Here’s a short Q & A from a half-hour conversation earlier this month at Angelique’s Boutique Spa & Suites in Troncones.
LOT: Our first interview was about your hearts coming together and creating the Santu brand. To use corporate-speak—what are the underpinnings of the Santu products?
Alicia: We have three signature scents, but copal is our hero ingredient. It’s used in everything we make. It’s been used in Mexico for thousands of years for medicinal reasons, as an antiseptic as well as an anti-inflammatory. Copal is used in sacred ceremonies to clear out negative energy. You’ll always see it on altar for Day of the Dead, and you’ll find it used in churches. It’s very grounding. My great grandmother was a curandera [a healer] and she used it often for its benefits. Our three signature scents are Lima Mexicana—lime, rosemary and eucalyptus; Jasmine—pineapple, mango and jasmine; and Coco Corazon—coconut, vanilla and hint of coffee. We really spent a lot of time in the lab with chemists trying, like a good wine, to try to make them layered, bringing together botanicals, herbs and fruits that work together.
Angelique: They all are intended to kind of take you, like, on vacation. Our lotions smell good, feel good and they’re good for you, because they’re from natural ingredients and they’re very moisturizing. That’s the same with our salt scrubs, they’re natural—the salt comes from the salt flats south in Petatlán [south of Zihua]—they exfoliate and they also hydrate. We always teach our customers how to use it—to use it on dry skin to remove dead skin cells and, then, after about 10 to 15 minutes, to rinse it off. That’s the best way to enjoy the benefit of its oils—the shea butter, the cacao butter, the mamey butter and the copal.
LOT: In December, your products were available in Mexico in Troncones—at the Spa, at The Inn at Manzanillo Bay and at Casa Croma—and in a few hotels in Mexico City. What’s changed?
Alicia: Starting this week, you can go to santubeauty.mx and you can buy online. We are now, literally, selling in two countries, with delivery anywhere in Mexico and delivery anywhere in the U.S. We’ve intended this from the beginning. We ethically source our ingredients here in Mexico, and our creative team, our partners and our artisans are here. We’re here. Santu was born here. We’ve been wanting to go live, online, here for a long time. We’ve made a concerted effort to focus on Mexico, because it aligns with everything we’re doing. We are still in the St. Regis and the Ritz in Mexico City, and here in Troncones, but soon we’ll be able to announce distribution through retailers in Mexico. We’ve also been really focused on independent boutique shops, hotels and spas in Mexico that align with the brand—selling for professional use. There will be more to come before the end of the year, including five new products we’re still formulating, that I can’t tell you about just yet.
LOT: Will those new products be available within the U.S. and in Mexico?
Angelique: Everything we make from now on will be available in both countries. We produce here—everything is made in Mexico City—so it makes sense to be able to ship products all over Mexico.
LOT: Where are you expanding the States?
Alicia: In the Midwest, starting late next month. But first, we’re going into Ulta Marketplace, the online portal for Ulta, which is the largest U.S. beauty retailer. We’re also going into Free People online. That’s a boutique retailer owned by Urban Outfitters.
Angelique: And we’re going to Von Maur, that’s the Midwest retailer. It’s a family-run business, based in Iowa, that has almost 40 department stores. They’re good people and a good company. Some of their buyers have been with Von Maur since they were 18. They’re fun ladies to work with and they have us going to Detroit and Louisville for sales trainings next month.
Alicia: Last year, we won the NewBeauty award for All-Inclusive Brand. Retailers like Ulta look at that. Especially since, on average, most companies are in business selling product for five years before they get into NewBeauty. We did it in one.
Angelique: In six months, actually. NewBeauty rated their top 25 body lotions last month and our Coco Corazon came in at Number 2. And our Coco Corazon Body Scrub was picked as the Best Body Scrub in the 2026 Popsugar Beauty Awards. That also happened last month. In January, we went to Cosmoprof, the biggest beauty trade show in North America. It was in Miami. That’s where we met Ulta. Everybody goes. Big, big brands with big, big displays. We were among hundreds of vendors, in the section with the newest brands. Everybody walking by would say, “That looks like it smells good.”
Alicia: And our booth was the cover picture of the trade show guide. That brought us a lot of attention, and so was our being listed Number 1 in the “10 standout brands” by NewBeauty after the show.
Press coverage of Santu Beauty, on Trend Hunter
LOT: Are you getting that sort of recognition in Mexico?
