A to Z of a Cosmetic Product Launch with Loren West

Protect your brand, product or invention from the hazards of consumer product launching and go from idea to product to big brand with guidance from retail product design and development experts Tracy and Tom Hazard. Get the insider secrets to put the right things in the right order with the right resources so you can out design, outsource and out profit your way to retail success.

Hey there product launchers. Got another great office hours for you. This one's with Lauren west and if you remember, Lauren is our product development expert in all things consumer packaged goods that are a little bit more complex, anything that requires compliance, FDA approval, all of those things. Lauren is your person to talk about the process flow and project management and process management and anything related to those systems and tools. So let's hear it from Lauren.

Hi everybody, this is Lauren West. I'm with CPG Beauty and Beyond and I have expertise in project management, product development and delivery for a variety of different companies within the product based consumer product industry. And today we're just going to talk a little bit about beauty launch, basically the five keys to achieve better results. And what I'm going to do, I'm going to pop up my screen here shortly so you can see the presentation and we'll just run through this and then I know nobody's live today, but I'll shoot some questions at the end that are pretty common that I get from time to time. And so we'll go through the different aspects of a launch overview for the beauty business primarily. But this can apply to a lot of other types of product based companies. So initially most companies they're going to start off with coming up with a new innovative product idea or it could be maybe a product extension or reformulation of a product that they already produced currently. And usually that will coincide, say from an executive staff that's bringing in a new idea or their PD department product development and that'll coincide with usually their marketing and sales departments that may bring back some additional data, say from a field, whether it's merchants that they work with primarily or internally, just from consumers that also provide feedback based on their current product or what they might like to see next. So usually they'll kick off with a product idea being brought to a PD department and utilize the marketing and sales departments to come up with some initial strategy of how they might potentially sell that product and where they would sell that and how that will connect with their current consumer base or will that or they'll be reaching out to a new consumer target and next moving in with proper planning essentially which really ties in Project management and operations from a very larger level of what kind of options do you have to launch this within a certain specified time frame? Most merchants may come back with a target of when they're looking to launch a particular type of product in store. And so usually brands will go back and reset of what's possible for them. Or they'll also come to various different merchants already with some planned launches in mind and see what works. So as the product idea progresses from being introduced, it also concurrently a little bit kind of works within PD more with the development from a formula standpoint as well as a packaging standpoint. And that could be handled both internally and externally with a variety of vendors that a brand may already be working with. Or they may have a lot of those resources in house internally. And once the whole product is essentially planned out and approved, then it usually goes through the phase of execution. So basically implementing that plan that initially was designed and that'll include a variety of different things from operations to shipping. So we'll kind of walk through different stages of this. So starting off with the product idea, most companies will kick off with whatever product they're creating. What are going to be the key benefits, a key focus, and specifically with ingredients as well. Within a lot of cosmetics, that's usually a key highlight. So say one to three key ingredients that might be providing key benefit, that might be tackling, say, redness, for example, or adding additional hydration or some new ingredient that say, a lot of companies are not using. Then usually that'll be played up, say from a marketing strategy or story with it. And usually a PD department will want to really get those clear benefits first, so they can then go through the process of further development. Whether that's internally and they have their own labs to be able to do that, or they're working with external vendors. Most often than not, they're really looking to create a clear product brief. I can post up a very, very basic version onto the directory for people to access, but basically anything will list out something that will help them work with different labs, having a clear picture of quantities and focused benefits of a product, as well as providing competitive benchmarks. So usually a PD department will really rely heavily on what exactly does marketing and sales want us to create for them. Or even from an executive standpoint, say they've gone to, say, a recent beauty trade show and they picked up some different products and like the touch, feel and look of them and wondering how they might incorporate that into their own brand, they can easily come back and provide some different options. Whether it's different cleansers or moisturizers, lotions, what have you, and be able to provide a reference point instead of having completely no reference, it's better to provide as much references as possible to your PD team to then be able to do the development of it. And this also can be done from a product ideation basis. Say if you would like to start a beauty company yourself or make your own beauty product and you were just an entrepreneur individual and you don't have a whole team, there's a lot of companies out there that work as contract manufacturers and will do private labeling for a variety of companies and individuals, should that be the direction you want to go. And so they'll provide a lot of this for you, these different stages, and handle all that as if you had your own beauty company at your disposal. So that's also another avenue to go. So when you're approaching a cosmetic manufacturer, it's also really good if you can provide some samples of products that you like already and what you like about them. So whether it's the form, say cleanser and it foams up a certain way, or working with a particular, a variety of different products, it's good to present something to them as a reference point. And from a company standpoint, from a brand standpoint, a lot of companies will take their new product ideas and really divide them into a few different categories. Whether it's a completely new product idea they want to create, it's innovative to them or innovative just into the industry itself, or it can be easily a product extension from a current line and they want to offer more to their consumers within that same family. Whether it's say a treatment or a cleansing line, or it could be reformulation. So really tackling any consumer issues that might come up or things that need to be tweaked a little bit related either to formula or packaging. So they usually can hit those few different areas. And so next, once we transition to the product idea being