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Estimates for bringing a product to market
Hi guys. I posted a question a while back about what equipment might be useful for me to have in a home lab in order to begin work towards developing some products. Thank you so much to those who contributed wisdom, especially Bob.
We have not yet made the purchases, because the money fellow (my business partner) needs more information as we set up our LLC and such. Some of his questions again are not ones I know the answers to, because my experience has always been in either an academic environment or a corporate one, where I was not necessarily privy to all of the costs.
We would really like to figure out how much capital might be needed to bring a product to market. I realize this could vary retty wildly, but I imagine there are certain minimums we could expect. So, setting aside equipment costs and formulator/chemist costs (since I will be doing that work at no cost), what costs should we expect?
- Stability testing - I am not sure if I will be able to do this at home, due to not having an oven at which to hold samples at elevated temperature. If you guys think I could accomplish this at home somehow, that would be great. (We could buy an oven, but something about that makes me nervous re: fire hazard and utility bills at home).
- Preservative challenge testing - this will b e non-negotiable for me, and we will have it done on every product.
- Scale-up, pilot labs, trial runs?
- Packaging
So, assuming we begin with a line of shampoo and hair conditioners, what am I missing, and what do we think the cost could be?
$10,000? $25,000? more, less?
The more I get into this with my partner, the more out of my depth I am beginning to feel, as a chemist and business person!
I appreciate any insight anyone can offer.
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6 Replies
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You need to talk to Mark Fuller @microformulations. He probably has the best handle of all of us on start-up costs. Or, you could talk to a private label/contract manufacturer or two and get price quotes.
However - my take on all of this is that your biggest hurdle is finding a way to sell your products, rather than finding a way to making them. Solve that problem, and there are half-a-dozen different options for creating a product. -
Mark may not be on the forum anymore. Try LinkedIn.
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Here’s a discussion about that exact topic.
Also, we wrote a blog post about it too. -
Thank you so much, Bob and Perry!
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I am still here. Just trying to budget my online time since it can get away from you and be a big distraction.
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Sorry, added the “s” at the end and I couldn’t find you anywhere…
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