Traditional Treasures
Martha and Wulan Tilaar, the mother-daughter combo behind the Martha Tilaar Group, tell Indonesia Tatler about the culture and the roots of their beauty business. Edith Emeralda writes
Shame on you, Martha! You’re Indonesian yet you don’t know about your culture— go back to learn and to save your culture,” a teacher once said to a student regarding her final term paper about indigenous make-up at the Academy of Beauty Culture in Indiana in the US. The student was, of course, Martha Tilaar, who, once she recovered from the shock, vowed that she would preserve her own culture in the world of beauty.
As it turned out, there were not that many books about Indonesia’s beauty culture, so she researched from scratch by going back to the roots of local wisdom—by finding the traditional practitioners, the “witch doctors”, and midwives in small villages.
“People called me crazy that, for someone educated abroad, I would go to such remote places,” Martha said. “But my husband, who was a professor, was very supportive and helped me collect my findings.” Martha’s extensive research uncovered key aspects about the technology and the green science behind jamu, or traditional herbal tonics. It also has contributed to the Martha Tilaar Professorial Chair at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands for 10 years, and led to the start of the Martha Tilaar Innovation Center.
“My mindset once thought that all things from the West were all the best,” she said. “But from my experience working in the salons back in the States and from my research, I found out that we are all different and unique in some aspects, such as our skin types and colours, local wisdom, and much more.”
Combining science and technology with indigenous culture and rich natural resources, the Martha Tilaar Group (MTG) was born, under which are seven companies producing health and beauty products that contribute much to the country, with roles such as the official make-up partner during both the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2018 Asian Games and 2018 Asian Para Games.
Her daughter, Wulan, the Group’s Vice Chairwoman, explained further about how the mix between traditional and modern goes on until today as MTG approaches its 50th year. “Each customer has different preferences, so in our spas we do some treatments with electrical beauty equipment and some with traditional techniques—both supplemented by our all-natural products,” she said. “Moreover, since we use the natural way, our treatments are all non-invasive and safe.”
Besides spas, MTG’S line of business includes Puspita Martha International Beauty School, and various cosmetics brands made from—and distributed through—an integrated end-to-end system of factories and channels. With all the know-how accumulated about the beauty world, MTG helps smaller independent brands create quality, standardised products through a
dedicated factory, which used to only cater to big industrial clients.
“Individuals come to us with their own customised concepts for lipsticks, perfumes, pomades, hairsprays, and so on,” Wulan said. “I see this happening more often in the last three years along with the rise of beauty bloggers, influencers, or even aspiring entrepreneurs with their own brands.”
The Group’s giving spirit also helps women through education as spa therapists, which comes with boarding, pocket money, daily meals, and a guarantee of a job in one of 50 Martha Tilaar Spas around Indonesia, plus one in Brunei Darussalam, and another in Sri Lanka that will open next year. “We started this in 1990 and it has seen 6,000 graduates since,” she said. “Another training we began around the same time is for the jamu gendong ladies, or on-foot sellers of traditional tonics found throughout Indonesia, in conjunction with Taman Mini Indonesia Indah.”
Not only teaching these ladies to properly concoct and store each tonic, MTG also helps them create an incorporated organisation, Laskar Jamu Gendong, to help them get support from the government. Still about jamu, in yet another form of MTG’S social responsibility, it works together with the Ministry of Agriculture to create Kampung Djamoe, an organic garden filled with medicinal plants for educational and research purposes that goes together with training for farmers in 33 provinces.
Personally, Martha and Wulan opened up Roemah Martha Tilaar four years ago: a place that was Martha’s home in Gombong, Central Java, and now is a museum and a community place for locals to meet and to collaborate. There are almost 30 communities in Gombong today with themes ranging from business to entertainment, culture, and so on. Meanwhile, Martha loves to give out the Sriwedari makeup kits at half-price to small theatre troupes and many other small, traditional Indonesian performing groups—a gift that keeps on giving since she started it in 1987, the year that MTG’S Sari Ayu cosmetic line first released an Indonesian-inspired list of make-up colour trends and its applications.
“Senja di Sriwedari”, the product’s namesake, glows gold on the palate just like the bright colours worn by Wayang Orang Sriwedari, a troupe that performs Ramayana and Mahabharata stories in Surakarta, and akin to the group’s fate of that is now on the horizon of dusk—still bright as ever and hanging tight in the face of decline.
All of this is why Martha and Wulan work through MTG with principles of greenoriented beauty, beauty through education, beauty in culture, and empowering women— an ongoing process to success that is not gained instantly, and gives back to nourish and nurture both Indonesia and its people for generations to come.