introduced, usually the marketing and sales department will really work on the whole strategy around the product piece. So this is really key and very helpful for a PD department to really better understand how is this product going to be sold. And that in turn will help the next step when they really do the development. Some of this happens very concurrently at companies, so it's a little bit of a flow and things are intertwined. But usually, you know, marketing and sales departments, they'll target on, they'll consider the demographic of who they're selling to, what their specific pain points are, and what they're trying to solve from maybe a particular skin issue or something that is very trendy for ingredient, and that they want to jump on the bandwagon with that and participate in the marketplace that way. And look at just from whatever product they're creating, what sales channels will they be selling through, what will be through their normal retailers? Or do they want to approach a new particular retailer to focus on and look at the market competition? What other companies are currently selling this cosmetic or skincare product that's very closely to them. So they can really try to then develop their pricing strategy and their suggested retail price for it, and that the suggested retail price that's given to a PD department or even working with a cosmetic manufacturer doing that initial research is really key. Just to know where your brand or your particular product, if you're just starting out, where that's going to land. And that will also help signify what kind of formula you can go with and what kind of packaging options you'll have available to figure out what price point you're trying to target at and knowing how much profit you'll have. And something else. Another thing that brands sometimes consider as well is really looking at continuity options. And does this particular product may it fit into a kit that they may currently do? Or a regimen? Some companies like to structure their products and support specific regimen, so a day and night putting together a treatment regimen depending upon what they're trying to focus on. So from a sales standpoint, really looking at how you can sell that product in multiple different ways. The other thing they really look at too is what kind of existing or new partnerships could they create for themselves to really help leverage all the different network and opportunities. So some companies will start to initially look at just on Instagram and other options, what kind of influencers are they currently connected with or from? Some companies that want to really project themselves giving back socially, what nonprofits can they partner with or show that they have sustainability? And that comes a little later in the packaging piece, but essentially having a clear picture of who exactly are they targeting for this product and where is it going to be sold. That will also really help basically formulate and dictate a lot more of the formula and packaging decisions that come into play with the development piece of it. So sometimes this information is included as much as possible with known details in the product brief up front, or definitely shared a little bit later on. Once it gets kicked off into motion, the PD receives what kind of product is going to be developed. So moving on to the planning piece, which to me definitely coincides with the fourth piece of development is really coming into the piece where I hold more expertise in with the project planning, really looking at all the different stages of what needs to be done to be able to create a launch. So essentially looking at all these front end steps from product development, marketing, all these aspects and then all the product piece of it, from the formula and packaging development to execution. So a lot of times there's an initial project plan roughly put out for a launch. And usually a lot of beauty companies will put timing seasonally. So usually that even coincides a lot with the whole fashion industry. So looking at spring, summer and fall, winter and looking at holiday, sometimes you'll notice a lot of beauty companies, either independently or those that sell primarily at Sephora and a few other retailers as well, they'll come out with very seasonal looking kits based on that reason. So some target factors to keep in mind is as you're developing a new product, a lot of times your PD department or say if you're working with an outside consultant such as myself, you're really looking at vendor lead times and what additional things they need to get your product done. So with PPS approvals, it stands for pre production sample approvals, that ties into creative development and having time to really approve colors that are used on primary packaging, such as bottles, caps, jars, anything that's actual physical product with secondary packaging, cartons and insert shippers, all of that that has any color that will also come into play, but usually later on some aspects when building out products, some companies will need to do tooling as well. So say if you're doing a custom bottle shape, all of that that's not necessarily stock in a standard size. Most companies can work with you to create something just for your particular product, but it's always a good thing to keep in mind that that adds more cost, more time involved. It does make it more unique to you. So it's something to consider. And usually tooling can really range at a variety of companies. I would say most often than not you're really looking at five to seven months additional time added on from a development standpoint before you actually order components to then be mass produced. And usually within that five to seven month range that will include a couple sample versions. And it's always good to really look at all of the sizes and make sure internally as a company you have everything signed off and approved from a technical drawing standpoint. I ran into a case with a client once where they had approved everything but something was off a little bit on a neck size, which is the very, very top of the jar. And they went to put it on the line in production and it did not fit. So they had a huge problem on their hands. They got a shipment in from Mexico of huge assortment of bottles and they could actually not use them. They had to get everything redone. So it's always good to double check everything that you're approving and to really work with your operations team. And that also comes primarily if you're a brand and working independently internally. But if you're working like with a CM of really just having all those little pieces checked off, making sure that you have what you need done, that's something you can rely on your CM to provide those type of checklists to make sure all those approvals are done. But it's something to keep in mind if you're working with someone that that's needed. And also just with timing of looking at manufacturing and shipping. So a lot of fillers, they really range on how much volume they're going to be producing for you. So I would say on the short end, from a planning perspective, you're really looking at two months, about eight weeks to produce most products. But you could easily, depending upon the volume that you're requesting and if there's anything custom involved, some additional lines and they might potentially send out to an additional vendor as well. You could be looking anywhere between eight to 16 weeks to really produce most products and shipping ranges itself as well, depending