São Paulo – Sirius is the brightest start in the night sky. “Just like it, our goal is to guide people. This is our mission,” says André Luiz Kasprovicz, International Business manager at De Sírius, a company that defines itself as having a “green soul” and aims to be a landmark in vegan cosmetics by 2025.
The history of the brand started long before its founder imagine she would one day own a cosmetics company. If it wasn’t for the hard work and the lack of magic, her life story could be the plot of a fairy tale – at 16, Sabrina (pictured above), a low-income girl whose mother was sick, developed with the help of a pharmacist a product to restore hair health and vitality.
But instead of offering it to friends and family, her strategy was to present the cream to hairdressers. If they liked the results, they could endorse a treatment to their clients. It worked, and for a while, the “intense restorative cream,” as the professionals called her formula, helped maintain her household’s financial health.
At biology school, she met Flávio Rosa. They married and had children, and it was all going well until the financial crisis in Brazil in 1999 changed her family life. When her husband lost his job, Sabrina Rosa rolled up her sleeves and went back to the labor market. She borrowed BRL 100 from her partner, invested in raw material and packaging, and in their kitchen, she took turns as a mother and a housewife during the day and a seller and manufacturer of the cream she had created when she was a teenager at night.
At a family property, the couple established their first plant, 25 years ago in Porto Alegre. The industrial facility is now in Alvorada, in the metropolitan area of Rio Grande do Sul’s capital city, in a wooded area with native forest and fruit trees, where 60 employees – of which 38 are women – work. “But including the brand’s ambassadors and supports, we are over 150 workers around the world,” says the manager.
The business model chosen by Sabrina Rosa at the beginning of the enterprise continues to this day. “We’re manufacturers of professional hair products. This means that we work directly with our final customers – beauty salon workers,” says the manager. According to the company, this market has very particular needs, “so we provide constant attention, investing in training and customer service.” De Sírus products are found in specialty distributor in Brazil and elsewhere. “We want to be present in the daily life of hairdressers, as closely as possible,” says Kasprovicz.
The company provides over 200 products, of which 144 are free from animal-sourced ingredients. “We never test our products in animals. From the active ingredients to more common raw materials, we want them to be non-animal sourced. We make products without petrolatum, parabens, or salt, Kasprovicz says. He explains that the company’s CEO Sabrina Rosa has this as a life philosophy, regardless of the market movements. “So it’s natural for her to keep this essence when creating a new recipe,” he said.
For gaining market share, the company participates is present in major domestic and international beauty trade shows, like Cosmoprof Worldwide Bologna in Italy, and Beautyworld Middle East in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The results from this internationalization strategy first came in 2012, with the company’s first export to the United States. The products are now in over 20 countries, including some Arabs like the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Kuwait, Yemen, Bahrain, Algeria, and Morocco. “Dubai opened the doors some ten years for us to find more opportunities in the region.”
“De Sírius is booming in the Middle East,” the manager says. “Our actions have focused on establishing partnerships with distributors for them to replicate our way of working, particularly in this care with the health of the professional, with quality products that deliver result results.” Kasprovicz says that the firm’s international operations account for an average 20% of its annual revenue, but this is expected to grow by 5% with the Middle East.
Contact info:
De Sírius Cosmetics
Website
Instagram profile
Phone number: + 55 (51) 99230 1874
Report by Paula Medeiros, especially for ANBA.
Translated by Guilherme Mirand
