Meet HIGHR, the female-founded and California-made makeup brand scaling sustainability.
After Molly Hart, founder of HIGHR, gave birth to her children, she felt a shift in her moral compass. That shift, plus years of experience in the beauty industry at powerhouse brands like MAC, was the kick start she needed to tackle what she calls “the most invasive category in the beauty industry”—the lip category. Recalling the beginning of her entrepreneurial endeavor, she says, “Governments seemed to be making the wrong decisions when it came to mitigating CO2 emissions, putting the burden on businesses to reduce industry emissions through self-regulation.” Her desire for a better future for her children fused with her hope for a better way forward in beauty. HIGHR’s sustainable start, focusing on renewable energy by using 100% solar for formulation and printing with 100% wind energy for packaging, was certain from Day 1.
“I had to work my way up from the bottom of this industry—starting behind the makeup counter with a brush belt on,” shares Hart. Her teenage experience in direct customer sales is what proved to be most beneficial to her future in brand-building. “There is no business degree for understanding the beauty consumer. You must put in the work to truly understand the nuances of this industry,” she shares. Running a start-up, she notes, “is never easy.” In their second close in their seed round, HIGHR continues to fundraise for even more sustainable practices, a larger team, and new development. The one highlight to building a beauty business? Hart has spent her entire career in the industry. In a sea of brands clinging to labels like “clean” and “carefully sourced,” the brand she’s built has solid footing on a production process rooted in sustainability.
First, all HIGHR products are made in the USA, offering a head start in reducing overall operation CO2. Lipsticks are first formulated, and later produced, using solar energy out of a lab in Los Angeles. “I wanted the lipstick to be as organic as possible because everything on the lip is ingested,” Hart shares. The formulation, which nets around 70% organic, replaces the standard silicone and polyethylene with plant-derived emollients. All printed packaging is made of 100% upcycled material and printed in Minneapolis.
When it comes to reaching a robust customer base, Hart considers sustainable shipping a priority. Bulk shipments are sent to London to fulfill UK orders twice a year. On the same twice-yearly cadence, all shipments are tracked and tallied to be sent to Native Energy for calculation. To date, the young brand has saved and negated a total of 55.1 metric tons of CO2.
“I didn’t create HIGHR to fit the B Corp mold at all,” says Hart. Instead, she set out to build the cleanest lip product with the cleanest supply chain possible. This way of scaling happened to align with the B Corp mission of using business as a force for good. The certification process, often heralded as complicated and tedious, was anything but for Hart and her team. The brand’s alignment with B Corp’s vision made the procedure “very natural.”
It doesn’t take an ex-MAC exec to understand that the beauty industry has a waste problem. “The long-term discrepancy in sales data between best sellers and expensive ‘newness’ in the lip category is shocking,” Hart says. That’s why, when building HIGHR, the goal was to create a “complete wardrobe of lip color that is as universally flattering as possible.” In theory, this resistance to constant newness cuts down on the brand’s CO2 footprint, and retrains customers to shop the core collection without anticipating launches every month.
HIGHR’s seven-shade collection was more of a careful market study than a creative practice in restraint. “We didn’t take many big swings when it came to shade development. We went midtone and neural, and then tried the shades on 115 different women of varying skin tones,” explains Hart. Tapping makeup artists to ensure that shades were “kit–friendly” was key to development, as well.
As for what’s next for the brand, Hart notes that continuing to tweak based on customer needs and opening new entry points into the lip category are on the horizon. “Everyone touches the lip category, but not everyone wears lipstick. We know that. We’ll be branching out into soft color and balm territory so that everyone can switch their lip products to HIGHR.” And as for the future of beauty? Hart is optimistic. “The customer is more vocal than ever, and they’re always clear in what they want—true sustainability, cleaner product, inclusivity, and responsibility. It’s now up to companies to listen to them and action it through business decisions.”
