How To Start Your Own Makeup Line

The best time to acquire how to start a makeup line was yesterday. The next best time is now. That's because the unabridged dazzler and personal intendance manufacture is booming. Even if all you did was ride that wave, you'd see more progress than well-nigh entrepreneurs.

With that said, you still need a smart business plan.

Still, different most articles covering this topic, I'm not going to talk about all of the bureaucratic, time wasting steps like trademarking your brand proper name or getting a bank account for your new cosmetic line.

You tin worry about that later after you've made coin.

Instead, I'm going to give you an actionable, stride-by-step checklist yous can follow to starting time your makeup line and have it launched in the adjacent few months. Information technology doesn't matter whether you desire to sell lipstick, moisturizer, foundation, concealer, or annihilation else dazzler related.

This checklist will help.

But kickoff…

How Much Does It Cost To Start A Makeup Line?

The goal for this report is to aid you launch a makeup line with no money. Nonetheless, it'south important to know the economic science backside the makeup concern anyhow as it will dictate all of your decisions moving forward.

And so to start, the short answer is "it depends".

The long reply is that there are tons of things that can directly and wildly impact the bodily cost to produce, market, and send a makeup production.

In general though, it's rubber to say you can await to invest between $5,000-$25,000.

The biggest factors that impact startup costs include…

Number of SKUs
Product type
Customization
Minimums
Manufacturers
Paid Ads
Packaging

In all cases though, the best fashion to offset is to minimize the amount you demand to outsource. This means starting with 1 production instead of v, talking to tons of manufacturers to detect the right 1 for your budget, minimizing your packaging needs whenever possible, so on and so forth.

But there is a "free" way.

Information technology's the aforementioned fashion that Kylie Cosmetics and Glossier started.

No, it's non literally "costless". There is no going effectually paying manufacturers. However, the key is to make sure that money comes from other sources of funding rather than your ain savings and all while making sure you don't allow go fifty-fifty 1% of equity to some VC.

And so let's talk well-nigh that.

Starting a cosmetic line checklist coming in 3… 2… 1…

Step #1: Build A Small-scale, Loyal Audience

Most guides like this volition tell you to kickoff thinking about your make or products. Even so, if y'all desire to start a makeup line with no money, you have to play a new game with completely different rules. And the starting time rule to this new game is to work on the marketing before you work on the product.

You do this by using the content and commerce business model.

In other words, instead of trying to build your own Drunkard Elephant or ColourPop, you demand to build your own Vogue magazine first and and then later launch your Drunk Elephant. This can come up in the form of a blog, Instagram, newsletter, TikTok, Youtube, Facebook group, or anything else.

In this media holding, you want to talk well-nigh makeup.

For example, you want to cover makeup tips, product recommendations, interviews with beauty experts, and more than. In addition, you also want to certificate the backside-the-scenes of you starting your makeup line. Most 80% content and 20% behind-the-scenes is a good ratio to maximize audition growth. Later, you can flip that around when y'all're getting set to launch.

This audience is the primal to making sales without paying for ads.

Think of how Kylie Jenner launched Kylie Cosmetics.

She didn't outset with her cosmetic line and so later became famous to sell more lipstick. She outset became famous and then later launched Kylie Cosmetics to her audience. Of form, you don't take to be near equally large every bit she was when she launched.

So how large of an audience do you need earlier launching?

This is highly dependent on the adjacent step nosotros're going to cover, but assuming y'all're only starting with one SKU and have reasonable minimums, hither'southward what I would recommend…

500 email subscribers on a "hot list" waiting for you to launch.

Preferably, you're building that email listing on Klaviyo instead of Mailchimp.

At present, there are many situations in which you'll need more than subscribers before launching. For example, if your manufacturer's minimum is 5,000 units, you're going to need a much bigger list because there's no way yous're making 5,000 sales from 500 people.

Then delight plan accordingly.

With that said, the strategy doesn't change.

Build an audience of people highly interested in your topic by using free methods like Youtube and TikTok. Then ask your audition to subscribe to a pre-launch listing so they tin be the first to be notified when y'all launch. It's the slow route, only information technology's gratuitous. Later, y'all can worry about running Facebook ads yourself or hiring an advertising agency to do it for you.

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Step #2: Brainstorm Your Cosmetic Line

While you're working on building your audition, you can outset thinking about the bodily makeup products you're going to be selling, what makes them unlike, and the brand that ties them all together.

