How To Choose Between Skin Care Formulators [Beginner-Friendly Guide]
Your skin care formulator will make or break your business.
Delayed, overpriced, subpar skin care won’t sell and can potentially ruin your brand’s reputation.
How do you avoid this selection headache? Genie Supply is here to make this stressful process easy for you!
Our simple guide below outlines the three most crucial criteria for your skin care lab checklist.
We explain the key supplier green and red flags, the difference between various manufacturing methods, and how to distinguish between excellent and subpar skin care formulas.
Skin Care Formulators Should Accommodate Your Brand’s Specific Goals
The truth is there’s no one-size-fits-all best skin care lab. Your brand’s unique requirements will determine the best supplier out of all of your available options. As such, to find the best skin care formulators for your individual needs, first, you must decide on your brand’s goals.
Think beyond the immediate future. For success over the long term, you need to formulate a realistic strategy for how your skin care brand can stay competitive and stand out in the market.
Just a handful of questions to keep in mind while choosing between skin care formulators include:
Why are you sourcing skin care? Are you looking for skincare on a bulk basis for treatments at your spa or clinic, or are you hoping to start your own skincare brand?
What is your brand’s unique selling point (USP) and which labs can produce products to match it?
Can you allocate the time and budget to customize your skincare from scratch with this supplier, or does the quick, budget-friendly uncustomized route make sense at the beginning stages of your brand? Learn more about the costs of the various skin care formulation methods here.
Does your business adhere to specific ethical standards? Check if each beauty lab tests on animals or uses certain harmful ingredients in their products that are against your code of ethics.
Where is this lab and its headquarters based? Is it within driving distance or a short plane journey away from your location? If the manufacturer is close by, you may have the opportunity to build a closer working relationship.
There’s a lot to keep in mind, and it can be overwhelming to anticipate all of your brand’s medium and longer-term goals before you’ve even sold your first cleanser or serum.
Start with the most important parts of the puzzle:
The type of skin care you hope to source
The manufacturing method(s) you want to use
Write a detailed business plan outlining your short, medium, and long-term goals for the future, including your estimated manufacturing budget and a realistic time frame to launch your skin care business. Shortlist all of the skin care formulators that can fulfill your business plan’s goals.
Green flags: If the skin care manufacturer has an extremely detailed website, and an active blog and/or socials, is transparent about ethical skincare, is clear about their manufacturing services, and how they help clients to achieve their goals. Above all, they should be contactable! You will be working alongside them, so their response time and quality is important.
Red flags: Limited information on their website, a need for clarity about their manufacturing methods, poor or vague information on estimated costs and lead times, unclear formulating standards, refusal to share pricing even after first contact and/or unsure how to price products for manufacturing during the formulating period.
Genie Supply’s website clearly and concisely answers all of the supplier-related questions mentioned above - and more! Our ethical commitment to cruelty-free, vegan, and clean skin care is apparent throughout our website. We also provide step-by-step outlines of all our manufacturing methods including lead times and costs.
If you want to learn more about how we help small brands move from home to the lab, we walk you through the entire process in our step-by-step guide.
A Supplier’s Manufacturing Methods Must Align With Your Brand
With your brand vision in place, it’s time to dive deeper into the product selection process and decide on your preferred manufacturing method.
Firstly, it’s important to note that some skin care manufacturers offer limited formulating options. Certain suppliers only provide private label products, while others only produce skin care from scratch. Disqualify skin care formulators if they lack experience and expertise with your brand’s preferred manufacturing method.
If you need clarity on the best manufacturing method for your new skin care brand, we recommend our quick and easy quiz.
There are four main manufacturing methods in total.
Bulk
If you require skin care for client treatments, buying in bulk is your best bet. This involves purchasing large quantities of preformulated skincare from a supplier in large unbranded drums.
At Genie Supply, we’ve made ordering in bulk as simple as possible:
Select your desired product and its quantity from our products page
Click add to cart
Check out using the button in the top right-hand corner (as you would on any other online shopping platform)
Private Label
If you have a limited time frame and a tight budget, private label manufacturing is ideal for skin care brands in the early stages of your business. Private labeling involves using a lab’s preformulated skin care as your own.