upon what manufacturer you're shipping to. So for either if you're partnering and working with Sephora or working with QVC or additional retailers as well, that whole piece will range on say anywhere between nine weeks and less. So usually I'd say two months is a good rule of thumb to plan for shipping cost once your product is ready to be shipped, to actually be in store and then various packaging options. I bring this up because a lot of companies tend to forget about this and they'll tend to talk about, hey, we want to look at all these different specialty packaging options, or they want to do some additional hot stamping or direct printing, all these different aspects, or spraying on their components if they have a clear bottle. And all these additional steps take time and cost different amounts of money. So from a launch standpoint, it's really good if you can have either your consultant or your internal project manager really try to look at all the different options and map those out so that as an executive team or just as an inventor, that you're really Looking at, here's the timing for all these options. So one particular path may take three months longer. Or say if you're doing a custom bottle, that might add a whole other five to seven months on top of your whole launch over your whole plan overall. So really taking into account looking at all the options can make an informed decision when you're working with a different merchants to know if you can hit what their targets are when they need product in store. So transitioning from planning and this really coincides with the product development stage. From a product development standpoint, once you're a PD department or say if a cm, you're working independently with a contract manufacturer, they have a variety of those around the country, they're taking that product brief that you're giving to them and preparing rounds of samples to meet usually what marketing or sales is requesting. And sometimes companies will do preliminary focus group research that I really recommend to do just because you never know how people might react to things. And sometimes it's good to get a little bit of a blind consumer read on things before you march down the path and approve what product. Some companies really internally should really build this out more because usually a lot of brands are racing behind the eight ball to get this done. But I would say easily around a good four to six months if you can plan to provide your PD team enough time. And with my history of working with different CNs, I would say definitely the more time the better. Ideally, I would say in the beauty industry, everyone's rushing behind the eight ball and everything's kind of needed tomorrow. But ideally, if you can start to plan with more time in mind, that's better. Of course. And from a packaging standpoint, usually these can be done a little bit concurrently. Sometimes companies will be working with outside an outside consultant just for packaging itself, or they may have that internally. So that will usually comprise of any secondary packaging needed from unit cartons to shipping. If you're shipping a kit. Also thinking of vac trays that might be needed because the weight and the materials used, such as glass products definitely need trays and just the quantity of it. The other thing to consider is when brands start to develop a lot of products, sometimes they'll do a larger size, say for example, for a holiday promotion. And what some marketing departments or people will forget is the weight and size of the products may really not have passed a shipping drop test. They do those. So that way over time, early on, you kind of know if your products will pass shipping. Once you're sending these to the merchants you don't want all your products to come in broken or damaged. That would definitely not be ideal. The other thing a lot of brands are starting to get into over the last year or so is really looking at sustainability. So looking at recycled materials and carton, companies are becoming more open to this and carrying a variety of substrates to work with. So that's something I've seen probably in the last five years really take priority in the packaging. Likely I project that that'll become a main thing going on and might even go into say from the creative aspect really thinking of inks and recycled inks and all of that as well. And from a COG standpoint that stands for cost of goods. Usually that comes into play where marketing and sales is providing that target either to a PD department internally at a brand or they're working with an outside contract manufacturer that's providing that information to them based on their target suggested retail price. So usually at this stage, once you've developed your formula and your packaging, you'll usually create some type of sign off. So whether you're agreeing to all the CM that's providing your private labeling and private manufacturing, they'll provide you samples and you'll sign off on everything. It's really good to do full inspection on what you're being given to make sure it's exactly what you want. Because most companies can't really make a lot of tweaks or they're going to charge you a lot of money to do that. So it's really good in this development phase to really be clear on exactly what you want your end product to look like and get all the approvals aligned with that. And from an internal standpoint at most companies of really building in that structure and sign off process. I've seen some companies that don't have those types of clear approvals in place or enough parties involved from various different departments, then what will happen is you can get into a case where some people have approved it and run with it and then they have to go back to the drawing board later on because they weren't clear that everybody was not aware of it. So really having a clear approval process and setting that up within your company is very important as well. And also too with these types of sign offs, say a company is doing a partnership with a major celebrity or any kind of say a fashion someone in fashion. So I had a client once before they were involved with a high end fashion designer and producing a collection of beauty products for them. What they failed to do at the time was they didn't have an approval process set up for that celebrity's rep, the company that was repping them and handling all of this product partnership. And so they went ahead and produced everything, thought everything was signed off on, and this woman hated it. So unfortunately that can be somewhat common in the sense of doing partnerships and you're working with these additional influencers and celebrities to help bring more recognition to your product or a particular promotion. But it's really good to make sure that they're sign off, especially when it relates to color as well. So besides the formula development, usually within color cosmetics and companies that work with those types of products in lipsticks and shades and eyeshadows, all of that, you're having additional color development and samples as well. So having any kind of brand partnership you're doing where say you're utilizing someone's name or supporting that to make sure that there's that sign off too, so that you don't come back at the end and have anything come back to you in any way, shape or form and moving to the last stage. But all these other front end planning really works to set up your team to be able to execute well. So as you're basically going through