The key here isn't to just think of what to sell. Information technology's to create a production line that can help abound your business from 0 to $1MM in the next 12-xviii months. Luckily, doing then is non nearly every bit difficult as it sounds.

The reason?

Your competitors have all the information yous need.

They've already spent millions trying to figure out what sells, so use information technology!

Here'due south how…

Offset, make a list of your top 10 direct competitors. These competitors should be the 10 brands you most want to exist like in terms of their branding and specific production lines. For the nearly part, that's going to mean popular directly-to-consumer brands instead of billion dollar legacy brands similar Mac.

From at that place, you want to analyze their best sellers.

This means literally using the "rank by all-time seller" category on these websites. If they do not have one, then y'all can just add together this extension to the URL if they're using Shopify to host their stores…

"collections/all?sort_by=best-selling"

Once yous pull up their best sellers list, you want to find the similarities.

What product types sell best?
What features and benefits do they use?
How much does each product type cost on average?
How much does shipping price?

From there, you want to make your ain theoretical best sellers list.

Based on everything you are seeing from your summit 10 competitors, what are the top 3-5 products you could sell and feel confident will go your three-v best sellers two-3 years from at present?

One time you're done, pat yourself on the dorsum.

You lot now have a consummate makeup line with a very high chance of performing well.

Stride #3: Pre-Sell Your Hero Product

By the time you're set for this step, yous'll have a strong list of makeup products to sell and an audition ready to buy them. At present, it's time to actually make some money.

Remember, the goal is to start your makeup line with no money.

The simply manner to exercise this is to use your client's money instead of your own. And the only way to do that is to pre-sell your production before it's bachelor and and so immediately reinvest information technology into producing the product.

This is exactly what Kickstarter is for, merely they require prototypes before launching.

Since nosotros have none, you'll want to use Shopify and a pre-selling app.

Before you start promoting left and right though, you demand to pick a hero product. This product is the one you want your brand to be known for and the one that is most likely to sell well at a profit.

So go back to your list of all-time sellers and pick i based on that criteria.

Once you make your choice, you want to achieve out to different manufacturers and inquire for costs, minimums, samples, and any other questions you may accept. The goal here is to figure out if this hero product is doable with your electric current audition and to boom down all of the features and benefits to your product.

One time yous have everything yous demand, brand your Shopify shop.

You want to prepare information technology up EXACTLY like if the product already existed. This means using stock images to show people how life with your product would look like, writing all of the sales copy, having an official price, have a graphic designer mockup your product, and more.

Just make sure you conspicuously land y'all are pre-selling the product.

And to further make sure you lot don't go screwed, brand sure the Shopify app y'all're using to pre-sell your product has a meter feature. This fashion, you tin show you need to make a certain amount of sales before y'all tin start production.

Once y'all reach that goal, you can officially start your makeup line and grow from there, such equally appearing on Shark Tank, starting a popular up shop, or using Amazon to get more sales.

How To Find Makeup Manufacturers

A plan on starting your own makeup line wouldn't be complete without a section on how to actually observe makeup manufacturers. This is especially true because finding the correct makeup manufacturer can make or break your ability to starting time your business concern.

The skillful news is that the procedure is not complicated.

The bad news is that the process takes a long fourth dimension and can be frustrating.

And then with that said, there are substantially 2 means to find a manufacturer.

The first is with Google. But start googling keywords like "individual label makeup" and "makeup manufacturer". So open every manufacturer on a split tab and start contacting every unmarried 1 of them through phone or email with your questions.

The 2d is through networking. Basically, you but want to enquire anyone who you recall may accept an idea of who to talk to. This can be anywhere from FB groups with other people starting their ain ecommerce businesses all the fashion to request some manufacturers for referrals to others if yous two aren't a good fit for each other.

From here, you desire to pick the best partner for you.

The all-time partner is the ane who'due south going to let you start small and fast with the product ideas on your best sellers list. In add-on, you also want to be sure that they can handle some scale and so that if you do succeed, yous tin can piece of work with them for years to come up.

Again, this is not a quick process.

Most of the time, y'all're going to hit a lot of walls. Reasons for this include sales reps not replying to your messages, manufacturers replying dorsum with insane costs, no one can make the unique feature you want your product to take, and more.

For some people, this process can take a few weeks. For others, months.

But don't stop.

Remember, it costs you cipher to talk to them. So go on going. There is no clandestine hack around this. Information technology's just the manner things are, so encompass it equally a barrier to entry that will proceed low level competitors from ever starting their businesses and stealing sales from you.