Beauty Product Dev Problem Solving Like a Pro + Our Exclusive Packaging Vendors List

Authors: AJ Addae, Essence Iman

Abstract - A letter from the founder, AJ Addae

It’s Black History Month, and this year we’re celebrating by pouring into the community. On a personal note - as a beauty lab founder that lives in LA and has experienced the plight of the fires over the past month, we’ve spent a lot of this month donating to community-centered activations and orgs that just give our community a little space to breathe.

That includes:

• A fundraiser donation and sponsoring a braiding booth at LA’s Black Market Flea in collaboration with Petra’s Beauty Club to urgently help prevent the LA salon from fire-related closure, while helping folks in the community get their hair braided. Please donate if you can to help keep the salon open.

• Near and dear to my heart, we sponsored a dinner/mixer for Black students in UCLA’s Department of Chemistry - because chemists can always use a nice break from the lab.

• Also near and dear to my heart, sponsoring a Black photography show at Lone Star Dark Room in Dallas, TX curated by photography connoisseur Jaylen Allmond (who captures all of our lovely brand photos!).

In the newsletter this month, we’re also thrilled to collaborate with Slutty Founder creator, and ex-beauty brand CEO Essence Iman, who famously shut down her award-winning beauty brand The Established. We get an exclusive hindsight-centered interview of what she would have done differently when it came to product dev, shares why she would have worked with a company like SULA LABS, and answers questions such as, “Are 70% margins even real?”.

We also briefly dissect a product development/manufacturing obstacle that Ulta cult-fave brand Hanahana Beauty faced, and how they got through it.

Last but not least, in light of LuxePack 2025/MakeUp in LA, we share part of our exclusive packaging list and contacts for paid subscribers, to help with their product development efforts.

So, let’s hop on in.

A Word from the Slutty Founder Herself, Essence Iman

Yes, you read that right. In 2024, Essence Iman started the substack column “Slutty Founder”, detailing what it was like to build a gorgeous, scalable beauty brand. For today’s issue, we collaborated with Essence and asked her to recap some key successful product dev moves that she made, and what she would have done differently in hindsight.

What do you wish you would have known about unit economics in beauty product development?

I have a confession to make. When I first started out, I did not think about unit economics, as much as I thought about the vibes. I didn’t really care about how much my COG’s were as long as it led me to the brand I wanted. I certainly did not factor in scale.

I mostly trusted in the sense I had to know that I was spoiled by way of being in the beauty industry — one known for great margins.

Looking back, this was both my strength and my weakness. My obsession with the visual language and sensorial perfection is what made customers fall in love with our products, but I was disappointed by how quickly you stop feeling those "great margins" when you scale and take on more visibility.

The real awakening came when I realized that formulation decisions made based purely on bespoke qualities often create manufacturing headaches at scale (like that perfect marbled texture of the Pepper cleansing bar that required a specialized hand technique). This all made my inventory process move at a slower pace than I would have liked it to go.

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Also — be wary of more inaccessible raw materials, ingredients or packaging components that could be hard to get in the future. Nothing worse than being in demand for something you can’t provide. Try to create products that you could turn around on a dime and at scale as easily as possible!

What was your biggest waste of money when it came to product development?

Launching with multiple variants of the same product. When I launched in 2019, I had three differently scented body creams, four different types of bar soap with different makeups—I was essentially creating more work, more inventory, and more of a spend for myself in the hopes to please everybody.

I’ve learned that the less you offer, the more seriously the customer takes you — especially the one with discriminating taste (who I was aiming for).

Early-stage founders often assume that giving customers more options will drive revenue. There’s this desperate urge to cater to everyone as a baby founder, but in reality, it just leads to higher costs, more formulation headaches, and unnecessary complexities to your supply chain. Looking back, I wish I had focused on a single MVP—making it spectacular, making it expensive, and making it the product; simply irresistible. Ironically, our hero product —the Elixa Bath and Body Oil Serum ended up being the very first one I made anyway (and the only one that never had any variants LOL). Instead of building around that from the start, I stretched myself thinner than necessary, only to scale most of those products back to a single SKU a year later.

I share this story all the time with my clients who want to capture the prestige/luxury market: Stop trying to launch with so many products! You’re literally paying for people to take your brand less seriously. Scale your products lean and focus on the one product that speaks to your brand ethos. Intention and restraint creates desire.

Are 70% margins even real?

They can be especially if you’re starting out making your products yourself as many of us indie brand founders do. The margin on my body cream hovered around 76% at one point, when I decided to switch from an oil-based formula to a water one.

Those margins drastically shift when you scale, though. Once you introduce warehousing, manufacturing, shipping — or factor in the in the cost of marketing or retail, those margins get eaten up with the quickness.

The indie founder making products in small batches can hit those dreamlike margins initially, but they're a moving target that shifts with growth, so be prepared for the math to get uncomfy.

What’s the tea on retail, from your perspective?

Retail should always be a pathway for beauty brands—especially mass retail. Boutique retailing is a cute start, and a way to build adjacent industry connections, but in the long term, it’s usually not worth the effort unless you need a quick small cash injection.

