Need to Know: Contract Manufacturing

February 4, 2021 Emma Rees

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Maybe you just got your hands on the best custom formula or maybe you’ve already had a formula DIY’ed yourself and you want to use it for your beauty brand. The only problem is that you don’t know what the exact formula looks like outside of your kitchen. Combine that with not knowing how to expand your beauty brand and you’ve got a bit of a conundrum.

Have no fear, let me introduce you to contract manufacturing!

If you’ve heard of custom formulating, then you may already know about contract manufacturing. Contract Manufacturing is an add-on step to the custom formulating process. When you custom formulate with a beauty lab (like us), they’ll create your formula and give it back.

To have a beauty lab go through the process of making your formula (on a large scale) is called contract manufacturing and it’s important if you’re looking to jump into a professional side of things.

Let’s break it down even further.

Contract Manufacturing: What it Is

Contrary to popular belief, contract manufacturing is completely separate from custom formulating. If you want a formula for a specific product (i.e. lavender eyeshadow), then you go to a beauty lab for them to make a formula custom to you and what you want. After that, you can do whatever you want with that formula.

That’s where contract manufacturing comes into view. Once you’re the owner of the formula, you can compare different prices at different beauty labs to find the best price for you.

Contract Manufacturing: What it includes

The contract manufacturing process includes you giving the formula to a beauty lab for them to mass produce for your beauty brand. You have the formula, they make it. It can often includes contract filling as well (filling into the containers you send or purchase from the lab), but contract manufacturing typically only refers to the manufacturing of the bulk formulation.

Contract manufacturing: Who is it For?

Contract manufacturing is usually for two main reasons. As mentioned before, it’s a separate step from custom formulating. Once you receive a custom formula from a beauty lab, you have to have a way to mass-produce it safely, ethically, and beautifully for your beauty brand. The other person who needs contract manufacturing is the person looking to turn their DIY formula at home into a concrete formula to expand their brand.

Genie Supply & Contract Manufacturing Services

So now that you know contract manufacturing is just a beauty lab making a formula, let me tell you a secret about Genie Supply. If you’re a person making their products at home and looking to nail down the complete formula so you can move up in the cosmetics industry, then look no further! We’re definitely the beauty lab to help you with contract manufacturing.

Here’s how we can help in 3 easy steps:

Contact us. We’ll give you a form to fill out that will include specific information on how you make the formula at home.
- This information includes mixing instructions, percentage of ingredients, etc.
- Make sure your instructions are detailed. Something like an oil may be simple (i.e. mix the oils), but a cream can be super complicated from its different heat phases to different temperatures to different speed mixer heads.
- FYI: we measure percentage ingredients by weight.

2. Following your directions, we try to recreate your at-home masterpiece.

This process is super helpful if your formula has major discrepancies because the at-home recipe doesn’t match up with a formula in the lab. We can help you recreate it by figuring out the formulation.
FYI: We charge by the hour.

3. We show you a sample and you give us feedback on the product.

This process doesn’t mean that we do research and development into your product (that’s what custom formulation is for). Instead, we follow your instructions to a T and show you what we came up with.
We’ll ask questions like if we undershoot or overshoot the finished product.

You can also contract manufacture with us after you finish custom formulating! Read our “How Long Does it Take to Manufacture Your Cosmetic?” blog for more information on the manufacturing timeline.

Other contracting places

Looking for other places to contract manufacture? Here are a few to peruse:

Don’t hesitate to reach out!

Genie Supply offers high-quality services for you and your brand.