ABOUT SUGAR TOWN ORGANICS

• Year of registration: 2010.
• Number of employees: 1 full time and 2 part-time (all women).
• Business sector: Agro-processing and cosmetics formulation.

Anastasha Elliott – Cofounder and CEO 

Anastasha Elliott, born on the island of St. Kitts, is a businesswoman, natural health advocate, and a champion of food and nutrition security. She actively promotes entrepreneurship, women’s empowerment, agricultural innovation, and green living. Anastasha is a member of the Women Innovators of the Caribbean (WINC) Cohort, Vice President of the St. Kitts Agro Processors Cooperative Society, and founder of the Made Market SKN Entrepreneurs Expo.

Throughout her career, Anastasha has worked in journalism, graphic design, customer service, and as a chef. In 2010, she co-founded Sugar Town Organics, a company that integrates health, wellness, and agriculture. As the lead product formulator, she leverages over two decades of experience in product development.

Anastasha is a trained administrative and personal assistant, holds an associate degree in culinary arts, diplomas in organic hair care formulation and organic skincare business, and a certificate in botanical formulations. She is a Cherie Blair Foundation Mentee Alumni and a successful participant in the Women in Export (We-Export) programme. Anastasha has taken part in various business incubators and accelerator programmes and has represented St. Kitts at business competitions, forums, and trade missions across the Caribbean, Europe, and Africa, gaining valuable knowledge, technical skills, and support in modern business practices.

CONTEXT

Background

Sugar Town Organics, founded in 2010 by a mother-daughter duo, is a small agri-based social enterprise that offers authentic Caribbean cosmetics and tasty vegan food products to encourage health and wellness. The company is using innovative eco-conscious practices to transform indigenous ingredients into organic, natural and unique products that infuse Caribbean traditions and culture. The company offers its customers healthy food alternatives that boost nutrition, minimize crop loss and promote the sustainable use of natural resources. The company is motivated to have a positive impact in their communities by creating locally available products that combat the issue of rising non-communicable diseases which are aggravated by unhealthy diets and lifestyles.

Mission: To create products that promote and support good health and wellness, aiming to bring about transformative innovation to combat the prevalent ailments affecting society.

Vision: To offer value through ethically produced, plant based, environmentally friendly products that enhance and support healthy lifestyles.

Position in the market

Sugar Town Organics offers holistic, culturally infused organic products that enable a unique wellness experience. The company is dedicated to providing the highest quality healthy cosmetic and vegan food products that highlight their culture, ingenuity, innovation, originality and the purity of their space.

Relationships

Sugar Town Organics sources most of its raw materials locally, both from its own farm where herbs and spices are grown, and from local smallholder farmers.

Sugar Town Organics is involved in several community groups for agro-processing, business and mentorship. The company uses agricultural produce as a means of creating jobs, generating wealth and fostering cultural regeneration, all with the goal of inspiring a positive social and economic impact in its local community. The company works with smallholder farmers who maintain and improve soil health, carefully choosing their suppliers to ensure adherence to organic farming principles. Sugar Town’s suppliers include several female farmers who sell produce at the local market and on roadside stands. The company has intentionally chosen to work with women and young male farmers in a bid to support women and at-risk men who are making positive steps to support their families and communities by starting their own businesses.

PRODUCTS AND MARKET

Main products

Sugar Town Organics offers four product lines: Marapa (luxury skincare), Flauriel (processed food), Yaphene (hair and body products) and Baba’s Lullaby (nutrient rich baby skin products).

The company creates products in small batches using all natural, organic ingredients. The recipes for its products have been passed down over four generations of grandmothers, mothers and daughters to create their Caribbean-centric skin and hair care recipes. The recipes incorporate African, Caribbean and biblical medicinal traditions to create their luxurious yet accessible products.

Sugar Town Organics’ categories include skincare, hair care, herbal soaps, baby care, bath and body products, candles, vegan condiments, vegan fruit and vegetable wines, pickled products, relishes and dips and sauces. Their mango ketchup has been a particularly popular, innovative recipe.

Main markets

Sugar Town Organics’ products are sold locally, and it has its own store front at the historic Shadwell Great House in St. Kitts. Its products are also exported throughout the Caribbean, the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom and Taiwan, and will soon be sold in Dubai. The company exports to scale its impact, reach a wider audience and build its legacy, while also generating jobs, creating wealth and contributing to the local economy. The products can be purchased from the company’s website, which ships them worldwide via logistics company such as DHL or FedEx.

INNOVATIONS

Sugar Town Organics merges traditional and modern practices to formulate unique products. They use nature-based preservatives and no artificial flavours, while reducing sugar and incorporating natural colorants as much as possible. The company also crafts its own extracts, plant powders, hydrosols and some of their fragrances, ensuring a high standard of quality and authenticity in every product.

Reflecting on customer feedback and customer interaction with the products, the company decided to segment Yaphene and create a luxury line of bath and body products, Marapa, and the line for children’s products, Baba’s Lullaby.

Sugar Town Organics continually innovates to blend nature, herbal remedies and traditional and Biblical beauty and dietary practices to meet needs for nutrition security and environmental preservation and regeneration. With their first brand, Yaphene, they found that excess food was left over to waste. To combat this issue, they created the vegan food product line, Flauriel. In efforts to reduce waste, its in-house customers can return packaging to the store for refill, reuse and recycling. The company partners with a recycling plant to arrange the sustainable management of plastics. With the exception of its glass packaging and recyclable plastics the company utilizes biodegradable packaging such as paper/cardboard canisters, boxes, bags and tubes and bio-film.

Anastasha remarks that there is a need to be resourceful and creative to overcome barriers as businesswomen in the Caribbean. This includes circumventing the lack of access to finance, as many banks see women as high risks, despite the fact that women are seen as more likely to pay back loans than men.

SUCCESS FACTORS AND LESSONS LEARNED

Sugar Town Organics wants to reverse the trend of high imports through its activities and by encouraging others to start producing healthier, locally sourced food. Anastasha is dedicated to providing her customers with healthy food that makes a positive impact on their lives. By building a network that transcends  borders, she has advanced  her business and her goals. Her efforts have spanned across several dimensions, including lobbying the government, being part of groups that have strong collective voices and by building a brand that her nation sees as their own.

Coming from a passion for food security and teaching the next generation, Anastasha created a summer camp programme called “Creative Immersion Summer Camp”, where they teach creative entrepreneurship to have a positive impact on the community for generations to come.  Additionally, they also created Balm and Bond Body Bar where adults can learn to craft their own DIY cosmetics as well as seasoning blends using local herbs and spices.

The overall aim of Sugar Town Organics is to create a strong and vibrant, truly Caribbean company offering beauty and wellness solutions that elevates and revitalises the value chain of the Caribbean agriculture sector through entrepreneurship and the contributions of people, culture and food. In that sense, the company’s products are crafted to enhance and protect the natural beauty of women, and particularly of women of colour. These products tell a story about women’s resilience, beauty and futures full of promise.

From its beginnings, the goal of the company was to expand beyond St Kitts & Nevis. After a 10-month long programme sponsored by the Caribbean Export Development Agency called “Get ready to export to the EU/UK Market”, Sugar Town Organic’s brand Flauriel Foods participated in the Specialty & Fine Foods Fair London in 2022 and later that same year Sial Paris.

Additional Resources

• Business Profile (Enligsh)
• Profil d'entreprise (Français)
• Perfil Empresarial (Español)