Cheekbone Beauty - Building an Indigenous Growth Venture

Name: Cheekbone Beauty - Building an Indigenous Growth Venture (English version)
SKU: W25813

Simon Parker, Ramasastry Chandrasekhar

Product #:W25813

Supplier:Ivey

Discipline:Entrepreneurship, Sustainability

Setting:Canada, 2021

Details:Case (PDF) • 10 pages • 2021-10-28 (Rev: 2022-07-06)

Subjects:

Competitive advantage Competitive strategy Environmental sustainability Business and society Leadership and managing people Entrepreneurship Management

Geography:

North America Canada

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$9.71

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The founder of Cheekbone Beauty, an Indigenous enterprise in the Niagara Region of Ontario, was driven by the goal of becoming “the first Indigenous woman to create a unicorn beauty brand from Canada.” In early 2021, she was seeking resolution to an ongoing entrepreneurial dilemma: How should she identify the fledgling company’s unique strengths and build them into sustainable competitive advantages?

The Ivey Business School gratefully acknowledges the generous support of Pierre Lapointe, MBA ’83, in the development of this case.

Learning Objectives

This case can be taught in either undergraduate- or postgraduate-level courses in any of the following areas: entrepreneurship, strategy, marketing, and Indigenous studies. It gives students an opportunity to step into the shoes of an Indigenous entrepreneur and find a way forward for her. After working through the case and assignment questions, students will be able to do the following:

Understand the challenges and possibilities associated with Indigenous entrepreneurship.
Illustrate and apply the VRIO (valuable, rare, inimitable, organization) framework, a key part of the resource-based view of a firm.