Cheekbone Beauty's Jenn Harper on launching a beauty brand with no experience

Launching Cheekbone Beauty in 2016 was a bit of a serendipitous moment for founder Jenn Harper. It all started in Jan. 2015 when she dreamed about "Native little girls with their brown little skin and rosy cheeks, covered in lip gloss." The dream, paired with Harper's recent sobriety journey and deeper discovery about her lineage and Ojibwe culture, inspired her to create a beauty brand. 

The journey to becoming a beauty founder was no easy feat for Harper. Until 2016, Harper's professional career was rooted in the food industry, specifically seafood. Though she had no formal experience in beauty, her determination to launch a successful brand and celebrate her indigenous culture were her biggest motivators. Through thorough research and sourcing, Harper launched Cheekbone Beauty in Nov. 2016 as a DTC brand.

"Going back, of course, I'd love to do things differently," Harper shared on the latest episode of The Glossy Beauty Podcast. "However, I learned so much from starting things the way [I did], by being super scrappy about how we were going to build and learning how to [launch a business in real time]." 

In 2019, after Cheekbone Beauty's launch, Harper went on "Dragon's Den," a fundraising show similar to "Shark Tank." She did not accept an offer, but the exposure helped catapult Cheekbone Beauty's brand awareness. In addition to her experience on "Dragon's Den," Harper connected with Raven Capital, the first Indigenous investment fund in the world. The company initially offered Harper $350,000 to transition her business from being a private white label to creating its own products and packaging. Thanks to the funding, in March 2020, Cheekbone Beauty launched with its first proprietaryproduct, the Sustain Lipstick. 

As Harper looks to the future, she said she's excited about Cheekbone Beauty's direction. In 2021, the brand launched in Sephora Canada. And most recently, Cheekbone Beauty secured a partnership with Thirteen Lune — it will be available to shop on the marketplace's website and in 600 J.C. Penney locations. Apart from retail expansion, Cheekbone Beauty is also committed to innovation on the sustainability front through its packaging and clean ingredients.