Before Graduating High School, 17-Year-Old Aashna Sharma Created A Makeup Brand Helping To Save Animals

During a typical year, most 17-year-olds would be planning for high school graduation after recently going to senior prom. But this year isn’t typical, and Aashna Sharma isn’t a typical teenager.

In October, she launched Shared Planet, a direct-to-consumer makeup brand dedicated to preserving animals as much as painting faces. It kicked off with tiger- and polar bear-themed warm- and cool-toned collections containing an eyeshadow palette and two lip glosses each. The brand gives 10% of proceeds to protect the animals that inspired the collections through the organizations Panthera and Polar Bears International.

“They are beautiful animals, but, most importantly, today they are [examples] of the most at-risk animals. I also felt like both of these animals were synonymous with the green movement,” says Sharma, adding, “It was important for us that the donations are a percentage of revenue and not bottom-line dependent as it will be some time before we start making profits and the at-risk animals need help today.”

Shared Planet’s products are priced from $18 for a lip gloss to $98 for a deluxe bundle, and the brand describes them as clean, cruelty-free and vegan. Although Shared Planet’s formulas have ingredients including dimethicone, phenoxyethanol and palm oil-derived palmitoyl tripeptide-38 that are controversial in clean beauty circles, the brand adheres to Sephora’s Clean standard, and its ingredients largely rank low on the organization Environmental Working Group’s cosmetic ingredient toxicity scale. The mica in its products are certified free of child labor.

Shared Planet
Shared Planet launched last year with collections containing an eyeshadow palette and two lip glosses each. The brand gives back 10% of proceeds to the animals that inspired the collections through the organizations Panthera and Polar Bears International.

Shared Planet is sticking to online distribution for now, but Sephora and Ulta Beauty are on Sharma’s eventual retail wish list for the brand. The retailers’ clean makeup selections are increasingly crowded. Aether Beauty, Kosas, Hynt Beauty, Au Naturale, Ilia and Lawless Beauty are among the clean makeup brands they carry. Clean makeup sales represent a small share of the makeup market, but, prior to the pandemic, they had been rising as conventional makeup sales ebbed. Many beauty industry experts expect clean makeup will accelerate as clean skincare devotees turn to overhauling their makeup bags.

“We’re in the year 2020. We have so much technology and resources available to be embracing more ethical business practices,” she says. “Today, the new generation desires to have clean formulations, cruelty-free and ethically-sourced ingredients and, where possible, also connect to the overall good of planet Earth.”

Sharma created Shared Planet with boutique brand development firm Brazen Beauty, and worked with digital marketing agency IMA to secure beauty influencers Christen Dominique and Nicole Guerriero to promote its launch. The brand flew Dominique and Guerriero to Greenland and India, respectively, for a week to shoot videos highlighting Shared Planet’s polar bear and tiger collections, and the animals’ natural habitat.

“It was important for us that the donations are a percentage of revenue and not bottom-line dependent as it will be some time before we start making profits and the at-risk animals need help today.”

“When I first started watching a lot of makeup tutorials, it was because I wanted to know what products were brown girl-friendly. That’s why Nicole and Christen were such dream collaborations because they’re some of the most OG beauty influencers out there who I was watching for such a long time,” says Sharma. She continues, “Both Nicole and Christen loved and believed in the story, and that’s what pushed them to sign on, especially as a new brand versus a lot of other more well-established brands.”

Guerriero has collaborated with established brands Anastasia Beverly Hills and OGX. Dominique partnered on a lip gloss with MAC and leads her own emerging cosmetics brand, Dominique Cosmetics, which is in Sephora. Shared Planet’s campaign with Guerriero and Dominique attracted the attention of other influencers, notably Shayla Mitchell, aka MakeupShayla, and Militza Yovanka, and they posted organic content about the brand.

Sharma inherited the entrepreneurial gene from her father Rahul, a wireless technology expert behind several software solutions, managed services and network assurance companies. As early as age 4, she emulated him by giving presentations complete with fake charts and graphs. Upon deciding two years ago that she was interested in establishing a makeup line, Sharma’s parents put her through a grilling in the vein of “Shark Tank.” Ultimately, she passed their test, and her father gave her an undisclosed amount of seed funding to bring Shared Planet to fruition. In the fall, Sharma is set to attend NYU, where she anticipates studying business and applying what she learns in the classroom or, perhaps, in Zoom sessions to build her brand.

Shared Planet founder Aashna Sharma
Shared Planet founder Aashna Sharma

No business course could predict a global pandemic or the effects it would have on the beauty industry. Makeup has been hit hard by the current crisis. According to The NPD Group, prestige makeup dipped 22% in the first quarter from the same period a year earlier. So far, Sharma says Shared Planet hasn’t experienced a sales drop as a result of the coronavirus. The brand’s sales goal is to reach a seven-figure sum this calendar year. It may have not slowed its sales, but Sharma acknowledges the outbreak has impacted the timeline for Shared Planet’s product releases. Shared Planet had planned summer and fall releases.

“Because we don’t have one specific lab that we go to or one specific packaging manufacturer, at least for our second launch, everything has been really delayed. Luckily, for our most upcoming launch, we were able to get ahead of the curve right before the cutoff of things, so production went pretty smoothly, but it definitely has taken a toll in terms of timeline,” says Sharma. She elaborates, “While not revealing what it’s inspired by, I can definitely say that the next release and the release after that are both going to be very colorful and maybe even a little tropical.”