How to organize your own cosmetics production

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New or small companies often outsource mass production of a product. If the recipe is too complex for outsourcing companies, some brands open their own production.

Natalia Korchagina, co-founder and head of development philippines telegram database of the natural cosmetics brand Somelove, tells us how to organize your own cosmetics production .

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Step One. Development
To develop a product you will need:

a department of chemical engineers to create the first version of the product;
equipped laboratory;
purchasing department, which will deal with the supply of the necessary ingredients.

At the first stage, the most important thing is not the equipment and ingredients, but the people. Experienced department heads are needed. They will select a team and give advice on organizing production.

For example, during our search for skin-safe and effective preservatives with a wide range of microbiological protection, we were advised by Dr. Barbara Olioso, a chemical engineer with 20 years of experience in natural cosmetics, a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Society of Cosmetic Scientists.

Dr. Barbara Olioso participated in the selection of preservatives and confirmed our lead technologist's hypothesis about the effectiveness of honeysuckle extracts and levulinic acid. It is possible to do without the help of an outside expert - rely only on the in-house team of chemical technologists, but for us, an outside perspective was useful.

We consulted a standardization specialist to implement GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) standards in production. In our case, this is the ISO 22716:2007 standard, developed on the basis of GMP for perfumes and cosmetics. It contains requirements and clear instructions for creating and maintaining infrastructure, quality control and regular staff training.

Product development usually takes between one and three years, and during this time, you need to start thinking about options for production.



Step two. Production
You can organize contract or in-house production. In the first case, there are two possible scenarios:

take on the development of the product yourself and outsource its mass production to an outsourcing company;
outsource both development and production.
Contract manufacturing. If you develop a product yourself and outsource production, provide contractors with process maps — step-by-step instructions for creating the product. After that, your only task is to wait until everything is ready, and then accept the resulting product.

If both development and production are outsourced: formulate the technical specifications, approve samples and pay for product registration. When everything is ready, all that remains is to buy the product from the manufacturer at a wholesale price.

It is convenient to start with contract manufacturing - this is a familiar and less expensive option for a new brand.

Our search for outsourcing companies failed. Contractors did not want to work with us because of the complex product recipes. They understood that they were in for painstaking work: one of our products has about 30 components - it must go through several stages of technological processing.

An additional challenge we faced was our desire to find a contract manufacturing facility certified to the Cosmos natural and organic cosmetics standard. Such manufacturing must meet many criteria. For example, natural and synthetic raw materials must be stored in separate warehouses.

There were practically no production facilities willing to undergo audit for certification according to Cosmos, so this idea had to be abandoned. It is difficult to obtain certification now due to the foreign policy situation, but we hope that in the future this will become possible for us.

We were looking for overseas production options, but the pandemic and sanctions made this impossible. And even without them, setting up production abroad seems problematic: it is difficult to control outsourcing, there may be delays in deliveries, and there is a greater risk of damage to the product during storage and transportation.

Own production. We decided to take a more difficult path and open our own production. At the same time, we did not refuse GMP consultations.

We started by opening a production department and hiring a manager. We were looking for an experienced person who could organize the work of the entire department: shift foremen, cooks, packers.

Then we opened an independent department — the quality control department (QCD). QCD checked production at all stages: upon receipt of raw materials, during and after cooking the product, during packaging and packing of goods. The department's specialists constantly monitored the cleanliness of the premises and production containers, humidity and temperature conditions.

When creating your own production, it is important that all departments work together: development, production, purchasing and quality control.