Your first year, month by month
Updated
An order of operations, because the expensive mistakes in this business are all sequencing.
Weeks one to four
Decide cosmetic or drug, in writing, before anything else.
Buy small quantities of two waxes, two butters and three oils, and a hundred tubes.
Make five small batches at different ratios. Pour them, label them by number, and put them away.
Wait two weeks and look at them again. That wait is the part people skip and it is where graining appears.
Months two and three
Pick a formula, remake it three times, and confirm it reproduces.
Now test it properly: a week in a warm place, a week in a cold one, a week in a pocket.
Settle the container and the size. Work out what the label has to carry and check it fits on that tube before ordering either.
Order a small quantity of labels, accepting a poor unit price.
Months four to six
First production runs and first sales, somewhere with direct feedback: a market, a fair, a few local shops.
Three flavors at most. You are finding out which one sells, and a range of nine tells you nothing while costing nine times the packaging.
Keep every batch record and a reference set from every run.
The rest of the year
Drop the flavor that does not sell. Commit to volume on packaging only now, when you know what you are committing to.
Build the summer formula before summer rather than during it.
And approach wholesale only once you can make the same tube twice, because the first wholesale reorder is where inconsistency becomes visible.