all the stages of coming up with an idea and working through what kind of strategy of how you're going to sell it and what are the pieces for development, I now have a final product I want to produce, so I now know what kind of formula, what colors it's going to be, what kind of form it is and all of that, all the packaging that's going to be used. I now could step into a longer phase of actually executing it. So this really ranges, I would say, across the board from actual execution. In the beauty industry, I feel it's pretty notorious of having very, very quick turnarounds once all these pieces are known. But ideally I would say a good 18 months is more ideal to shoot with. A lot of companies tend to work within say a range of a five to nine month window. But I will say that that can be somewhat detrimental to either working with a variety of your vendors where you're really trying to have them rush a lot of items and condense their vendor lead times based on their relationship with you. But ideally I would say with most of my clients I really try to work to transition them from a 5 to 9 month plan more to an 18 month plan, but still allow for some flexibility and in really planning more time for your projects overall, it actually allows you to be more agile because your team is not as stressed and running around trying to create miracles every day. So from an execution process standpoint, usually this will be kicked off with a final cost of goods approval and providing final forecast to your operations team or providing that to your CM that's handling all of your private labeling and to really include consideration of launching along with the six month forecast. So say if you launch your product and you're getting some good feedback and there's some sales to really take into account of what the next six months of sales might potentially look like. It may be hard to determine that if you're completely new company and just launching with one new product and so seeing where it fits. But it's definitely something to take in mind for future use is to start thinking ahead and planning in a longer forecast. And this will really help your operations team from a planning perspective of components and keeping certain core product components on hand as you expand your line. From a merchant presentation standpoint, I think it's really key if companies can really start to have those conversations sooner and develop a little bit more ongoing communication with your retail partners that you have. I really find that a lot of brands struggle with gathering concrete information and obviously different buying teams that they're working with can have other demands and factors on them. But it's really good to try to have that ongoing communication setup that allows frequent changes. And a lot of times I'll definitely see where initial forecasts have come in. They've also agreed to take particular shades or particular products and then there's a lot of changes later on or there's a request for a new shade. So I really try to work a lot with teams of having those upfront conversations with merchants so that as your teams are developing the products or particular shades that retail partners are already aware of the direction you're headed in and you're getting that feedback from them on what kind of quantities of shades they may take in store. So that you're not coming down to then having to do a last minute development once you've already ordered your main set of products. So the other piece of execution too, and sometimes it starts earlier at companies, it just varies how they're built out, is doing the branding. And so usually at the same time that a product is being kicked off with people is really doing bringing in a creative department. And sometimes this is done by an outside company as well. If the company is very small is having all the creative development added in and the messaging. So for primary components, say the bottles, the look of the product name, all of that as well as the secondary for packaging and taking into account any regulatory information that's needed as well, can add that on here too. That's always key from a product standpoint and usually a branding and packaging personnel will be responsible for looking at your pre production approval samples and really looking at all that color matching. So most teams will rely on that. Once your quantities have been determined for your product launch, your operations team will really looking into purchasing all the components that are needed as well as secondary packaging. So usually that comes in later on. I would say if you're building out a purchasing team and just starting with this, something that's very helpful to do for your team is to really start building out a component list and lead time list so that say your marketing and sales teams can be better informed of. If I pick this product to do in the future, how long is my lead time really? That's something I've noticed a lot of companies don't have things written down and known cross functionally between a lot of different departments. Keep everybody informed of what your department does and how they can serve the next one involved. And so usually that process will range say from 16 weeks. We're on the low end of a component lead time to say 27 weeks or further just depending upon what processes are needed. Say if bottles are sprayed and they could potentially be sent out for from that bottle vendor to be sprayed and then come back in house and then go to your filler to your manufacturer. So there's a lot of moving pieces of that. That's another reason when you're product planning at a company, it's really good to bring in an operations representative from your team or say an outside company that's handling all that for you so that that timing is really accounted for up front when you're considering your packaging options. And from an operations standpoint, you're really looking at a variety of things. So operations, they'll be involved with scoping out new vendors. They might be helping the product development team to source new vendors for manufacturing. Get all the vendors set up in whatever your vendor management system might be and then tracking all that from ordering the components to actually having the filling done at various different manufacturers. In going through batch approvals, most brands will have a QA regulatory department or they might be using an outside consultant for that as well. And so really keeping history on all of that. That's very important to keep routine samples from production batches and what's being approved. And even more so with SPF products, for example, that has a whole Regulation with FDA requirements and everything. SPF products specifically are very specialized and have certain QA requirements. So all of this collectively, there's a lot of different factors that go involved. And packing out with some brands that will have their own warehouse directly internally, or they'll be hiring out for packing out services as well. And then keeping in mind of shipping lead times. So that really varies. The other thing of shipping keeping in mind too is say, for example, our brand is working with a particular company that builds their product that may not necessarily be domestic. And in the States, a lot of companies tend to work with international companies and providers. And that always comes into play on timing and planning. Back in step five of looking at what products potentially could be coming from China. So anything shipped in, you're