This post started out with a comment from a retailer that I sent products to try out and see if FBS would be a good fit for their shop.

I was struck by their comment back “Flower & Bone does not have a sophisticated enough packaging for our clients”. Normally this is something that I would not think twice about, but this comment really bothered me. Not because the retailer did not think the line was sophisticated enough, as they clearly didn’t try them, but that they think that their customers actually enjoy paying exorbitant prices for product, which is mostly for the packaging.

My previous background was a product manager, for 12yrs I worked with large corporate companies making apparel and bags for the consumer marketplace. I got to see first hand the nitty gritty of costs and what customers are really paying for.

One of the biggest things I wanted to debunk when I started making skincare, outside of making something you could actually put into your mouth, was that it shouldn’t cost a million dollars either.

I don’t need to be the one to point out all the pretty packaging, custom bottles, boxes and wrapping that you find in beauty and skincare. It’s honestly kind of nauseating and actually quite wasteful.

It’s something that as a small business owner, is an insane investment. I’m talking thousands and thousands of units that need to be purchased because small orders are out of the question. It’s challenging to be able make any necessary quick changes without losing thousands of dollars in the process, and believe me, there are PLENTY of changes that come up.

For instance, since I don’t make custom printed bottles or boxes, when I decide to stop using an ingredient and replace it with something better I can, with hardly any waste, say just a few labels and very low cost impact.

However, it’s the cost to the customer that I really can’t stomach. I did a little cost analysis even for a simple little box for my products. Are you aware that it can cost as much as the product itself? In order to make it work for small businesses, who also wholesale their products to retail stores, they need to multiply the cost of the packaging by 4 to get the cost at retail. Say a pretty box packaging costs a small business $5, that box increases your product price by $20, which means that the face oil that costs $30, now costs $50.

Yes, you read that right!

Instead of paying $30 for facial oil you are really paying $50, that’s $20 extra just for it to be inside a pretty little box. Now that example doesn’t include a custom bottle plus a box or inserts. All of that has to be factored into the actual product cost in addition to the ingredients and labor involved in order for companies to make a profit. No wonder why you pay over $80 for a 1oz bottle of skincare.

It’s insane.

I don’t like it and as a customer, i find it equally as repulsive. Why should we be paying more for all this stuff that ends up in a landfill. We barely look at it once and toss.

Unfortunately, skincare and beauty is only one of the many places where we are paying more for the fancy packaging than for the product itself (I’m looking at you, cereal and other packaged foods). It’s wasteful and unnecessary. We are already paying a million more dollars for things these days and enough is enough.

So, I am ok with the fact that my “packaging doesn’t look sophisticated enough” because I am proud to offer my customers a high quality product without all the BS.

Enjoy! :)

xoxox

Heather