Ready to take the plunge and create your own skin care line?

This is an exciting time in your brand journey, and it’s easy to get carried away and rush into a contract. But in order to make your skin care business a success, you need to fully understand the different ways to create a skin care line and weigh up all options to find the right fit for you. 

That’s why we’ve created this simple guide breaking down the pros and cons of each three skin care line production methods! Plus we also discuss your options if you already have a formula ready to manufacture.

Finally, we touch on the next steps to create your skin care line once the manufacturing process is ready to go. 

The 3 Different Ways To Create A Skin Care Line 

The path you choose will depend on your current set of limitations, priorities, and your brand concept. It’s essential that you conduct proper market research, understand your financial limitations, and develop a business plan before you commit to any strategy. 

1. Prioritize Time Saving & Budgeting: Private label 

At the beginning stages of your skin care line, it’s common to work on a tight budget as you don’t have cash flow from any sales yet. Plus, it’s normal to be conscious of the manufacturing time frame. You want to get your brand up and running as soon as possible, but highly customized skin care production just doesn’t allow for a quick turnaround. 

If this rings true to you, it’s a good indication that private label manufacturing is the best way to create your skin care line. Private labeling involves partnering with a lab to use their pre-existing formula as your own.

It’s a super common manufacturing arraignment, with everything from groceries, to workout equipment, and of course cosmetics, available on a private label basis. All of the product formulas are developed in advance so the entire process is fast.

Private label formulas are typically available on a turnkey basis, however you can also buy just the product in unbranded tubs in bulk, if you choose to source your customized packaging elsewhere.  

Our private label production at Genie Supply spans just 6-8 weeks on average. Plus, we offer four different private label categories to suit a range of different brand concepts and budgets - diffusion, mass market, luxury, and super luxury. 

With over 40 private label skin care products in total to choose from, we have multiple options that will work well to create any skin care line. Clean beauty runs at the heart of our business and we formulate all of our private label products to clean standards. 

If you just want to order the skin care product itself, you can place a bulk order direct from the product sample pages on our site. Simply add the product to cart and check out. Learn more about our bulk offerings on pages 6 and 7 of our private label catalog.

Just because private label products aren’t unique, it doesn’t mean they have to be boring! The best labs have unusual private label products on offer that can make your mark on the skin care industry.

Genie Supply’s green-colored Berry Hydrating HA Serum is not your everyday skin care - combining the hydrating and antioxidant powers of cherry, blackberry, apricot, grape, cranberry, and rosehip oils.

2. Customization Is King: Custom Formulating 

If unique, never-seen-before formulas are the heart of your skin care branding plans, then custom formulating is the way to go. This option allows you to control every single ingredient and create a formula to your exact specifications - bringing your original skin care line ideas to life.  

You will need a little more patience, as getting the formula to work exactly to your specifications, and provide great results for future customers, takes time. Plus, it will require more wiggle room with your budget as brand-new formulas naturally involve more work to create compared to ready-formulated private label ranges. 

Depending on the complexity of the project, Genie Supply’s custom formulating process can range from 3 months to a year. We specialize in novel chemical research and formulation, with clean skin care also at the heart of our custom formulating process. 

Looking to create hybrid skin care products? Our lab is an expert at developing new-to-market concepts and product formats. 

3. The Best Of Both Worlds: Custom Product Creation 

Maybe the customization perks of custom formulating appeal to you, and you just can’t find the formulas you want on a private label basis? But your budget and time constraints just do not allow for a more expensive and time-consuming production process right now?

The middle-ground between private label and custom formulation - custom product creation - was designed specifically to create a skin care line for business owners like you. 

This process allows you to choose from Genie Supply’s catalog of hundreds of bases and customize your product from there. We know that managing finances is essential at the early stages of your business, and as such, we offer 2 different custom product creation packages to suit a range of budgets. The product development process only takes between 4-6 weeks at Genie Supply. 

Following that, we can create and assemble the skin care line in a 2-4 month time range. Curious about the base formulas that we have on offer? Schedule a call, and we’ll refund you at the end of the first call if we’re sure we don’t have an existing base that fits your needs.

What If You Already Have A Developed Formula?

If you have the legal rights to your own formula and are ready to create your skin care line, contract manufacturing is the next step in your brand’s journey. This is the final stage after custom formulating and testing, where your unique formula can finally come to life.

At Genie Supply, we can contract manufacture your formula if it was made in our own lab or even if it was created using a different manufacturer (as long as you own the full legal IP rights to the formula).

Learn more about the specifics of our contract manufacturing process over on our blog. 

Next Steps To Create Your Skin Care Line

Once you’ve set your manufacturing process in stone, it’s time to think about all the other aspects that need to come together to create your skin care line.

This includes your packaging and branding options, where you plan to sell your products, and how you will advertise your business to your target market in the future. A great manufacturing lab will help you along with this process. 

At Genie Supply, we provide optional customized packaging and filling with each of our production processes. We offer a range of jars, bottles with droppers, and airless bottles to create your skin care line. For more information on the packaging options for each private label product, refer to our catalog. 

As clean beauty and sustainability are at the core of our business, we have also created a 50% Post Consumer Recycled (PCR) range, made from recycled plastic.

If you want your brand name screen printed directly onto the product packaging, we will make this a reality for you. In addition to our bottle/jar packaging, we also offer customized product boxes to wow your potential customers. Learn more about our customized packaging process here.

In sum, the 3 different ways to create a skin care line involve: 

• Private labeling - available in bulk or turnkey manufacturing - save on time on cost

• Custom manufacturing - highly flexible customization that involves more time and greater budgeting requirements

• Custom product creation - the middle ground between these two options, where you apply customizations to an existing base formula

Contract manufacturing is the next step for customized formulas, and great manufacturing labs (like Genie Supply) will offer packaging customization services too — create your skin care line all in one place!

Ready to create your skin care line? If you are not sure which manufacturing method will work for your small business, just get in touch and we’d be happy to answer any of your questions. Email us: customerservice@geniesupply.com or call (812) 329-1105.