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Start or expand a Business making and selling high quality Natural Skin, Hair and Body Care products
We are very pleased to offer you this opportunity to start your own successful business, making and selling natural cosmetics and toiletries. Selling the professional, natural skin, hair and body care products that you have made can be very rewarding, fun and creative as many of my course participants and customers can attest to! Having taught people to make their own cosmetics and beauty products for over 10 years, we know you’ll just love making these products.
You may be starting from scratch or expanding your business or you may be a hobbyist or therapist who previously sold only to family and friends or therapy clients but now you want to sell to the public.
Selling your products – is there a market?
As consumers become aware of health and environmental issues, a growing number of them are interested in buying natural, nature-friendly and preferably organic personal care products. Sales of these products have rocketed since the late 1990s, and continue to surge. There is an increasing trend for even over-the-counter, big brand beauty cosmetics and beauty products to be organic and natural. In 2009, organic certified- cosmetic products were worth an approximate $7bn globally (Source: cosmeticsdesign.com). Whilst the majority of the market is dominated by multinational cosmetic corporations, more and more people enjoy supporting cottage industries and small, local businesses and buying products that are ethical, eco-friendly and economical.
Where do I start?
If you would like to start up/expand a business making and selling your own products to the public, here are some recommendations and pointers:
- If you haven’t already done so, we recommended that you attend Aromantic’s Courses in order to get a good basic grounding in how to make your own products the Aromantic way.
- If you cannot attend our Courses, you could also purchase The Aromantic Guide to Making your Own Natural Skin, Hair and Body Care Products as this contains a lot of recipes and other information to get you started. You can buy this book as a whole, in printed form or you can buy chapters of it in the form of eBooks.
- We also have other books and recipe brochures. Click here< to browse our Publications section.
- A lot of customers ask us if they can use our recipes to make products to sell to the public. The answer is that you may freely use Aromantic recipes (that you’ve either bought from us or taken out of our Newsletters and web articles) to make products to sell to the public. You don’t need to get any further permission from us.
- If you feel that your need more in-depth help to create your own range of products, then contact us about our one-to-one consultancy services, usually provided in either London or Scotland or via Skype. During the consultancy we can create a range of recipes for your own brand of products. We sometimes also make products on the consultancy day, depending on your needs. Any recipes we create for you will of course remain confidential and we are happy to sign a confidentiality agreement if you wish. Note: A lot of customers, but not all, enquiring about booking a consultancy would benefit just as much from attending our courses, which are a lot less expensive. If you’re not sure please give us a ring or e-mail.
- Once you’ve attended a book or recipebrochure or even seen a recipe on the website that you’d like to make, then you can order the ingredients you need to make the products. If you’re a first-time customer, click here for information on how to place your first order. If you’re having trouble placing your order online, click here.
- We run a legal requirements course to help you comply with EU requirements for selling natural cosmetics to the public. Course attendees receive a CD containing all the necessary paperwork that you can personalise for your own business as well as a file with handouts that will get your started with your production logbook system. See our Getting Started Resources page.
- We can also recommend companies that can supply you with insurance and contact details of laboratories who can safety-test your products for you before they go on sale. See our Getting Started Resources page.
- The rest, of course, is up to you but we are here to continue supporting you with our twice-yearly Newsletters, new products and knowledge. We are not simply a supplier of raw materials as we equally value the importance of empowering our customers with knowledge. If you ever feel stuck, you can contact us for help.
Points to remember when selling your products to the public
Legal issues – selling to the public
Before selling your products to the public, there are a few different areas that need addressing before you are able to sell your products legally. There are some important starter points below. We also run a 1-day course on Legal Requirements, which is run by Roberto Ciaff. See Getting Started Resources.
If you’re a qualified therapist prescribing products for your clients, or you only want to sell to your family and friends, then it is much simpler. Making your products for the public
- There are certain levels of health and hygiene standards that you need to meet.
