Do I need a Business license to do this? I want to make it myself and sell it..
you need all SORTS of things to do this aside from just a license ... first of all we don t know what country you re in, so we don t know which laws apply to you, but.. if you re in the states, you will need to have all sorts of permits, safety measures in your laboratory , pay fees to the government, have it approved as safe for human consumption and all sorts of stuff.. If you re going to put something on a person s body, you need to pay a lot of money to have the products verified as safe to use. you can t just start mixing stuff up in your bathroom sink, throw it in bottles and put it on the shelf at the grocery store. I know that is a fact, but... i don t know where to begin. i think realistically you could probably get away with doing it for a little while, but you ll need to make enough money quickly to be able to afford to pay the stuff when they catch you. that s not the best way to do business. it s better to do the research first and take care of the things before they come to YOU. let s say you have all of that in place.... the next thing you need to do is set up a limited liability company, then learn the specific differences between that and a sole proprietorship. then you need to put those things into action so you have true limited liability -which helps you in case your business fails or if you get sued. honestly a corporation is probably the BEST way to go but it costs more than you ll be making at first so not worth it immediately. once you have the LLC, you need to set up a bank account.. you need an accountant to help you handle your money. you may say i m good with money but... unless you know what a form K does then you need an accountant. one that will help with your business taxes, figure out gains and losses, business expenses vs personal, etc etc etc etc.. as far as the product yourself, you ll need to figure out how to get the supplies as cheaply as possible and how to turn a profit on them. you will need an advertising campaign (several) in order to get the word out there for your products. you will need to pay people to make the products and put them in containers and get ready for sale.. all said and done, you re looking at spending i m going to guess 15k per month between hiring 2 minimum wage employees, paying yourself, having an office, paying taxes, and all of the other crap that you have to do.... there are about a hundred things i m not listing here that you will need to pay monthly. long story short, it may COST you $7 to make 1 piece of product..... it may cost you 10... how much can you sell it for at WHOLESALE? if you sell to a retailer, they may SELL that product for $10 which means you re taking a loss by selling it to them for 5.... you re losing 50% at that rate... what i m saying i guess is... if you want to do this the right way and actually make a viable business out of it, you re going to need a LOT of start up capital, and a LOT of knowledge... you can start small, like maybe with a few thousand dollars and work from home for a while, but eventually you ll need to spend money to make money... i m mostly worried about all the crap you ll have to go through to legally sell makeup to the public though. and like i said, i don t know where to start. there are a lot of other aspects to this that i haven t gotten into, but this is a lot of info to start with.. good luck
yes, you need to start a full company with all business licensing and more, and there are strict regulations with cosmetics. visit www.cpsc.gov on all the government regulations that are required for cosmetics, including ingredient limits, testing, certification and more. it is not easy, but it is possible.
