Before Tropic Had Awards, An Expansive Product Range, Or Millions Of C – Tropic Skincare

She wasn’t supposed to become one of the most successful women in direct selling. She’d just lost her income, had no savings, and was meant to get a ‘proper job’. Instead, Sarah backed a young founder with five skincare products – and helped shape one of the UK’s fastest-growing beauty brands, turning grit, belief, and one well-stretched cup of tea into a £125 million business.

Every business has a moment before it becomes what it’s known for. A moment when it’s still just a handful of people, a great idea, and an awful lot of belief doing the heavy lifting.
Tropic had one of those moments, too.

Long before our expansive product range, hundreds of awards, and millions of customers, there was a small group of women sitting in a hotel café at Heathrow trying to work out whether this small skincare brand could become something bigger. The answer, as it turns out, was yes.

Sarah was one of them.

Before Tropic

Sarah didn’t arrive at Tropic fresh-faced and looking for a hobby. She arrived with serious experience. Before direct selling entered her life, she worked in fashion and retail buying, the sort of role that sounds glamorous, and it is, until you remember it mostly involves graft, pressure, and a lot of other people deciding what counts as important. She knew exactly how businesses operate – what sells, what doesn’t, and the difference between a good idea and something that’s all noise and no legs.

She also loved skincare. Properly loved it. When she moved for work, everything changed. Her husband joined the police – the thing he had always wanted to do – and Sarah began piecing together a different kind of life. She’d seen an advert for a direct selling company, and, as she tells it, “it seemed like a great way to get to know people. I’d never sold anything in my life. Buying, at that time, was my thing.”

At first, she was, by her own admission, “pretty rubbish”, travelling too much and learning on the job. But over time, she built a solid business. Then, the whole thing collapsed. The company changed hands and folded, leaving Sarah without a safety net. “They owed me a lot of money. I was left with nothing. There were no savings to fall back on, just my husband’s modest police salary.”

Sarah was left without a clear next step, beyond the obvious one: go and get a decent job.

And then she met our founder and CEO, Susie Ma.

The Heathrow Years

At the time, Susie had five products. That was the entire range – a small, carefully developed edit of skincare that had all the promise but needed an engine. Sarah tried them and loved them immediately. “I thought these are amazing,” she says. But what really caught her attention wasn’t just the formulas – it was the woman behind them. “The greatest impact on me was meeting someone so passionate,” she remembers. “You could tell Susie knew exactly what she wanted out of Tropic, and I knew I could help. I said to her, we could do this, you know, we could sell this direct to people.”

So Sarah went home to deliver the news to her husband. “I said to Michael, ‘You’re going to be upset, because I know I was supposed to get a proper job… but I’ve met this lady who’s unbelievable.’” His response? “He gave me the greatest gift. Total support. ‘Just do it,’ he told me, ‘we’ll manage somehow.”

After her previous direct selling venture, Sarah was left without a car. Her husband cobbled together what he could to buy her a small Citroën so she could get around – a detail Sarah still laughs about. “That car nearly killed me, actually.”

Sarah would meet with our other founding Ambassadors – Carol and Gill (who sadly passed away in 2024) – at a hotel café in Heathrow to plan their next steps. “None of us had any money,” she recalls. “We used to make one cup of tea last all day – I’m surprised we weren’t thrown out!”

But what made those days so energising was that they, as Sarah puts it, “could literally see the future”. They knew what a good direct selling business could be if the products were brilliant, the people were championed, and the person leading it had the right vision and purpose.

The feeling Sarah still has about Tropic reflects that early period: it was never just a commercial opportunity. It was a shared act of belief. “It was our passion – we had no blueprint telling us this would actually work. We’d be up talking until three in the morning about products, about makeup, about what the brand could become. It was just so exciting.”

And that belief has never left.

Sarah still talks about new Ambassadors with that same day-one enthusiasm. Just recently, one of her team phoned to say she’d met someone who wanted to join. Sarah’s first advice was not a training manual. It was: “Step one, jump up and down and scream and be very excited because this is your first team member.”

The First Signs It Was Working

For Sarah, success didn’t arrive all at once.

She still remembers her first sales. She had gathered a small group of people together to try the products, and their orders came to £250. A year later, she did exactly the same event with the same group of people. This time, the total was four times as much. “With the same people, I made £1,000 in sales. That’s the obvious growth – and shows just how amazing the products really are. People can’t get enough of them!”

