Beautiful Purpose: A Response to the MMIW Crisis

Native Americans and Alaskan Natives are also referred to as Indigenous people of the U.S. and make up only approximately two percent of the U.S. population. Indigenous women and girls in the United States and Canada are going missing or being murdered at alarming rates. Indigenous Women in the United States face murder rates that are ten times higher than the national average in some areas. According to the National Crime Information Center, in 2016 there were 5,712 reports of missing American Indian and Alaska Native women and girls; however, only 116 of those reports were logged into the U.S. Department of Justice’s federal missing database NamUs. These startling numbers of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women combined with inadequate data and legal response is what has come to be known as the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women crisis and often referred to as MMIW.  

In response to the MMIW Crisis, our solution is to utilize today’s new trade routes, which includes the internet and social media. As an online store, Skye Woman Beauty has created a first of its kind in the world combination of products that include both make up and personal self-defense products in order to promote the use of personal self-defense products by Indigenous women and as an attempt to mitigate or minimize further loss within our communities.

Our solution is directed toward Indigenous women in the U.S. Because of our unique relationship with the federal government, Indigenous women often lack adequate protection through laws when it comes to the complexities of criminal jurisdiction. By promoting the use of self-defense tools among Indigenous women, we may be able to impact their lives by mitigating or minimizing loss. In doing so, we have the potential to also impact the children and families of Indigenous women.  

Our target population includes all women in not one, but all Indigenous communities throughout the U.S. and possibly even Canada. As an Indigenous lead organization, we have lived experience and knowledge of the MMIW crisis. As a company that is in it’s pilot stage, we are engaging our target population through social media with plans to include a survey within our online store to gather data on first time buyers and/or users of self-defense products as well as age range and education levels.

As a team, we are a surviving family of a Missing and Murdered Indigenous woman. Her name is Skye Jim. We are based in our own community and are aware of the statistics that Indigenous women face. As the team leader and Executive Manager of Skye Woman Beauty, I am also the mother of an MMIW woman. Having had to investigate my daughter Skye Jim’s death myself, I am intimately aware of the jurisdictional complexities and barriers to justice that Missing and Murdered Indigenous women face. As a result, I have created a web-based resource tool for surviving families of Native homicide victims called The Skye Woman Project.

Skye Woman Beauty is an extension of our MMIW efforts as a means of prevention. Because such an effort as Skye Woman Beauty has never been done before now, and because we are a start up who is working on limited resources, we have not had the resources to conduct marketing analysis and extensive engagement. We have acted on lived experience and observation, we have identified an integral need that has not been a part of the nationwide MMIW discussion. With the courage to go where no one else has gone, we have a pilot online store in place and since launch, we have received orders from all over the nation for make up and self-defense products and have even received orders for only a self-defense product.

First and foremost, we want to make a difference. We are applying to Solve because we are first time business owners. The purpose of Skye Woman Beauty is much bigger than any of us. In order for Skye Woman Beauty to have a successful impact on the lives of Indigenous women and even their children, we need guidance in financial management to help us strategically plan and implement our continuation and growth, legal expertise in contracting should we be able to get our product line considered for sales within tribal gift shops as well as employment laws should we need to hire assistance. We also need technical assistance to maximize the efficiency and security of our online store and overall operations. We will also need expert guidance in setting up a better system of measuring any potential impact we have on the target group we are striving to positively impact. With growth, we may also need in-kind support in terms of software.  We could also benefit from guidance in successful marketing. 

As an Indigenous woman, Our Team Lead resides within her own Indigenous community and is culturally and traditionally involved. Having advocated for her own daughter, our Team Lead is also personally experienced with the issue of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. 

Currently, for the first time, there is a rising Indigenous fashion and beauty industry as a result of social media. Now is also a time when MMIW awareness and the extent of it's criticalness is an an all-time high. Ironically, despite all of the MMIW awareness and hundreds if not thousand of families who have been directly impacted, there has been very little in terms of prevention. This includes the oversight of our options to use self-defense tools as a means of increasing our chances of escape and/or survival. 