This founder I know who built a massively successful cult-favorite cleanser once said “You gotta retail” — it was the entryway to their brand’s first $1M. It makes sense because DTC is just so damn expensive. Between CAC, fulfillment, and content marketing, you’re paying for every single sale. The catch 22 is that you kind of need your DTC to leverage and position yourself for strong retail entry.

Although I think retail success relies more heavily on brand marketing over product excellence (unfortunately), from a product dev perspective, you have to be incredibly intentional when it comes to retail. Your margins need to be structured for wholesale from day one—because once you start scaling into retail, reformulating to hit better costs isn’t as simple as swapping out an ingredient or changing your packaging.

Can you reflect on something that you would’ve done differently when it came to product, knowing what you know now?

My skincare brand sort of started out as a self experiment that got carried away —I didn’t expect to actually formulate my own award-winning products. But in hindsight, given the countless hours of experimentation and iteration — I wish I would've validated my concept, gotten some early stage capital in the door and collaborated with a private chemist, like you, AJ (I’m not a wild fan of 3rd party). In hindsight I would rather not have done as much legwork as I did in that area of my business. I spent so much time trying to DIY formulations and manage manufacturing and inventory myself when, in reality, that's not where I identify my zone of genius or excitement to be. I'm a creative and a marketer—my strength is in storytelling and building intrigue, not mixing down formulas in a kitchen or figuring out supply chain logistics.

I just so happen to be good at those things too, because I’m good at everything.

Product Dev Problem Solving: How Hanahana Beauty powered through a packaging obstacle

How a change in their product processing impacted their packaging - and what they did to fix it.

Hanahana Beauty is one of our incredible clients. Not only can you find their shea butter-based bodycare range at Ulta, but the community-forward brand has been around for close to a decade - and has stayed strong.

One of their biggest product value props is that they use shea butter from Ghana and pay 2x the asking price of the farmers. Evidently, the shea butter creates the texture basis of their beautiful products. In the last year, the brand innovated further to develop an even more texture-rich product, especially as they scale through Ulta Beauty. They introduced an updated processing “whipping” technique creating a fluffier, lightweight yet nourishing feel which enhances the user experience of the product.

So, all around win, right?

In true beauty industry fashion, product innovation doesn’t come without its challenges. As Essence mentions earlier, maintaining bespoke-ness can increase the entropy associated with an already entropic industry. For Hanahana Beauty, that concept reared its head in the form of a packaging obstacle.

The products historically declare that the largest size contains a net fill weight of 250mL.

However, as we explain in this Instagram video, when incorporating that new whipped technology into the making of the product, the resulting product contains both goop…and air bubbles responsible for the signature whipped feel.

So in result, the net fill weight of the product was revised from 250 mL 100 mL (seriously, watch the video for an explanation on why), from a manufacturing standpoint. Hanahana Beauty became faced with two options:

• Option A: Create entirely new packaging with a new printed net fill weight listed, and either discard or try to find a new use for the packaging they have in stock.

• Option B: Keep the packaging that they do have, and overlabel.

BTW - to us, both options are a solid way forward, depending on your priorities. As Essence also emphasizes above, you make the best out of what you have. In Hanahana Beauty’s case, they likely had an existing inventory of packaging - so they/the manufacturer overlabeled the weight declaration on the packaging for all updated products in the range, with an actually cute little label that matches each product’s colorway.

I share this because situations like overlabels are common, and they are very possible, and happen - and they can/will happen to your brand! If you couldn’t tell already, the theme of this newsletter is truly embracing all the chaos that is associated with product dev and manufacturing, especially when your brand’s DNA is programmed to drive innovation. Personally, I like to always remind customers that there is truly a fix for everything - it just may not look like your exact initial vision. Because in the same vein, so many things can become beyond your control in beauty product dev, since there are so many moving pieces like packaging, tariffs, shipping, and so much more.

So, we applaud the Hanahana Beauty team on their quick-witted pivot, and problem solving skills. If you know the founder Abena personally, you know creativity is truly at the forefront of her problem solving at Hanahana Beauty.

And to newer founders, just remember it’s not that it necessarily gets easier - you just get better at doing it. And you will!

For Subscribers: Sharing Our Exclusive Packaging Suppliers List

Last week, our CEO AJ Addae was given the opportunity to speak at MakeUp in LA on a panel titled “What's Next in Suncare Innovation: From Inclusive to Effective Beauty”, with Aimara Coupet from BeRadiance, and Alexander Kwapis from Fusion Pkg. The panel coincided with LuxePack Los Angeles - so to commemorate, we’re sharing our packaging suppliers list that we shared with our clients, with contacts. There is a mix of packaging on this list - from MOQ variety, to country of origin, to capabilities. Just a heads up - many of these vendors are behind some incredible beauty brands. We hope this helps in your search for your next packaging innovations. Just promise that when you reach out - just tell them AJ from SULA LABS sent you. ;)

Find the list below: