Soap Making Supplies Company

[Koshka]

Hello guys!

I've been staring at the huge pile of supplies I have in my little warehouse for days and came up with a crazy idea of opening a soap making supplies company.
My reasons are:

1. I order in bulk all the time.
2. Lots of people make soap and need supplies.
3. In Florida we don't really have a variety of suppliers, and lots of good companies are in mid-west or west. Shipping can be expensive.
4. I wanna share the wealth and not charge people 2x or 3x the amount I paid for the items. Fragrances that I purchase are of excellent quality and a lot of very well known companies resell them. It really hurts me to see that people pay $25-$30 dollars per lbs for a decent fragrance.
5. A lot of fellow soapers already get supplies from me, they just help me out with shipping a bit.

So, does anyone know if I need to have any kind of special permits or follow any particular regulations to open a supply company? would it be considered cosmetic repackaging? Has anyone done something like this before?
I would really appreciate any kind of input and if everything works out, lots of people can benefit from this venture.

Cheers!

Kosh

 

[Lindy]

Kosh I can't help you with the reseller licensing part of this but I can tell you that if you are not doing a 100% mark-up then you won't be in business long. Part of your costs are going to carrying costs of the ingredients which is the interest you are losing, or paying, to have that money out there. Profit is not a swear word. You need to figure out your real costs before knowing what you have actually paid for that product, then you have to allow for a 10% fudge factor (what you missed but don't know you missed), overhead, your time, the space being occupied, internet expenses, phone, electricity, heat, cost of shelving, labour to pack it in, labour to ship it back out.

Just some things to think about.