The beauty industry has been flourishing, with experts predicting that annual growth will continue to rise for the foreseeable future. If you’ve been thinking about launching your own beauty brand, now would be the perfect time to do so.
However, where exactly do you begin? How do you go about crafting a modern-day beauty empire capable of global domination? Read on as FLPL explains how to build a beauty brand in 2024.
Find Your Niche
Every successful beauty brand out there began with a single good idea – what’s yours? You’re not going to make it big by riding on the coattails of other brands. Instead, you need to find your own niche within the industry – a way for your brand to stand out from the crowd.
There are a few ways to approach this. The best way to begin is to consider where your personal interests lie. If you’ve spent years hunting for organic skincare products and haven’t found what you’re after, then create them yourself. Likewise, if you’re a bridal makeup fanatic and want to capitalize on your existing knowledge, beauty accessories may be the way to go.
Market research is another effective way to identify a niche for your beauty brand. Take a look at current trends to see which ones have staying power and then consider building your brand around these. Competitor research will also tell you so much. Find out what consumers are saying about your competitors – perhaps there’s a product that could do with some improvement, creating a gap that you could fill.
This will all lead to you finding your unique selling angle – something that differentiates you from the competition. This is what will persuade consumers to reach for your products rather than for the competing products that are sitting next to yours on the shelf.
Choose a Private Label Manufacturer
The manufacturing process can be intimidating for any new beauty brand. Back in the day, you would have had to do it all yourself. From sourcing materials and factories to quality control and shipping logistics, getting this wrong could spell disaster for your brand. However, many new entrants to the beauty industry lack manufacturing knowledge, meaning that mistakes are easily made.
Fortunately, private label manufacturing is now more popular than ever. This involves teaming up with a third-party company, like FLPL, who will take control of the manufacturing process for you. It won’t matter if you don’t have any manufacturing knowledge as your private labeling manufacturer will have decades of expertise that you can draw on.
With that said, it’s vital that you choose a private labeling manufacturer that has experience in your chosen niche. At FLPL, our experience is in all things beauty. We have worked with brands specializing in skincare, haircare, male grooming, and more. This means that we’re well-placed to help you take your beauty brand to the heights of success!
Decide on the Products You Want to Create
Once you’ve chosen your niche and found a private label manufacturer, it’s time to finalize the types of products that you want to create. Say, for example, your chosen niche is organic skincare. You’ll then need to decide which skincare products you want to create. Do you want a full range of products, meaning everything from cleansers to serums to moisturizers? Or would you prefer to specialize in a certain type of product, such as organic face masks?
The next step would be to work with your private label manufacturer to create product samples. Don’t worry, this doesn’t mean that you’ll be spending days in a lab! Instead, with FLPL, we would simply discuss your goals for your products. You would then be able to pick and choose key ingredients from our ingredient catalog, while also letting us know if there are any other specialized ingredients you would like to include.
After this, you would be able to continue working on building other aspects of your beauty brand, leaving us to create product samples for you to approve. Only once these have been approved would we then send them off for mass manufacturing.
Deal With the Legalities
It goes without saying that you’ll want your beauty brand to be legit. This means that you’ll need to spend some time taking care of the legalities.
The first step is to register your business under your chosen business name. Much of this can now be done online, making life a little easier! You’ll then need to look into business licenses and permits. These are often state-specific. They’ll encompass regulations related to everything from health and safety to product labeling. Choose a good private label manufacturer, like FLPL, and you’ll enjoy assistance with things like this!
Once you have your licenses and permits in place, you’ll be able to apply for business insurance. This can sometimes be pricey for a new beauty brand but there are business groups that you can join that will enable you to access reduced prices.
Pick a Pricing Strategy
Your pricing strategy will play a huge role in how much profit you make and how successful your beauty brand is, making it important to give this some serious thought.
There are a few ways in which you could go with this. The first is to aim for the luxury market, assuming your products would appeal to them. This will, of course, give you a much higher profit margin on all of your sales. The downside is that your customer base will be limited. Luxury products come with a higher price point that not everyone will be able to afford.
On the other hand, you could choose to create a more affordable brand instead. This would open you up to the mass market, meaning a greater volume of sales. This would be needed if you’re hoping to make sustainable profits since your profit margin for each sale wouldn’t be quite so high.
In addition to choosing a long-term pricing strategy, short-term strategies should be considered too. For example, you may want to run a special promotion to entice people to give your new products a try. Alternatively, you might decide to pick one product as a loss leader. Sell this at cost price, or even a loss, to draw people in, after which they’ll then also, hopefully, purchase products that give you a much healthier profit.
Develop Your Branding
Branding gives a business character and personality. It tells people who your brand is and what it stands for, which is why branding is something that companies pour a big portion of their budgets into.
Start by defining your brand’s values and core mission. Establish where your ethics lie and work on bringing your brand’s unique voice to life.
Once that’s done, it’s time to translate all of those ideas into visuals. You’ll need to work with designers to create a logo, which will then be used on all of your packaging. Again, your packaging also needs to align with the brand image you want to portray. If you’re planning on launching a line of sustainable, plant-based lip balms, then you shouldn’t be using packaging that’s heavy in plastic and components that can’t be recycled.
If this sounds overwhelming, this is, again, another benefit of working with a private label manufacturer. At FLPL, we work with our clients on the entire process. We have an art and marketing team that will take care of all of your branding needs, along with specialist designers who will be able to whip up the perfect packaging for your products.
Choose Your Selling Platforms
Before you know it, your products will be ready for you to start selling. Lead times are usually even faster if you’re working with a private label manufacturer.
Once your products are in your hands, what next? This is where your selling platforms come in.
While traditional retail stores used to be the norm, many brands these days choose to go purely digital. Social marketing is heavily used to promote the brand and purchases are made online. This exposes you to an international market.
With that said, many consumers prefer to get up close and personal with beauty products. They would rather be able to see, touch, and smell a product before making a purchasing decision. This is why some beauty brands also opt to have additional offline sales platforms. Be it selling at wholesale prices to an established retailer or setting up a pop-up store, offline sales can really help a new beauty brand to build credibility and a solid reputation.
Grow Your Business
Once you start selling, it won’t be long before you see some success, especially if you team up with FLPL! Once that begins to happen, it’s important to not get complacent. Sure, bask in the glory of all of your sales for a while but you also need to be looking to the future. What’s next? Where do you want to take your beauty brand?
One way to grow would be to introduce a new product line. Say you’re selling a range of heated hair styling tools, such as flat irons and curling wands. Once you’ve gained a loyal following, it would only make sense to add more hair products into the mix. Heat protectant sprays, deep conditioners, and other products that complement your existing range will likely all be well received.
Again, when you have a trustworthy private label manufacturer by your side, this becomes so easy. You won’t need to start from scratch in terms of product design and manufacturing. Instead, your private label manufacturer will be able to take matters into their own hands, creating your new products for you while you focus on running your beauty brand.
Building a Beauty Brand With FLPL
Although the beauty industry may be growing, it is, and always has been, a very competitive marketplace. Make a mistake at the start and you may find it difficult to recover from this. This is why working with a private label manufacturer can be such a game-changer when building a beauty brand in 2024. They’ll help you to bring your unique ideas to life, enabling you to create products, as well as a brand, that you can be truly proud of.
Click here to find out more about the private label manufacturing services offered by FLPL.
