Every morning, production activity is already underway at Maryati Widiharto's two cosmetic factories. Formulation ingredients, product packaging, and the packing process all form part of the daily routine for the workers there.
The journey of this Pharmacy lecturer at Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta (UMS) toward building a local cosmetics industry didn't start with large scale production. It actually began in a modest rented house in Dalangan, Tawangsari, Sukoharjo.
The kitchen became Maryati and her husband's first laboratory, followed by the home garage, which was turned into a space for testing various formulas.
"The kitchen basically became a laboratory. We had beakers and everything in there. We ran small scale trials right there," Maryati recalled when interviewed at her home in mid September.
It all drew on her background in pharmacy. Since her teenage years, Maryati had always been passionate about science. That passion led her to pursue a Bachelor's in Pharmacy at Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM). She also completed her professional pharmacist training and her Master's at the same institution, before eventually flying to the University of Nottingham, England, to continue her doctoral studies on a full scholarship.
Long before she had a factory of her own, Maryati had already failed once trying to break into cosmetics. Back then she and her family worked as production brokers, matching other people's products with factories that could make them.It did not end well. One factory she visited, in Bekasi, West Java, turned out unable to meet the quality it was supposed to deliver.
"The quality was really bad. Some of it had mold, the soap density was off, and the scent was heavily chemical. In the end we lost hundreds of millions," Maryati recalled.
That failure became a turning point. She began to see that cosmetics couldn't run on just churning out products and selling them heedlessly. A real grasp of formulation, production, and quality standards was what it took to deliver something genuinely good.
"That's when it clicked. I just wanted to build my own factory, a good one, with guaranteed quality," she said.
Maryati returned to Indonesia in 2015 after finishing her doctorate, and set about learning how to build a cosmetics business. A year later, with her husband and her colleague apt. Fina, she began building the company from nothing.
The first factory was called CV Garuda Mas at its founding, and production ran out of the modest house Maryati had rented to get the venture off the ground.
The first product she and her team made was Javalgae soap, produced for the network-marketing company PT Natural Nusantara (NASA) in Yogyakarta. "In the early days I wasn't marketing my own brand yet. I was helping with PT NASA's production," Maryati explained.
Things ran along normally until the Covid-19 pandemic, which at one point brought Indonesia's economy to a standstill. Demand had actually been rising beforehand, one of their private labeling products, had at one stage sold tens of thousands of units a month.
The pandemic stopped the order. "Just three months after Covid hit, there were no orders at all," Maryati said.
That left her with a hard decision. Of around 30 employees, she could keep only five.
"I gave the staff their holiday bonus as I let them go. It was so hard for me, but what else could I do? There was simply no work, no production," she recalled, the hurt still visible.
Once things at the factory began to recover, Maryati brought back the workers. The turn came when one of their private labeling products took off after the pandemic.
"That's really where it started. That's when I began thinking about my own brand, Happy White, right around the time production had stopped. I just kept racking my brain over how to survive," she said.
Maryati built her own skincare brand, Happy White, which began to take off in 2021. She followed it with Saliha, a line aimed more at teenagers.
"Cosmetics are basically a necessity now, aren't they? School kids will skip their snacks to buy skincare instead," said the mother of three.
As demand grew, Maryati expanded her production capacity step by step. The company, founded as CV Garuda Mas Kosmetik, later grew into PT Garuda Mas Kosmetik.
Her two factories, PT Natural Cosmetics Indonesia and PT Garuda Mas Kosmetik, have helped dozens of other brands develop their products.
"All told, hundreds of brands have come to us to make their products. But that's how business goes. Some try it once and don't earn their money back, so they don't carry on with us. Right now we have dozens of brands still in steady production," Maryati explained.
Several have seen sharp jumps in sales, among them Ratu Arab body lotion and Haloca Beauty. That growth meant the factory had to size its workforce to keep pace with demand.
"We have 40 employees across the two factories, covering production, R&D, and marketing. When demand spikes, we bring in extra hands from around the factory and our home to help with packing," she added.
Business success hasn't pulled Maryati and her husband away from giving back to society. Since 2022 she has put part of what the business earns toward scholarships for incoming students from poorer families.
Her Happy White Scholarship targets students in their first semester, just arriving at university. As a lecturer herself, she knows new students often struggle to land scholarships, since many programs use a semester GPA (IPS) among their criteria, something a first-semester student doesn't yet have.
"In the first semester it's usually hard to find a scholarship. The hope is that by the next semester they can find others on their own with good grades. But some we keep supporting right through to graduation, orphaned students, for instance," she said.
Each cycle, Maryati usually supports around 20 students. As of 2026 the program has helped more than 50, across a range of universities.
Maryati always believes the success of a business isn't measured by how much the company grows, but by what it gives back.
Writer: Genis Dwi Gustati
Translator: Farizal Luqman Majid
Editor: Al Habiib Josy Asheva
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