Spring 2008 :: Finance
When your lip gloss poses the question, “What does eternal equity look like?” it may be a sign there are more pressing issues to discuss besides who is the fairest one of all.
Jody Weiss knows a few. In fact, her business, PeaceKeeper Cause-metics, is devoted to women’s health advocacy and urgent human rights issues. The cosmetics line, launched in 2002, is the first to give all of its after-tax distributable profits to such causes.
After years as a New York–based sports agent, Weiss was stopped in her tracks by a photograph in Time magazine of a little girl in tears, surrounded by her cheering family.
“The article was about female genital mutilation,” Weiss says. “I knew that it existed, but I never realized that it happened to girls in patent leather shoes with bows in their hair. I didn’t want to interpret it from a Western point of view, but I wanted to be the mother of that child to understand. I knew right then that I did not want to take another breath of life without focusing on urgent issues in the world.”
Weiss’s career in activism took off with a running start. After writing and producing a film about such practices, Weiss, motivated by her product endorsement expertise, decided to enter the beauty industry—a field where she could actively inspire women to use their buying power to generate opportunities and resources for women born without.
“We need to continually ask how to raise women out of hunger and poverty and exploitation—by giving them education and economic opportunities,” Weiss says.
But before she could launch her campaign, Weiss had to answer a few questions on her own. In addition to learning chemistry to see what “clean” cosmetics looked like (they use beeswax, jojoba oil and shea butter minus ingredients like formaldehyde), Weiss put together a comprehensive business scheme, basing it on Paul Newman’s sustainable business model for his Newman’s Own brand.
“We are what you call enterprise philanthropy,” Weiss says. “It does pose some challenges because you are not offering as much back as a venturing investment, but we are a pioneering model. I am proud, but it has been challenging to build a brand this way.”
To date, the brand has given more than $55,000 in cash to women-focused nonprofits, as well as $30,000 in products for additional fund-raising. Weiss hopes that PeaceKeeper will continue to inspire women to find ways to help themselves by helping others.
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PeaceKeeper has given one half of 1 percent of its gross revenues to organizations addressing urgent human rights issues each year since launching and will continue to do so until the company becomes profitable. A number of PeaceKeeper products are associated with specific issues and organizations.
*UNIFEM Lip Gloss. With each purchase, five percent of the retail price, or $.80, goes to the UNIFEM Trust Fund to Eliminate Violence Against Women.
*PeaceKeeper V-Day Gloss (a lip gloss launched with Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues). Five percent of the retail purchase price (about $.80) goes to V-Day, Ensler’s organization to end violence against women.
*The newest addition, Eternal Equity Gloss. A dollar of each purchase goes to women and girls who live on less than a dollar a day.
*All proceeds from the Million Kisses Campaign, which invites women to pucker up with PeaceKeeper gloss or lipstick and send a kiss to someone they love, along with a dollar (or more), is donated directly to the PeaceKeepers Fund, which supports a girl’s education who has left a life of indentured servitude or the sex slave trade.
*Total cash donated to date: $55,584