looking at three to four months added on before you're even doing your pack out to then ship your product to the manufacturer. Or say if your product's being produced over in Europe overseas, you're easily looking on the short end of around six to eight weeks of shipping time before you even start a typical one month packout process. So there's so many processes to keep in mind. I find a lot of companies don't offer enough planning on the front end activities of getting clarity around their marketing and sales teams to come up with those strategies. And so I find a lot of companies struggle in their operations to go back and forth and meet marketing's demands of not having clear forecasts up front and a clear strategy in place, which is something I always recommend putting together a project brief in place to really have that clarity internally of what is this product, what's going to go in it, how is it going to be shipped, and what kind of packaging is required. So I can also add a very, very basic, basic brief that can be further developed at whatever company or location you're at. But that's something very important to add when you're kicking off projects internally. And from a collection of all of this, I would say from a tracking standpoint with project management, there's a lot of options out there. I'll include a little tip sheet as well. There's a lot of different online platforms. So there's a new software that I've been using recently at one of my clients called Workfront. What I like about this particular platform is that it's very universal to set up a basic timeline. Okay. This particular client of mine, they use, I believe, just the workfront. They have some additional types of products that are available from this company. But I like it that it has multiple users and the users themselves actually close out their tasks. Whereas in some other types of product software you're reliant on either your consultant or your internal project manager to constantly update timelines. Whereas this actually kind of allows a lot more of the ownership on the task owner themselves so they can go in and individually close stuff out. They have a few other platforms as well, but this company actually is based on a user cost per month. I think it starts off at around $30 a month per user. So depending upon what your needs are, if you're not like a huge company or even if you are, it might still be good to look at. It definitely is universal and puts more ownership on multiple departments. Another one that I've worked with is basecamp.com as a little bit visual. So they have a variety of things. I've used them before in the past. It's very visual. So for someone like myself I tend to line up much more with very task and to do list oriented type of systems. This is definitely another option that's out there. Traditionally another option is Microsoft Project. That particular system is a little bit more robust version of Excel and you can do a lot more Gantt Charts and stuff with that. However, you really don't get that real time feedback because there's always constant updating. So I definitely recommend as a company trying to focus on finding some type of online platform that you are comfortable with. I feel that's really the long term vision of different project management software is really using the Internet using that capability. It also allows your team the flexibility of being able to check wherever your basically the project status, wherever your project status is. The other thing I'll be doing like a review. I'm looking into a new software that's come out and definitely I think I believe in the last year and they've gotten a lot of notoriety is the software called Monday that looks like that mix is a little bit of visual and to do list together. They also have another platform out there called Asana and that has worked really well for multiple teams of creating to do lists and dropping in documents and everything together in one place for a variety of teams. They just added a new feature on their software with adding in timelines so I don't know if those automatically update. I'm hoping that they've made it more integrated and user friendly and they've been working off these other platforms to help integrate very similarly. So there's a lot of aspects that go into a product launch. So just to kind of recap Some of the steps before of looking at all those phases, from the ideation phase, going into planning your sales strategy, putting together a proper plan in mapping out the development of your product to really set your team up for success and execution. So I would say that I'm really often asked how much time is a good amount of time to plan for products. I would really say for most teams you should be planning around two years out. There's a lot of various different hiccups at different stages that occur and issues with vendors. And it's better to give your teams more time than not. And I would say on the back end of that, if you're not at a place where you can do that, I wouldn't suggest trying to launch something less than a year, especially if it's something new and you're new to this, is that there's so many different variables to run through. You want to make sure you're producing a solid product. From a CM standpoint, I think it's good to get advice and get recommendations for people that have used companies before. I would say that as a business industry as a whole, people are very open to connecting with others and sharing what has worked for them. So I recommend to reach out to the network that you do have, people that you may know that work within the beauty industry and see what feedback or experiences they've had with various different companies, whether it's a manufacturer, whether it's a contract manufacturer, or various different suppliers. I think word of mouth is key to most businesses and most definitely within manufacturing. So I definitely look at referrals and look at what other companies help, what kind of success that they've had. For those you're already connected with in the industry and for just getting started is really doing your research, approaching a lot of different companies to gather overall pricing and looking at price breaks. That's another thing too of looking at what kind of quantity you want to come at producing with. Sometimes I feel companies come in way too low, so they're not really getting the price breaks available to them. And looking at the longevity of this particular product launching in maximizing profit that way. From an execution standpoint, what I'd say is pretty common is a lot of companies are not planning well enough or tracking well enough. So I would recommend taking time to put together a proper project plan of what is it going to take to create product. XYZ is important to do in mapping out those multiple paths based on what packaging direction you want to consider having that time up front. So those I would Say are pretty three common questions and I definitely have some space on the product platform here to feel free to reach out and to connect with what type of launch you're looking to do. I might be able to point you in a couple directions to help support a successful launch for yourself. I look forward to hearing from you soon and I look forward to our next product session next month. So thank you everybody for your time today. I truly appreciate it and feel free to drop some questions you may have in the inbox on the platform. I look forward to hearing from you soon. Have a great day everybody.