The numbers themselves might seem small at first glance, but the trajectory was huge. The business was growing in exactly the way good businesses do – steadily, naturally, and through word of mouth.

What Success Means

Sarah knows what it is to have nothing. She remembers the Christmas when there was no money for presents, no new decorations, and the worry of trying to create something joyful while mentally calculating every pound. “I thought, I never, ever want this to happen again,” she says. That memory still stays with her.

It’s why, when Sarah talks about success now, she doesn’t describe it in abstract terms. For her, success is the freedom of being able to book the holiday she wants without staring at the price first. It’s the comfort of knowing the bills are taken care of before they even arrive. “It’s the glow of treating the people I love, like my amazing daughters and granddaughter, to experiences that enrich their lives” – and she doesn’t have to think twice about it. 

And perhaps most importantly, it’s the ability to give back.

One of Sarah’s proudest moments came when she could return the favour to the man who stood by her from the start. She bought her husband, Michael, an Aston Martin – a car he had admired for years, but he never imagined he’d one day own. Buying that car was her way of saying thank you. “That was a ‘we made it’ moment,” she reflects.

Today, Sarah has built a Tropic business worth more than £125 million, leads a community of over 5,000 Ambassadors, and sits among the top 1% of earners in the UK. But when she reflects on what she’s built, it’s not the numbers that come first. It’s the people.

A Tropic Original

Sarah often jokes that she’s the “Tropic granny” to the thousands in her wider team. It’s a title she wears proudly, because the meaning behind it is real. Over the years, she’s learned that leadership doesn’t come from standing above. It comes from standing beside.

“You hold people’s hands until they have the confidence to do it themselves,” she says with characteristic clarity. Sarah’s philosophy has always been simple: give people the tools, the belief, and the encouragement to succeed – and then watch what happens.

That approach has created something far bigger than a business. It’s created a culture. In Sarah’s world, it doesn’t matter whether someone joined last week or sits several generations deep in her team, when they succeed, she celebrates it like it’s her own success.

That’s why some of her proudest memories are not her milestones, but the moments when someone else unlocks their potential. Watching a team member reach the top of the business. Seeing someone step into the spotlight for the first time and share the journey that brought them there. “Those moments,” she says, “never lose their magic.”

The Ripple Effect

And that is ultimately the thread that runs through Sarah’s story. Yes, she built a remarkable business. Yes, she achieved financial freedom. Yes, she helped shape one of the UK’s fastest-growing beauty brands from its earliest days. But what still excites her most is the ripple effect.

Even now, when someone rings her and says they’re thinking about joining, she feels the same surge of excitement she felt in the beginning.“The whole day changes,” she says. “Even the toughest day becomes the best day ever.”

Because Sarah knows exactly what that moment can become. If she could speak to the version of herself who almost chose the ‘proper job,’ her advice remains the same: “Follow your dream.”

And if you don’t know what that dream is yet? “That’s okay,” she says. “It doesn’t matter what stage of life you find it. What matters is recognising it when it arrives, and having the courage to say yes.”

Because sometimes the opportunity that changes everything begins very quietly. With five products. A beaten-up Citroën. And one cup of tea that somehow lasts all day.

“If you have a passion for something, go with the passion,” she says. “Because that will bring everything else with it. I could retire tomorrow, I just don’t want to. I love it too much.”

Sarah is celebrating a milestone birthday this year, but she treats age as exactly what it is: just a number. “It’s my big birthday this year, so I’ve rented this James-Bond-style villa in Croatia.” She’ll also be marking the occasion with her Tropic family in Ibiza, living it up at a mega club because, as Sarah puts it, “Why would I slow down? I’m having way too much fun.”

It’s difficult to think of a better summary of what direct selling, at its best, actually offers. Not a shortcut. Not a fantasy. But real businesses built on real relationships – ones that give others the chance to create something of their own and watch that possibility ripple outward: into confidence, into income, into giving back, and into the freedom to live life to the fullest.

If Sarah’s story has inspired you, then this is your signal that there is no right age, background, or starting point. You do not need to have sold anything before. You don’t need a neatly tied-up plan. You just need the willingness to follow your passion too.

FIND OUT MORE

Sarah’s ‘Tropic Glow’

Sarah’s glow isn’t just skin deep. It’s the unmistakable energy of someone who genuinely enjoys what she does – and has no intention of dialling it down anytime soon.
That said, a lifelong love of skincare certainly hasn’t hurt. So, if you fancy taking a leaf out of one of our OG’s beauty books, here are Sarah’s Tropic favourites.