Martha Tilaar brings 'jamu' to the world

David Kennedy, Contributor, Jakarta, d_kenn@yahoo.com

When Martha Tilaar reflects on the harm caused by the modern search for physical beauty, the 66-year-old queen of her own Indonesian spa and beauty empire seems particularly worried about the growth of cosmetic surgery.

"If you start with one thing then you have to change everything. People are never satisfied," she told The Jakarta Post recently at her East Jakarta research center.

Attributing the craze for cosmetic surgery in Asia to the Western concept of beauty, which focuses on correcting a person's physical looks, she compared it to traditional Javanese approaches to beauty that include fasting, meditation and diet.

"We have a different philosophy. Beauty is an expression of the inner person -- it's about harmony between the inner and outer. I'm happy the Western world today is looking more to Eastern values and getting back to nature with spa programs, meditation and yoga and so on."

Over the last 30 years, Martha Tilaar, originally from Kebumen in Central Java, has built one of the country's most successful business empires, with a chain of over 60 beauty and health spas across the country as well as in the U.S., Pakistan, Malaysia and Brunei.

The Martha Tilaar Group includes four major companies employing over 6,000 people, producing cosmetics, spa treatments, toiletries and jamu traditional herbal medicine, with annual turnover in the tens of billion of rupiah. Given the size of the business, one would think that Martha Tilaar would leave the job of running it to others.

But a visit to her office, nestled between a product testing lab and a museum which traces the origins of the company, dispels this preconception right away. Dr. Martha Tilaar -- she received an honorary doctorate in "fashion and artistry" from the World University of Tucson, Arizona, in 1984 -- is a very hands-on chairwoman.

The small museum near her office tells the almost fairy tale story of a young, newly graduated beautician who returned home with her academic husband after five years in the U.S where she studied to be a beautician. The young woman had a vision of marrying Eastern beauty treatments with Western scientific testing and production methods and was determined to succeed.

"When I came back from the U.S., everyone was using Western cosmetics that were not very suitable for their skin. The imported creams were too heavy for the tropical climate," she said.

Starting with a small beauty parlor in her father's garage in Jakarta in 1970, she started mixing her own cosmetic products by hand and soon saw an opportunity to expand as demand for her products grew. She teamed up with a pharmacist friend and it took only four years to launch her own range of cosmetics and jamu.

Within a decade, Martha Tilaar had built a state of the art factory producing cosmetics and herbal remedies, sending shock waves through the traditional herbal industry in Indonesia.

"There was so much opposition, people said you are crazy, you come back from the U.S. and you think you can be a beautician using traditional jamu. They accused me of being a dukun (witch doctor) and a mystic. I remember one meeting full of prominent people when a glamorous woman said, 'hey you, you look like a maid -- how can you become an icon of beauty?'" she recalled, admitting that at times she cried under the pressure.

"But I knew then that beauty is on the inside as well as the outside. I just had to sharpen the inner part!"

The head of Sari Ayu jamu laughs when she recalls being accused of using black magic to succeed in business. Having been educated in a Dutch school here and trained as a beautician in the West, she found it hard to believe in some traditional ways, including the Javanese belief that jamu can cure all sorts of ailments.

Her attitude changed in her late 30s when doctors insisted that she would be unable to have a child. After many tests without success, as a last resort she agreed to let her grandmother, a tukang jamu (traditional medicine expert) treat her.

"She massaged me with warm oils and herbs and made me drink a jamu that was so bitter I had to eat a piece chocolate right after it. I did not really believe in it before but I let myself be a kind of guinea pig. It changed my mind as I eventually gave birth to my first child at the age of 42."

This story is now well known and Martha Tilaar's own jamu, Sari Ayu, was marketed as a combination of ancient secret recipes obtained from the palaces of Yogyakarta and Surakarta and produced in a convenient tablet form under strict scientific controls. It proved a huge success and helped to transform the image of commercial jamu.

It is not uncommon to make an enemy or two on the road to success, particularly in highly competitive industries, and she is no exception.

The often mentioned rivalry between her and Mooryati Soedibyo, head of another major jamu company, Mustika Ratu, began, she said, following a dispute over the launch of the latter's brand in the late 1970s.

Although the two rivals are no longer on speaking terms, Martha said she does not harbor a grudge.

"Now I just say hello to her but she does not want to speak... that's up to her. For me a rival is a motivation so I just look at it positively," she said, adding that "with globalization you may have Ibu Mooryati as a rival but there are also many rivals in India, China and so on".

With her cosmetics and jamu creams and lotions already on sale in the U.S., Martha Tilaar has designs on the lucrative American alternative health market. Overcoming the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's reservations about the unknown ingredients and effects of traditional Indonesian medicine is the first hurdle, and clinical trials are under way in her company's laboratories.

"We have to be very serious, very professional and use a scientific approach to get into the West. We already have evidence from clinical trials," she said, explaining that a cholesterol reducing tea has been proven to be effective; the results were verified by Western scientists.

The irony of using Western scientific techniques and paradigms to sell Eastern medicine to the West seems lost on the First Lady of modern Jamu but remaining competitive in a global market is clearly her main goal. She has been a pioneer of efforts to improve the country's image abroad and last year won the Ministry of Research and Technology's Siddhakretya Technology award for innovation.

"Indonesia does not have a reputation for cosmetics and health supplements. Everybody thinks it's a bit mystical and magical and still not very hygienic or scientific here," she said adding that her factories meet international quality control standards such as ISO 9001.

Martha often refers to her strong Christian beliefs but she is also steeped in traditional Javanese culture and sees the Hindu goddess Saraswati as an important icon for women and for her business -- the four-armed goddess represents principles she holds dear such as communication, commitment, innovation and faith.

Marrying the traditional and the modern is something that appears to come naturally to Martha Tilaar. Bridging the gap between traditional Javanese beliefs and modern science would seem a near impossible task for even the most gifted of marketing gurus. But as she sets her sights on perhaps her greatest challenge yet -- selling jamu to the world -- Martha seems to revel in this duality.

"We have to plan long term and we have to innovate all the time," she said adding with a chuckle, "I am a futurist... like a dukun."