Lauren, I'm going to ask you a question. It's Tracy and I'm listening. So you mentioned the whole idea of checking everything like your packaging and getting all of that checking to making sure that it matches the sample. We have this thing we call it the golden sample because a lot of times when you're in the early development process of launching a new product, you're developing the samples and there's a sample shop or a product development department, formulation department I suspect might happen in that and they're the best people to make samples. The best experts are in that area and not necessarily what you will see in production, of course. Does that happen in your area?

Yeah, I mean there's definitely variances across the board. A lot of companies they'll have a general sample that they've approved but then having a range. So whether it's from the printing aspect or say a company's come back with tolerances. So a lot of vendors will bring in here's where what we're going to produce to you. But there's tolerance. There's a little bit both ways of what would be acceptable from a sample to actual production. They do look different whether that's say a promotional purse or bag that's added on. A lot of those tend to come from overseas. I will say like from even that added on those are. It's a real hit and miss on what you get back for that kind of packaging. At a variety of companies it really ranges.

So like color ranges maybe scent ranges could be something that happens.

A lot of companies will have a range. Even if there's an approved color, it'll come back with a range. Most companies are being more proactive that way from a delivery side to be two companies that they will provide a range instead of things be exact things do happen in manufacturing and things can shift a little bit or say a file comes in off which is why there is that case in point to have pre production Samples approval. So. So that way there's clear colors, you can actually see what it's going to come out like. The other thing is getting with samples of production samples. So sometimes the early production samples will be sent back early enough where if you're doing a very long range production, you might have a chance to stop it if you don't like it. So they haven't produced the whole entire order. So there might be still some catch all for that.

