Turning a formula into a product

Plenty of people can make a cream that works once. A product is a cream that works every time, in a package, with evidence behind it.

A formula is not a product

A formula is a list of percentages. A product is that formula plus a process, a package, a challenge test, stability data, a safety assessment, a label and a specification.

The gap between the two is where a hobby becomes a business, and it is mostly paperwork rather than chemistry.

What has to be pinned down

Components as percentages by weight, with the batch size separate. The process: phase temperatures, mixing time and method, cooling approach, and the addition sequence with a temperature against each line.

The specification: acceptable ranges for pH, viscosity, appearance and odor. The package, because it is part of the preservation system. And the supplier for anything where origin changes behavior.

Two people following the same ingredient list in a different order make two different products, which is why the sequence is part of the formula rather than a note about it.

The documentation that makes it real

Challenge test results on the final formula in the final package. Stability data in that package. A safety assessment. Batch records linking every unit made to the lots it came from.

That file is what a wholesale buyer asks for, what an insurer wants to see, and what you would need if a customer ever reported a reaction.

When it is actually a product

When somebody competent but unfamiliar could make it from your written process and you could not tell which batch was theirs, and when you could answer, for any unit in the market, what is in it and where it came from.

Until then you have a formula you happen to sell, which works until the first question you cannot answer.

References