a vir­tu­al mo­nop­oly in the mar­ket. There's go­ing to be no com­pe­ti­tion in 2,179 stores. The on­ly im­port­ed brand is go­ing to be Sacha. There are no chal­lenges in the mar­ket any­more," he said.Ma­haraj said the com­pa­ny is will­ing to men­tor any oth­er man­u­fac­tur­er wish­ing to en­ter the mar­kets Sacha Cos­met­ics al­ready has a pres­ence in.

"We love to see all the T&T brands get out in those mar­kets and we hope that we are set­ting an ex­am­ple and paving the way for oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ers."Con­fi­dent his com­pa­ny has done its part in as­sist­ing with Gov­ern­ment's di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion thrust, Ma­haraj said the ef­forts would con­tin­ue. For more than a decade, Sacha Cos­met­ics has al­so been on the on­line busi­ness.

"We have been sell­ing on­line for 16 years. E-com­merce is at an in­fan­cy stage and peo­ple are still try­ing to un­der­stand how to max­imise e-com­merce. We are fi­nal­ly see­ing a way to do it. Blog­gers are blog­ging about Sacha and sales are go­ing through the roof."