We do that, we do that. So we have people special monitoring happening of first run manufacturing because those things happen because we have a lot of finish issues. Right. So we do a lot of wood products and things that have. But you might have range of finishes because it's a natural material to begin with, right?

Yeah.

So your tolerances are wider. And so what we do is we set what we think it's going to be and then as they start to run greater production and get more material running through, we have a team in place that will maybe recommend that we widen it or we shrink it. And so that's what we monitor over the first run to make sure that we refine those standards. And so I think that that's a good practice and that you suggested when you were talking about that is that to stay involved and to stay on top of that and to maybe stay all the way through your first run.

Yeah, it's a pretty standard practice across most companies. As a beauty company starting to grow and develop and expand their team say from the entrepreneur to a few more people. And typically when they'll bring in someone for their operations role or QA regulations area most off bring in sample control and monitoring and looking at that aspect. And it's good even for people to do that if they're individually in private labeling. It's good to be connected to who is making your product and what exactly are you expecting and to retain those samples so that you have recourse with the companies you're working with to really be involved in what you're producing. Especially when it comes to all the different regulations in the industry, like it's your name on the product, you, you're responsible for how things happen for consumers. Although you're relying a lot on the expertise of a variety of different vendors, you still want to take a very active approach of how does your product look, how is it going to work? And follow that all the way through.

Thank you. Yeah, thank you for that. I want to remind our readers, listeners, viewers, whichever way you're consuming this content in replay, that there is A resource library on the site. I personally have loaded up my template that we use for sample reviews. Now, keep in mind, we mostly review consumer goods, Right. So they're not beauty products. They don't usually have formulas. They're not as complex as what you might be doing in the beauty area, but it gives you a sense of you need to tag your samples, you need to have examples, you need to know the date they were made, where they came from. And so there's a template that might be a great starting place for you startups out there where it's just there for you to use. So take advantage of that. And then, Lauren, I still want to get you to load up some of your examples when you can. And I know you're busy and that's great. But yeah, load up a few if you can, just. Because even seeing an example could really help a lot of our startups figure out what they do need. Because when you don't have enough people, you better have a better system.

That is very, very true. I would say it's harder in the beginning when you're doing things almost all yourself because you're so reliant on the expertise of people that you're going to. You really have to make sure that you're really utilizing the best in the business, especially when you're just starting out.

Yeah. And so I also did want to make the comment that we use Basecamp with our clients and you have a lot of these. We utilize it for a little bit different purposes than most people do. One is because it allows sort of large file sizes for. Without a problem. And so when we're transferring to our Asia factories or even back and forth with our clients, it gives us the ability to put those in a place that's not going to be dropboxing and Google docking and like being in all different weird places. So it allows us one place to do that. But the other thing that I do like about it is to keep the discussions out of everybody's individual emails and to force it to be on the platform together. So that's really how we utilize it. We don't really go into great timeline management or any of those things because everything is always in flux and we'd spend more time updating that than we would actually doing the work. And so it's just not a part of what we do with our clients. But for a lot of people and for very sensitive product lines like yours, you need to do stuff like that. So I would love for you to do some reviews of those for everyone here because you have much more insight onto more complex use of them. So let's take like one a month maybe, and you could do a little segment on them. And we've been doing this on the market research side. In a month or so, we're going to have Field Agent, this market research platform that we utilize. They're going to come in and they're going to talk to us about it. And so it'll be kind of a review and interview process. And so if you find that there's one really out there, maybe we should do the same thing.

Sure, Sure. I can take a look and see what might be a great fit.

Great. Well, thank you so much, Lauren. I appreciate it. It was great.

Thank you. Very informative. Appreciate it. Thank you. Tracy.

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