Angelique: Yes, Revista de Milenio just wrote about Santu. They picked up a press release and wrote an article about us, about our having “conscious well-being with ancestral roots”. Revista de Milenio is a style magazine that reaches a lot of Mexico.
Alicia: That kind of recognition validates we’re doing something well. That our message and our products are connecting with people.
Angelique: The thing is we’re not really trying to expand rapidly. We want to grow organically. We want the ingredients, the culture, the people of Mexico to come through in everything we do. Mexico is what inspired us, and we want to be true to that.
LOT: All this success, what does that mean for people here in Troncones?
Alicia: The reason I wanted to be involved in creating Santu is that—yes, we are selling products—but I don’t think you can love yourself enough. And whatever your rituals are that bring you back to yourself are really important. I’m not a makeup girl or a jewelry girl, but I love body care products. They’re part of the self-care rituals I use as my most imperfect self, my perfectly imperfect self. If I could start a movement, it would be a radical self-love movement. It may sound cliché, but you can’t love yourself enough. It’s a commodity that you can’t buy, it will never run out and it’s within us. The more you love yourself, the more you can give and the more you get back in return. And it’s like throwing a pebble in a lake and creating concentric ripples.
One of our principal tenants in the two years we incubated Santu is that we wanted to work with local artisans—like our salt lady, like our handmade vessels—so we are helping the local economy. We want to bring what we do, and what we learn, back to Troncones. Our garden here at the Spa is part of that. We’re growing the plants we use in our products, and we’re doing it in a regenerative way. We hope to use the garden as an educational space. Like how do you compost? How do you plan to conserve water? How do you use the land to feed yourself and others?
Angelique: This is so important to what we’re doing. That teaching. That growing. And to be able to show the kids here that it can be done here, locally. I’m learning so much in our garden, like, how long it takes plants to bear fruit after you cut them. For example, pineapples take three years. Ours are growing well, but we’re not going to be able to eat them for another two years. As we learn from our garden, it’s part of the ripple. We hire people to work. They take fruit and herbs from the garden home for their families. We use it here in the Spa for our clients, for their teas, for their health. We have papayas. We have bananas. We also have a cinnamon tree.
The cinnamon tree in the garden at Angelique's Boutique Spa & Suites. Photo by La Onda Troncones
LOT: A cinnamon tree?
Angelique: Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think how cinnamon grew or that I’d have ever a cinnamon tree. We use it to make teas, some with the bark and some with the leaves. The bark tastes like cinnamon, and the leaves taste like cinnamon and clove. Both of them make red teas.
Alicia: Part of the inspiration for our garden—and growing some of the ingredients that we use in our products—is how removed we are, in a mass market way, of knowing how we get the things we need to survive on. I get a real joy in being able to connect with our ingredients and seeing our soil get richer from what we’re doing. We have citronella growing in our garden. We use that to keep away mosquitoes. It’s practical. It’s natural. It’s a reminder of the old ways, the ways of the curanderas, where plants were the medicines, the protectors and the healers. Being able to participate in that, and bring what we learn back to Troncones, is all part of what we’re doing.
LOT: Is there anything else new for Santu that you can talk about?
Alicia: Yes, I almost forgot. Since we’ve started Santu, we’ve had an annual retreat for our employees here in Troncones. At first, it was just three of us, but now we have eight. I looked at the video we made when everyone was here last month and it looked like a lot of fun. I bring that up because part of our health as a business is making sure that our employees are getting what they need—in ceremony, in meditation, in self-care, in setting intentions. It’s the nature of a startup to set things like that aside. Taking care of ourselves, and taking care of our community, starts with acknowledging the people we work with.
Angelique: Our team really appreciated the retreat. They all felt the emotional connection we put into the brand. Santu is not just another skincare brand. We want to encourage people to take care of themselves emotionally and spiritually. I think our team felt that.
Alicia: Oh, yes, and one more thing. Something new we can tell you about. “Minis”. Travel sizes. We’ve been in Mexico and the U.S. with full tubes, but you can’t travel with them, so we’re coming out with “minis”—a little set of the Lima lotion and the Lima scrub. That’s going to happen in April, online first. You’ll be able to take Santu and your self-care rituals wherever you go.
LINKS
https://www.newbeauty.com/nb100/body/santu/
https://mrevistademilenio.com/el-bienestar-consciente-con-raices-ancestrales/
www.santubeauty.com