Alumna creates ‘cheeky’ new beauty brand

Since graduating from Tulane Law School in 2015, Nicole Swartz has balanced studying legal briefs with building her own brand of beauty products.

Dubbed the Sweet Cheeks Beauty Co., Swartz’s budding line of bathtime body scrubs and hydrating hair masks was created last summer while awaiting news of passing the Michigan bar exam.

“The law background has definitely been helpful in starting the company,” Swartz says. 
 
Swartz has been concocting her all-natural skin remedies since her childhood.
 
“I’ve been creating them since I was a little girl making a mess in my mom’s kitchen. I would experiment with different combinations, like strawberries and cream for facials, and even ended up putting avocado in my hair once,” she says.

“The products are still handmade, and I want to keep it that way. I found it hard to find products with all-natural ingredients, so I created products that I would want to use.”

The luxe line of Sweet Cheeks body scrubs includes ingredients like handpicked lavender, pink grapefruit zest, sweet almond oil and rose petals. Infused with recycled Starbucks coffee beans, the newly offered coffee body scrub collection also provides a mud bath-like experience in the shower.

Each PETA-certified cruelty-free item comes packaged in recycled materials.

“We consider ourselves 100 percent kind,” says Swartz.

With help from a longtime friend working as a publicist in New York, Swartz was invited to feature Sweet Cheeks products in celebrity gift bags during New York Fashion Week.

Hollywood Swag Bag, the company that delivers gift bags during major award shows like the Oscars, also recently acknowledged the products. Sweet Cheeks was reserved a spot in the “swag bags” delivered to celebrities, including host Ricky Gervais, prior to the 2016 Golden Globe Awards ceremony.

Now based in Los Angeles, Swartz’s company is looking toward national distribution.