b"CHANGING MARKETSthe needs of the Fred Meyer storesBeauty products can be found in onlyin the locations we're in, unfortunately, from their location in Langley is less68 of about 130 Sephora locations. Iover the last year we've heard our clients than ideal, so the company is lookinghear feedback all the time from ourgo in, and they're told we're not in that at ways to adapt and improve its ship- Cheekbone Beauty customers, andstore, Harper explains. It's been quite ping operations. there is a frustration, Harper says.a challenge, but I accept the challenge, Outside of the tariffs we found if we'reThere is also frustration with the storesand we're doing everything we can.shipping from Langley, B.C., to try tothat do stock the brand, with someTo help educate Sephora employees, get to UNFI for the Fred Meyer stores,employees not even aware that itsCheekbone Beauty has been finding there's such a big delay even withoutthere. Sephora has explained thatpeoplewhoarepassionateabout the tariffs or those additional costs, thateducation is up to the brands in terms now we're looking at having a ware- of educating employees on what prod- the brand and can visit some of the house down in Washington with someucts their stores stock. However, thestores once a month to tell staff about level of inventory where we can shiphigh turnover that comes with retailCheekbone. We're trying to do this [in] directly in the U.S., Anthony explains.positions can make this difficult. Eventhe most cost-effective way possible.And then for Canada, weve looked at the increase from Walmart Canada, and really ramping up that Buy Canadian, being able to capitalize on that because we ship all the pecans to Langley. We process all the pecan oil in Langley. We make all the products that we ship there. So we do have that Canadian manufac-turing opportunity as well.In addition to the U.S. and Canadian markets, Nuez Acres has also partici-pated in trade missions to try to expand into China and Mexico in the future and has done some research into the European and Australian markets as well. That said, the companys main focus is still growing its footprint in the U.S.As this tariff noise is happening, we're still going to focus on getting into the U.S. and continuing to work with different distributors in the U.S., says Anthony. That might be an opportunity while everybody's not looking that way. CHEEKBONE BEAUTYSince it was founded in 2016 by Jenn Harper, Cheekbone Beauty Cosmetics Inc. has seen incredible growth. TheCome work with uscompany started out as an e-commerceWe are innovators who believe operation selling sustainable lines of beauty products such as refillablethat successful collaboration lip glosses and lipsticks. By 2023, Cheekbone Beauty had launched intocomes from all over Canadamany Sephora stores across Canada andJCPenneystoresacrossthe United States.While Harper, who is Anishinaabe Ojibwe, is grateful for the opportu-nity to showcase her companys prod-ucts in Sephora stores, she would like to see her brand available at all locations. To date, select Cheekbone Indigenous BUSINESS REPORT45Hitachi Energy_CCAB_Sept 2022.indd 1 8/29/2022 12:35:25 PM"