Episode 2 of 5: A Primer On Developing A Clean Beauty Brand! – Working With A Cosmetic Chemist and Allied Professionals To Develop Your Products & Brand
Developing a cosmetic brand can involve a constellation of professionals who can help you bring your product to market. These include Cosmetic Chemist, Testing Labs for Preservative Challenge Testing & Safety Substantiation, Packaging Designers/Suppliers, Consumer Perception Testing, Claims Substantiation, Cosmetic Contract Manufacturers, Marketing Strategists, PR Firms and Digital Marketing Experts.
The constellation of allied professionals that you chose to help you build your brand is all a function of your budget and goals. It can be as simple as a Cosmetic Chemist and Contract Manufacturer or any combination of these professionals.
Let’s focus first on your Cosmetic Chemist.
It is most efficient if you provide your Cosmetic Chemist with your:
– Consumer Personas
– Competitive Benchmark Products and List Of Ingredients
– Target retail price points
– Specific ingredients that you want to include in your products.
Your Cosmetic Chemist will distill this information into a proposed formula for your products, probably also including some suggestions on additional functional ingredients to consider.
Once you are in agreement with your Cosmetic Chemist on your Product Form/Function and List Of Ingredients, your Cosmetic Chemist can cost-out the ingredients in your formula and give you an rough estimate on the unit cost for product manufacture & fill.
S(h)e can also note ingredients that have relatively high Minimum Order Quantities so you have an estimate of your total capital outlay required to purchase ingredients for your first production run. You won’t know the actual cost of a manufactured unit until you select your packaging and engage a Contract Manufacturer. But, this will give you some indication of whether or not your manufactured cost per unit is in line with your target retail sales price. Based on this information, your starting formula can be modified to achieve cost alignment.
The next step is making and testing prototypes of your starting formula. This will generally involve iterations of your starting formula to achieve the product sensorials and performance you desire. My favorite mantra is “Every formula is perfect on paper … until you try to make it.”
While your product development and testing is ongoing, you will be busy selecting packaging, developing your logo, website, product labels and working on your go-to-market strategy.
In Episode 3 we’ll cover Your Business Model