By utilizing social media and the internet, and the trend of interest in Native fashion and beauty influencers and by providing a makeup line that contains cultural symbolism, we have the opportunity to integrate self-defense products in a combination that just makes sense. It is impossible for us to go to every single Indigenous community across this nation, but by meeting Indigenous women where they're at through the use of technology based tools, we have the potential to usher in a move toward tangible MMIW prevention strategies.  

The unique combination of beauty products with self-defense products could even extend to the market of non-Indigenous women as well. 

Our impact goals for the next year, with growth and the ability to maintain as a business, is to continue influencing and promoting the use of personal self-defense tools by Indigenous women throughout the nation.  We plan to achieve this by maintaining and even expanding our product line and reach. In addition to being an internet based store, we plan on submitting a proposal to at least two tribally owned gift shops.  We also plan on getting our brand and message to other national Native organizations who's work addresses the issues of domestic violence and human trafficking. 

It should be noted that next year, we plan on applying to the Indigenous Fellows Challenge again but with the concept of creating an MMIW phone app with shared location and emergency contact abilities. 

Our reason for this we are experiencing the purchasing of self-defense items through Skye Woman Beauty by Indigenous women, it appears that Indigenous women are more likely to use self-defense tools that are made specifically for them. We feel by creating an MMIW phone app, Indigenous women may also be more likely to install and use such an app which could also increase their chances of escape and/or survival. 

Being a brand new start up company that just began on April 22, 2023, we haven't been able to formally gather data to measure our progress or impact. We can only tell by the eager and interest of those who have shared our information with others or who have purchased our products.  So far we have received orders from at least ten different states. Some of the orders were specifically for self-defense items and in multiple quantities. 

We are in the process of adding a survey to our online store in which we will be asking our customers if they have ever owned a self-defense product, if this is their first time buying one, if the purchase is for themselves or a loved one, as well as their educational levels. This is where we could benefit from experts in measuring our impact. 

Indigenous people make up less than two percent of the U.S. population. Indigenous women in the U.S. are ten times more likely to be murdered in some areas and are a part of what has come to be known as the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women crisis. 

Despite increasing self-awareness of our own crisis, minimal preventative measures are being taken within our communities as a community response, including the promotion of the use of self-defense products among Indigenous women. 

By creating Skye Woman beauty, which is purposefully aimed at appealing to the Native woman's interest in beauty products and integrating self-defense products, our immediate outcomes brings affordable make up and self-defense products to a geographic who has yet to fully embrace the option to protect ourselves with self-defense tools.  We plan on implementing a survey tool within our online store to capture data on self-defense product purchases by Indigenous women. 

By increasing the recognition of the option of utilizing personal self-defense among Indigenous women, our long term goal is to contribute to the decrease in number of Missing and Murdered Indigenous women. 

It must be understood that we are attempting to impact a target population who have been marginalized to the point in which only until recently has data on Missing and Murdered Indigenous women began to be taken seriously; therefore, it is difficult to say with certainty exactly how we will measure our long-term impact on a group for which very little data exists to begin with. 

Despite this unique and enormous challenge, the need is great and the problem is a life and death situation which can not be ignored for lack of data tools. 

Skye Woman Beauty uses the internet, web hosting, apps as well as software to support our online store and thus our ability to reach Indigenous women across the entire nation. Without technology, our potential impact would be limited.  The name Skye Woman is not only our way of honoring Skye Jim, it is also a reference to a cultural belief and knowledge system known to some Indigenous Nations. 

While Skye Woman Beauty is an LLC and thus maintains formal Articles of Incorporation and an Operating Agreement, unlike most western concepts of teams or business model, Skye Woman Beauty was born of and will continue to be grounded in concepts of Indigenous consultation, kinship and cooperation. What mainstream society might view as an informal team, we consider formal to the fullest extent due to our cultural values. 

Skye Woman Beauty was created by the joining of minds of multi-generational family members of Skye Jim and from it’s birth, Skye Woman Beauty’s “informal” consultation team consists of Skye’s grandmother, sister, brother, aunts, mother and step-father. Inclusivity and diversity are embedded within Indigenous values. As Skye Woman Beauty aspires toward growth, these values will be extended and shared with all future potential employees within the culture of our organization.  

