how to write a business plan for a cosmetic shop

Cosmetic Business Plan Template

Written by Dave Lavinsky

Cosmetic Business Plan

You’ve come to the right place to create your cosmetic business plan.

We have helped over 1,000 entrepreneurs and business owners create business plans and many have used them to start or grow their cosmetic companies.

Below is a a sample cosmetic business plan to help you create your own cosmetic company business plan.

Executive Summary

Business overview.

Guilt-Free Glow is a cosmetics shop located in Spokane, Washington. The company’s mission is to provide customers with high-quality, cruelty-free cosmetics. We want our customers to look and feel their best without feeling guilty about the harm cosmetics do to the environment and animals. Therefore, the shop will sell a wide variety of vegan and cruelty-free cosmetics for people all over the world to enjoy. Some of these products include makeup, moisturizers, and hair care products.

The company is founded by Kiera Smith, who has been a vegan beauty vlogger for five years. During that time, she has amassed 500,000 followers through her beauty vlogs. She has always been committed to finding products that are vegan and cruelty-free. Now that she has gained popularity on Youtube, she is eager to start her own cosmetics line. She will offer an online shop for her followers around the world but also start a shop in downtown Spokane for local residents.

Products Served

The following are some of the vegan, cruelty-free products sold by Guilt-Free Glow:

• Makeup tools and brushes
• Shampoo and conditioner
• Moisturizers

Customer Focus

Guilt-Free Glow will target both online customers and customers located in the Spokane area that are interested in vegan and cruelty-free cosmetics. Since the founder has a large following on Youtube and social media, we expect most of our customers will come from her fanbase. When marketing to local residents, we will focus our efforts on women ages 15 to 65, as this is traditionally the largest customer segment for the cosmetics industry.

Management Team

Guilt-Free Glow is led by Kiera Smith, who has been a successful beauty vlogger for five years. She creates tutorials on makeup techniques and offers other beauty tips. She has always been passionate about using vegan and cruelty-free products in her videos and encouraged her followers to do the same. Since there aren’t many cosmetics companies that dedicate their whole line to these values, Kiera Smith was inspired to create her own line of cosmetics and beauty care products.

Kiera Smith will be the owner of the company and will conduct much of the marketing efforts through her own social media channels. She will hire other staff to help her with the other aspects of the business, including running the retail shop.

Success Factors

Guilt-Free Flow will be able to achieve success by offering the following competitive advantages:

• The founder, Kiera Smith, is a popular beauty guru, and her brand and popularity will help sales and minimize marketing costs.
• Guilt-Free Glow offers great pricing in the vegan cosmetics industry. Vegan and cruelty-free products are often expensive and unaffordable to the average consumer. Guilt-Free Glow will sell all its products at a moderate price so that everyone can buy cosmetics without feeling guilty.
• Guilt-Free Glow will hire friendly, knowledgeable, and highly-qualified staff to help both our online and in-store customers.

Financial Highlights

Guilt-Free Glow is seeking $300,000 in debt financing to launch its cosmetics business. The funding will be dedicated to securing a retail space, manufacturing the products, and purchasing the necessary supplies and equipment for the store. Funding will also be dedicated toward three months of overhead costs, including payroll, rent, and marketing costs. The breakout of the funding is below:

• Retail space build-out: $50,000
• Equipment, supplies, and materials: $25,000
• Three months of overhead expenses (payroll, rent, utilities): $125,000
• Marketing costs: $50,000
• Working capital: $50,000

The following graph below outlines the pro forma financial projections for Guilt-Free Glow.

Company Overview

Who is Guilt-Free Glow?

Guilt-Free Glow’s History

In 2017, Kiera Smith started her Youtube channel, which focuses on beauty tutorials and product reviews. Kiera commits to promoting and working with vegan and cruelty-free brands and educates her audience on the importance of these values for the cosmetics industry. Over the years, Kiera has found that very few cosmetics brands commit to any pledge to be vegan or cruelty-free. Therefore, she decided to start her own cosmetics line that is committed to these values.

Since its incorporation, Guilt-Free Glow has achieved the following milestones:

• Developed the company’s branding image, social media, and website.
• Found a retail location and signed a Letter of Intent to lease it.
• Found manufacturers to create the cosmetic products.
• Obtained a sales and use tax permit for use in Spokane, Washington.

Guilt-Free Glow Products

The following are some of the vegan and cruelty-free products sold by Guilt-Free Glow:

Industry Analysis

According to Fortune Business Insights, the cosmetics industry is currently valued at $287.94 billion and is expected to grow to $415.29 billion over the next few years.

This growth is due to the increasing demand for high-quality cosmetics. The target market for cosmetics has expanded substantially over the past decade, with people of all ages and genders opting to pay good money for high-quality makeup, hair care, and other beauty products. This trend is expected to continue, and the cosmetics industry will only continue to grow rapidly.

Another important trend is the increasing popularity of environmentally friendly, vegan, and cruelty-free products. Guilt-Free Glow is taking advantage of this demand and selling exclusively vegan and cruelty-free cosmetics.

By capitalizing on these trends and our founder’s increasing popularity online, Guilt-Free Glow is expected to thrive in the cosmetics industry.

