Boonsithi Chokwatana is the Chairman of Saha Group, Thailand's leading consumer products conglomerate. This is part 11 of a 30-part series.

In the mid-1960s, I was helping my father with his plans to start producing washing powder while working at a factory to put powdered shampoo into containers. Thailand's shampoo and detergent markets certainly had a lot of growth potential but were crowded with competitors.

I kept wondering what could be a more promising business.

A stroke of luck came our way one day when I was looking blankly out from the head office of Saha Pathanapibul, located in Samphen Road, a narrow artery in Bangkok lined with wholesale shops of all kinds.

A stranger in a dress shirt passed by, mopping sweat off his face.

"Hello, are you Japanese?" I spoke to him in Japanese. He was surprised and walked toward me.

The man introduced himself as Mr. Kondo, a sales manager at Pias, a cosmetics maker based in Osaka. Although I had lived in Osaka for six years, I did not know Pias. He had come to Bangkok to exhibit his company's products at a trade show and was looking for a sales agent in Thailand.

The word "cosmetics" caught my attention. A friend of my father's was a sales agent for Max Factor. My father had a small stake in the business and had learned about sales methods from his friend.

By that time, Western and Japanese cosmetics brands, such as Max Factor, Revlon, Lancome, Shiseido and Kanebo, had made inroads in the Thai market. These luxury cosmetic products are referred to as "consignment sales merchandise" and sold by trained sales reps after face-to-face consultations with consumers. They are different from general merchandise that are usually displayed on store shelves.

Pias products were treated as general merchandise in Japan, Kondo-san told me. I proposed to sell them as consignment sales merchandise in Thailand and offered to take care of all necessary procedures to import them.

We immediately struck a deal.

Normally, cosmetics are sold to retailers on a nonreturnable basis. That means retailers own the inventories and could end up stuck with unsold stock. In contrast, unsold consignment sales merchandise can be returned to sales agents. So there are differences in how to account for these two types of cosmetic products in bookkeeping.

I thought it would be better to set up a company separate from Saha Pathanapibul, which only dealt with general merchandise, to sell Pias cosmetics as consignment sales merchandise. When I expressed this idea to my father, he agreed and told me to give it a try.

In 1964, we established a new company named International Cosmetics (PIAS) with capital of 100,000 baht. This was the genesis of I.C.C. International, now one of the two core companies of Saha Group along with Saha Pathanapibul.

I became the president of the new company at the age of 27 and had seven employees under my supervision. My small office had only three desks and one electric fan, and also doubled as a warehouse.

We imported Pias products such as lipstick, foundation and milky lotion from Japan. At the time, Western brands were very expensive and out of reach for most Thai consumers, but for the well-heeled in Bangkok.

Since Pias products were priced much lower, we decided to focus on local markets to gain as many consumers as possible in our marketing strategy. We tried to turn the low-name recognition of the brand to our advantage by advertising its products as cosmetics that "better agree with Asian skin."

We trained sales reps we called "beauty advisers" and dispatched them to all corners of Thailand to build our marketing network. Since most were not familiar with our products, our beauty advisers started by showing them how to use our cosmetics.

We also paid a lot of attention to how our products were displayed at stores. I told our sales reps to ensure that our products were displayed in ways that emphasized their high quality.

"We do not sell fish sauce," I said to them. "Use lighting effectively to make our products look like diamond. Otherwise, nobody would be willing to use them on their skins."

Our sales in local markets grew steadily thanks in part to a lack of competitors.

Even though our success drew our rivals to local markets, we managed to make Pias the No. 1 player in the Thai cosmetics market in four years.

We launched a company to produce Pias cosmetics in 1970. This way, we avoided a 200% tariff on imports. This approach gave us an additional competitive advantage by lowering costs and giving us greater discretion in developing new products.

This column is part of The Nikkei's "My Personal History" ("Watashi no Rirekisho") series of autobiographies. The series first appeared in The Nikkei in 1956. Since then, a wide variety of world-changing individuals have written or dictated their life stories for publication.