Look for skin care formulators with a large collection of private label products and detailed information about their ingredients, prices, and packaging options.
At Genie Supply, we offer over 60 private label skin care products to choose from! We provide in-depth information on all of the ingredients, packaging options, and prices in our catalog.
Custom Product Creation
On a budget but want your product formula to stand out? Shortlist skin care formulators that offer custom product creation. This process involves adding some limited customizations to a manufacturer’s base formula.
Genie Supply’s custom product creation service offers 100s of bases to choose from! Plus, we have two separate packages to suit different budgets.
Custom Formulating
Does your brand vision include original skin care products unlike anything else on the market? Custom formulating from scratch is the way to go.
This involves working with a lab to develop your formula starting from zero. Look for labs with extensive custom formulating experience. This method requires highly trained professional chemists, a developed R&D department, and the necessary manufacturing facilities to develop skin care from scratch.
With extensive custom formulating experience, Genie Supply specializes in new-to-market concepts, novel chemical research, hybrid product concepts, and clean skin care.
Green flags: Extensive experience with all of the manufacturing methods listed above, transparency around costs and timelines, and specificity about their exact processes for each method.
Red flags: Limited information about the methods on offer, a lack of proven experience and expertise with one or more of their services, vague details about their ingredients, and the formula quality.
Skin Care Formulators Should Prioritize Clean and Quality Ingredients
Quality Ingredients
Let’s take a look at the performance of an unnamed skin care brand that launched on the market just last year:
The website is amazing
The packaging is eye-catching
The marketing messaging appeals directly to the audience
Even so, the brand is struggling to get return customers.
Why? It all comes down to product quality.
The products you sell must produce noticeable skin care benefits for your customers or they won’t come back for more.
Thankfully, it’s easy to differentiate winning formulas from the duds if you know what to look for. It’s simple - quality ingredients.
As a business owner, it’s normal if your formulating knowledge does not match a professional chemist’s level! The best skin care formulators understand this natural knowledge gap and offer clear guidance on how their products actually work.
Narrow your list to the skin care formulators who provide full transparency about all private label ingredients on their website. Next, evaluate products based on the number of beneficial ingredients in each formula.
Some of the most effective skin care ingredients to look for include; retinol, vitamin C, hyaluronic acid, and glycolic acid.
At Genie Supply, we list the amazing science-backed benefits of our private label skin care right on each product page. We pride ourselves on our quality and formulate each product to deliver a multitude of skin care results for your customers.
Clean Ingredients
It’s not enough to create skincare that actually works, it’s also important to formulate with skin safety in mind.
Consumers are increasingly concerned about potentially harmful ingredients in skin care products and demand formulas that prioritize safety above all else. According to Fortune Business Insights, the market for vegan (and cruelty-free) skin care is also growing each year.
Ensure the skin care formulators on your shortlist avoid harmful ingredients and formulate to strict vegan standards.
At Genie Supply, we’re experts in clean and cruelty-free skincare. We carefully formulate our private label products without over 2,000+ potentially harmful ingredients and we commit to clean beauty throughout all of our manufacturing methods.
Plus, we can help your brand become clean beauty certified. We formulate our skin care to match and exceed the strict clean standards set by clean beauty retailers. Look for the Sephora, Whole Foods, or Credo badges on our product pages.
Learn more about Genie Supply’s clean beauty standards on our website.
Green flags: Full transparency about ingredients, a clear commitment to clean and vegan beauty, matches strict clean standards for multiple retailers.
Red flags: Zero information about ingredients, or formulas full of harmful additives, including most silicones, mica, petroleum, and drying alcohols.
In sum, the most important factors to consider when looking for skin care formulators are:
Can the skin care lab accommodate your brand’s specific goals?
Do their manufacturing methods align with your budget and customization preferences?
Does the skin care supplier use quality and clean ingredients?
Ready to start your skin care brand’s product creation journey? Genie Supply would love to partner with you! Get in touch through email: customerservice@geniesupply.com or call: (812) 329-1105.
