Indie beauty conversations: Cheekbone Beauty

10 May 2021 --- Bootstrapping the business with her own money while working a full-time job, Jenn Harper wanted to launch Cheekbone Beauty with her own formulations. Having achieved that for her Indigenous-owned and founded, digitally-native, Canadian cosmetics company, we caught up with brand founder Jenn on what it takes to launch and grow an indie beauty brand in today’s landscape.

Where did the idea for Cheekbone Beauty come from? 

Click to EnlargeJenn Harper, founder of Cheekbone BeautyIn 2015, I had this crazy dream about these Native American little girls, and they were covered in lip gloss. I literally woke up from that dream with just the whole idea about this business where we are going to make this lip gloss and try to create awareness. I woke up from that dream with this mission and vision in my mind. I grabbed my laptop that night and started writing out what I now know is a business plan.

I had no idea what any of this was called at the time but thought: “Why don't I see Indigenous faces in the beauty space?” “Why doesn't that exist?". And so, the first layer of our brand was certainly about representation, bringing more representation to Native Americans, or what we call First Nations Metis, Inuit people in Canada. Then we discovered Indigenous people globally. We truly share this pain of the traumas that come with colonization, as a lot of our communities have truly been impacted in a negative way by colonization.

How did you take your idea, personal experiences and trauma, and launch Cheekbone Beauty? 

For three years, I worked on Cheekbone on weekends and all night long. We realized there is a market for this; there is a product-market fit here that did not exist before. 

We weren't here to be like: “Yes, let's build this great business where it will be worth all these billions of dollars and take market share from these big conglomerates.” 

We were just coming in with this idea of wanting representation. I want to support causes. So we have always had this layer where we give away 10% of our profits to organizations that focus on the educational rights of our Indigenous youth.

What new product development have you been working on?

Over the past two years, we have been doing a lot of research and development (R&D). We launched Sustained Lipstick in March 2020. We have a foundation that we have been working on that is using plant or agricultural waste as one of its main ingredients so that waste is converted into a usable ingredient for cosmetics. We have been testing it to make sure there are no residual chemicals or metals and we are now gearing up for it to launch in mid-2021. It was supposed to happen at the end of 2020, but COVID hit and the supply chain became a massive issue for our ingredient supplier.

There is so much super exciting stuff happening. We have also been building our own lab. We realize that that is where all the incredible work will actually happen. We have been going back and forth for the last two years with labs, with product and testing, and we decided: "Yeah, let's just get our own cosmetic chemist or scientist onboard and help us do all this testing in-house, so we can speed up that process.”

We are all about using science and Indigenous wisdom, and really trying to figure out how we can make better stuff, including packaging as well as the product, the raw ingredient and the sourcing. And asking: “How can we really do that? So that we are not only the business doing it, but that we are actually creating ideas that everybody can jump onto as well.

How have you built your community of supporters? 

We have used the power of social media to tell our story and have found that to be truly effective. In Indigenous history, we are taught stories as young children, our stories, which were always passed on orally. One really powerful story is that you use your gifts for good. When you find a tool like social media where you can connect with people online and find people that relate to you, that is where we have been able to really tell our story and people have listened.

What platform/s have you found are particularly good for resonating with people and for storytelling in an authentic way?

We have found success with Instagram. We are realizing now that as time changes, there are new platforms like YouTube, which is a platform we haven't placed much focus on. But again, we are still such a small business, and we are just hiring more people, which will hopefully help us fill those jobs on platforms like TikTok and YouTube. Short video stories, I think, will be even more powerful than the wonderful images that we have been able to use on Instagram.

What are people’s reactions to Cheekbone Beauty?

The most wonderful process that has happened is the emails and direct messages we get as a brand just saying: "Oh my goodness, I finally feel seen, I finally feel heard.” And that just didn't exist in traditional beauty before.

What exciting things are planned for 2021 and beyond?

Click to EnlargeCheekbone Beauty is reformulating its range and launching new products in 2021In 2021, despite COVID-19, it has been a very busy year for us. We are in the process of developing exciting new products for our customers and working on reformulating our current popular products to meet our updated clean standards. There are many exciting things happening this year and we cannot wait for everyone to see them!

We are working on adding shades to current product lines and developing new product lines altogether. A new product will be launched in one month and then June, National Indigenous History Month, will be full of many surprises! These products will all be clean and sustainable; we are taking every aspect of Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) into consideration. 

Earth Day is everyday for our Indigenous community and Cheekbone is working hard to educate our customers on the sustainable journey we go through when developing each product. Check out our socials on #SustainableSaturday for a deep dive into each step!

In addition, Cheekbone Beauty has something in the pipeline for September 2021. It is currently top secret, but we promise you will not want to miss it. We have also just signed with our dream marketing agency, Sid Lee, and are truly honored to work with such an amazing team. If you haven’t heard of Cheekbone Beauty yet, you will soon!

By Natasha Spencer-Jolliffe, BPC Insights Senior Journalist