- When you make your products, you need to keep records in a logbook or spreadsheet, where you keep note of the recipe, who made the product, date and time of making, batch number and you need to record any incidents e.g. you had a distraction such as a phone call and you accidently put in a little bit more of a raw material than you should have done. If you are checked out by any authorities in the future or have any customer complaints, you can easily go back to your records and see if there were any irregularities. The best would be to keep a small sample of each product that you’ve made for the duration of its shelf life.It is also important that you keep copies of material safety data sheets (MSDS) on every raw material that can be found on your premises. Your suppliers have to provide you with these data sheets by law, so simply request them. It’s easiest to receive them on a compact disc. Aromantic will provide you with a CD containing MSDS for all of our raw materials.
- To comply with EU Cosmetics Directive 76/768/EEC(4) all cosmetic products on sale to the public in the EU must have a safety assessment or certificate provided by a qualified safety assessor. These have to be included in the Product Information File for that product, along with other information such as the manufacturing process and any data on undesirable effects. So, put simply, you need to send a recipe to a cosmetic chemist or laboratory who will undertake a safety testing service for small scale producers. You will only need to do this once for a product/range of products and then you won’t need to do anymore testing for that specific product or range before selling it to the public. This is much less expensive than you may think, See Resources below for the contact details for laboratory services that offer special rates if you’re an Aromantic customer. These laboratories consider Aromantic’s raw materials/ingredients as much safer than conventional cosmetics ingredients as we use many ingredients that are from the food industry and/or natural, or as natural as is possible.
It is important to say that these labelling and trading guidelines are only necessary if you sell to the public but setting up a system of good practice is an excellent habit to get into even if you’re ‘just’ making for therapy clients.
Product labels
- If you are working within the European Union (EU), you need to state the INCI* name on the label all of the ingredients in your products in decreasing order of volume i.e. the ingredient that takes up a greater percentage of your product is listed first. *[International Nomenclature of Cosmetic Ingredients, abbreviated INCI, is a system of names for waxes, oils, pigments, chemicals, and other ingredients of soaps, cosmetics, and the like, based on scientific names and other Latin and English words.] Source: Wikipedia
• On the product label, you don’t need to declare each essential oil in your product. You can instead use the word ‘perfume’, ‘aroma’ or ‘fragrance’ on the label. However, to comply with EU law, you need to identify allergens or so-called ‘sensitisers’ contained within the essential and fragrance oils in your products. See our Getting Started Resources for information on our Sensitiser Labelling Software. Aromantic has made it very easy for you by designing a simple Excel-based software programme into which you type in the number of drops or percentage of essential oils/absolutes/perfume concentrates you have put in your products and the programme will workout which of the essential oil constituents needs to be declared on your label in order to comply with EU regulations.
• Ideally you need to have your full address on the product label but if you’re short of space, you could get away with your telephone number, website and e-mail addresses.
• You need to include the volume or weight of product being sold and it’s best to use millliltres so that you won’t have to purchase an approved scale to weigh your products.
• The label also needs to state a best before date and a batch number. The batch number should enable you to trace that batch to your and your suppliers’ records. The batch number can be the date that you made the product e.g. if you made a product 10 February 2010, then the batch number could be 10022010. If you made different batches of products that same day you could add a number at the end e.g. 10022010-01.
Marketing and advertising your product
• It’s very important to market and advertise your product and this is often an overlooked area by smaller companies. The marketing and advertising you undertake should be appropriate to the size and nature of your business. In the United Kingdom, there is an extensive network of local enterprise companies who can give you advice, help draw up a business plan and may even help you with small business grants. There is also a lot of information available on the web about business start up, market research, marketing, business plans and advertising.
Do I need any special equipment to make Aromantic’s products?
It’s amazing how many times we are asked what kind of equipment is required to produce products using Aromantic’s recipes. The answer is that you don’t need any special equipment at all as Aromantic’s recipes are designed for standard kitchen equipment that you are already likely to have at home. We will say though that if you’re starting a business, then we would recommend you use equipment especially dedicated to making your products. Aromantic does sell equipment that makes it easier for you to make accurate recipes and larger quantities. Click Equipment for the equipment we stock. Click here for a free PDF document of the basic equipment you may need.
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