It’s easy enough to make your own body scrub, and this can be a cheap and fulfilling way of ensuring your skin is as smooth and glowing as possible. If you’re a dab hand at it, you may have thought about turning your hobby into a cash-generating business – read on to find out how to do just that.
1) Identify your best products
It’s not a great idea to sell everything you can possibly make – this can be rather expensive! Instead, just think about which of your scrubs is likely to sell the best among target market. For example, if your main selling point is going to be your use of natural ingredients, it makes sense to focus on products with the highest concentration of these.
2) Get pricing
Once you’ve completed step 1, make sure you know exactly how to produce the scrubs in question and where to buy your ingredients from for the lowest price. This, along with an estimate of how long it will take to churn out each scrub, will help you settle on a potential price point for each product. Don’t forget to include a mark-up if you intend to make a good profit!
3) Decide how to sell
Next, you will need to determine the appropriate sales outlet for your scrubs. You might decide to set up a stall at your local market, for example, or approach bigger retailers and ask them to stock your products. A popular route is to establish an online shop, which can be done pretty easily and at a surprisingly low cost.
4) Start marketing
Now it’s time to make your fantastic body scrubs known to the world. It’s likely you’re starting out on a bit of a tight budget, so turn to the internet for a cheap yet effective way of advertising your goods. Social media sites are brilliant for this sort of thing, as long you have the friends/contacts to help you spread the word! You can also use the local press (newspapers, magazines, radio, etc) if you want to target consumers in your area.
5) Watch sales grow…
…hopefully! All being well, you will eventually have a thriving business. If you find sales increase faster than expected, remember to expand accordingly. Don’t waste time filling containers by hand if you have lots of orders to deal with – consider investing in a bottle filling machine to help speed things up instead. Similarly, it could be worth spending more on your marketing efforts to both keep your happy customers and attract new ones.
General points to bear in mind:
• Make sure your body scrubs comply with the relevant legislation, especially when it comes to labelling and fair trading. If you sell your products over the web, you should also familiarise yourself with distance selling regulations.
• If you set up on your own, you will need to register as a sole trader and pay tax accordingly. Hire more people and your status will change – as will the tax you pay, so do your research as you go along.
• Don’t overreach yourself. Always thoroughly research the market before launching a new product. Fail in this regard and you could end up with some hefty bills to pay and not enough money to do just that.
Do you have any tips for people looking to launch their own body scrub business? Leave them in the comments below!
