What to buy before you start
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Spice has one of the lowest equipment barriers in food, and the temptation is to spend the saving on the wrong things.
The short list
A scale that reads to a tenth of a gram, because you fill to weight and you build formulas as percentages. This is the one piece that changes the product.
A hygrometer for the packing room, because 55 to 60 percent relative humidity is the line where powder starts to bridge together, and you cannot manage what you do not measure.
A grinder you can run in short bursts and clean properly. Sealed storage for bulk. Screens for sifting. Funnels, brushes, and a light-colored work surface so you can see what is in the material.
Everything on that list is inexpensive, and together it is most of what a small operation needs.
What you do not need yet
A filler. Hand filling to weight is slow and accurate, and accuracy is the thing that matters.
An induction sealer, until you are selling into cupboards rather than face to face. A large mixer, until a batch outgrows what you can tumble. A label printer, until your volumes make outsourcing more expensive than a machine and its consumables, which takes longer than people expect.
Where to spend more
The scale and the grinder. A scale that drifts undermines every formula you write, and a grinder that heats or grinds unevenly costs you volatile oil on every batch and creates the wide particle distribution that makes blends segregate later.
Uniformity is the grinder specification that matters, not fineness.
A first order that works
Three or four spices you can sell confidently, bought whole where possible, in quantities you will move in two months. One jar size, one closure, one label layout. A dozen cases of jars rather than a pallet.
The mistake is not underbuying equipment. It is buying a range of thirty spices before knowing which four people actually want from you, and then storing the other twenty-six until they fade.