Sugar Cosmetics: Savouring The Sweet Taste Of Success

Sugar Cosmetics, one of the fastest growing premium colour cosmetics brands in the country, entered the Indian cosmetics market in 2015.

- Smita Sinha

The cosmetics brand has recently clocked a turnover over Rs 100 crore and is reportedly already giving tough competition to market leaders in the colour cosmetics category in India. Backed by the trust of marquee investors and the love of millions of makeup enthusiasts, SUGAR Cosmetics is rapidly scaling its physical presence with 770+ retail outlets as of early 2019, driven by a mission of reaching the doorstep of every makeup user in the country. In an exclusive interview with VM&RD, Amrita Shinde, Head of Brand Marketing, SUGAR Cosmetics, sheds light on the company’s journey so far, approach to retail brand presence and on the factors that help stay ahead of competition.

Can you first take us through the birth of SUGAR Cosmetics and your current retail footprint?

SUGAR Cosmetics is a four-year-old brand. We entered the Indian cosmetic market in 2015 with premium beauty products that were designed to be high on style and higher performance. Over the year, the company has expanded its retail presence at an aggressive pace from 770+ retail touchpoints which include self-operated kiosks, general trade stores, shop-in-shops in channel partners like Lifestyle, Shopper Stop, Central, Pantaloons etc and also EBOs. We currently have 3 standalone EBOs. We opened our first EBO in Kolkata in Feb this year. Within 2 months we opened our 2nd EBO in Bangalore and have opened our third EBO in Gurugram recently. We are slated to officially launch our next EBO in Hyderabad soon.

The current cosmetics market is dominated by global market leaders. What would be your key strategy to stand out amongst competition in India? What’s your USP?