Skye Woman Beauty was founded on April 22, 2023 as an online store utilizing the appeal of a cosmetics line targeted towards Native American women combined with personal self-defense products to promote the use of personal self-defense products among those most affected by the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women crisis while also providing Native American women affordable access to said products.

Skye Woman Beauty has a lighter cost structure than other cosmetic lines as well as other self-defense product companies with which it competes because it is a home based company that doesn’t have high overhead warehouse costs that other, larger companies have. Skye Woman Beauty’s main costs ate inventory and platform management.

Because of Skye Woman’s light cost structure and ability to connect with other potential partners within the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women’s advocacy groups and Domestic Violence organizations, we anticipate increased interest in our products which, in turn, will provide us the opportunity for steady and reasonable growth.

To sponsor our objectives of supporting our necessary expenses while maintaining JusticeForSkyeJim.com, TheSkyeWomanProject.com and creating a Justice Fund for Skye Jim’s investigation, we have established an LLC to fund our goals. The plan we have implemented to establish financial stability is a transactional revenue model utilizing both e-commerce and direct sales. Revenue is generated through retail sales of private label products and wholesale items selected by us for our designated consumer base. Making use of the revenue generated within a reasonable budget, we will expand our product line as fiscal responsibility allows. Our plan also includes establishing an operating inventory of products along with the necessary operating capital to replace all products including the funds required to maintain all expenses for a minimum of three months. This will allow us the security necessary to preserve the business in the event of a lack of retail sales or unforeseen manufacturing or delivery delays.

Once those goals have been established we will establish the Skye Jim Justice Fund through an established percentage of the profit. We believe that our demographic will continue to support our product line as they are all consumables that will need replacing. We will also be adding or removing product based on those appreciated or not by our target consumers.

We have a long term plan once we have established the necessary operating capital to expand direct sales by partnering with various Tribal retail outlets such as gift shops and offer a prepackaged display of our products that will offer us and the Tribal partner both a reasonable profit margin. To do this it will be necessary to negotiate enough partnerships to purchase large enough quantities that wholesale product cost is reduced greatly through volume manufacturing discounts.  

By utilizing Federal Tax Return funds we purchased our first batch of inventory, consisting of 5 products with varying color options in select items. We procured the initial inventory which consisted of about 50 of each item and as little as 18 of some higher priced items. We paid to establish a Limited Liability Company here in Oklahoma and filed our articles of incorporation, acquired a federal EIN and filed for an Oklahoma Retail Sales Tax ID.

Due to our limited startup funds we had to find and establish an economical domain registry and hosting. We established our online store at SkyeWomanBeauty.com and then prepared to have a scheduled launch date. Unfortunately the date and location we chose was preceded by a Tornado in the vicinity of our launch location. One of our partners found a new venue out of the Tornado damaged area and was able to still have the launch party. The launch was well received and those that attended were very impressed with the products and the motivation behind our retail concept. As I share this information for you it has been two and a half weeks since our launch. We have had to reorder from our suppliers as we have sold out of stock on some items. The inventory of our personal defense items have had three reorders from suppliers, which is inspiring as our goal was to provide affordable protection items that Native woman would utilize.

We have generated enough capital to add an additional product to our line that has been requested by our consumers which will be received within the next week. Of our initial Inventory we have sold more than 50% of the beauty products and all of the personal safety devices and are backordered on some items. We will begin increasing our available inventory par levels as the revenue allows us to do so responsibly. We have also found a way to cut our payment processing from just under 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction per payment to only 1.25% & no per transaction fee. This will make a sizeable impact on our net profit margin, promoting us closer on our path to our goals. Our gross revenue has already reached 67% of our initial investment in just under 3 weeks. We have purposely not over marketed our website and product line as the response of interest prior to the launch by those we shared it with gave us the impression that we possibly would be required to replace inventory quickly and some products have a 2 week window for procurement. I can only imagine how much our retail sales will increase once we apply some targeted marketing. Although we won’t be doing that until we have established an inventory that could handle such demands and not have to turn anyone away because of out of stock dilemmas.