Customer Analysis

Demographic profile of target market.

Guilt-Free Glow will primarily target Kiera’s current fanbase on Youtube and social media. This fanbase includes 500,000 followers, with the majority being females and under the age of 40.

The company will also target residents of Spokane who may be interested in purchasing vegan cosmetics. Traditionally, the customer segment most interested in this industry is women ages 15 to 65.

The precise demographics for Spokane, Washington are:

Customer Segmentation

Guilt-Free Glow will primarily target the following customer profiles:

• Women ages 15-65
• Kiera’s fanbase
• Beauty professionals and influencers
• Spokane residents looking for vegan, cruelty-free cosmetics

Competitive Analysis

Direct and indirect competitors.

Guilt-Free Glow will face competition from other companies with similar business profiles. A description of each competitor company is below.

Ulta Beauty

Ulta Beauty is a major retailer in the cosmetics industry, being the ultimate provider of all beauty products for millions of people across the globe. The company aims to be the most loved beauty destination of its guests and has ultimately succeeded in that mission. At Ulta, you can find any beauty brand you are looking for, such as Dior, Chanel, and Lancome. Whatever item or brand you need, you are bound to find it at Ulta.

Since 1988, Sephora has been a giant in the cosmetics and beauty industries. It’s one of the top locations to shop for all your high-quality beauty and cosmetics needs and has dominated the cosmetics industry with its global presence. With 2,700 stores in 35 countries worldwide, there are very few locations around the world where you can’t find a Sephora store to visit.

At Sephora, you can find some of the hottest and most exclusive brands, such as Rare Beauty by Selena Gomez and FENTY BEAUTY by Rihanna. Furthermore, Sephora has been recognized by Forbes as one of America’s Best Employers four years in a row and scored 100% on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Quality Index three years in a row. When customers are looking to buy cosmetics conveniently and ethically, they often head to Sephora first.

The Cosmetics Company Store

The Cosmetics Company Store is an online cosmetics company that sells high-quality cosmetics brands to customers all around the world. They carry thousands of products for anyone in need of beauty products, including hair care products, makeup, and moisturizers. Customers can purchase from a wide variety of brands they love and are familiar with, including Estee Lauder, Clinique, and Aveda. In addition to having a large online store, The Cosmetics Company Store has a few retail locations in select areas.

Competitive Advantage

Guilt-Free Glow will be able to offer the following advantages over the competition:

• Guilt-Free Glow offers great pricing in the vegan cosmetics industry. Vegan and cruelty-free products are often expensive and unaffordable to the average consumer. Guilt-Free Glow will sell all its products at a moderate price.

Marketing Plan

Brand & value proposition.

Guilt-Free Glow will offer a unique value proposition to its clientele:

• Wide selection of cosmetics.
• A focus on vegan and cruelty-free products.
• Competitive prices that are more affordable than the competition.

Promotions Strategy

The promotions strategy for Guilt-Free Glow is as follows:

Guilt-Free Glow will be located in a very convenient, highly-trafficked area of Spokane that is frequented by men and women of all ages and backgrounds. The store will be in the same neighborhood as stores, restaurants, and salons. The area of Spokane is frequented by shoppers who live in the area and have disposable income to be able to spend frequently on cosmetics.

Social Media

Guilt-Free Glow will have Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook business profiles where Kiera will post frequently new arrivals to the store, featured clients who are using the products, and upcoming sales and events. The posts will be appealing with professional photographs and will engage customers with discount opportunities if they tag friends in the comments in order to grow their social media following. Kiera will also use her personal social media accounts to promote the company and its products.

Website & SEO Marketing

Kiera will reach out to a website designer to develop a website for Guilt-Free Glow. The website will be easy to navigate and include an option to purchase items online and schedule a pickup time in the store, contact information, and location. The SEO will also be managed to ensure that anyone searching “cosmetics store near me” or “Spokane cosmetics” will see Guilt-Free Glow listed at the top of the Bing or Google search engine.

Partnerships With Beauty Influencers

Kiera will partner with other beauty influencers to spread the word about her company. She will offer discount codes to the influencers’ audiences to entice them to shop for her products.

The pricing of Guilt-Free Glow will be moderate so customers feel they receive value when purchasing their products.

Operations Plan

The following will be the operations plan for Guilt-Free Glow.

Operation Functions:

• Kiera Smith will be the Owner and President of the company. She will oversee the major operations of both the retail and online stores.
• Kiera will hire a General Manager for the store. They will be in charge of day-to-day administrative functions, product inventory, supply orders, hiring, and training.
• Kiera will hire an Assistant Manager to assist with product inventory, supply orders, and managing the store when Kiera and the General Manager are unable to be there.
• The store will have 6 – 8 part-time and full-time employees to assist with stocking merchandise and customer service.
• As the store grows and business picks up, more employees will be added to the team to keep up with customer demand.
• Kiera will hire a Marketing Specialist and Web Designer to develop the store’s branding, logo, and social media accounts. The marketing specialist will also develop the website and manage the SEO.
• She will also hire an Administrative Assistant to help her with the other operations tasks needed to run the company.

Milestones:

Guilt-Free Glow will have the following milestones completed in the next six months.

6/1/202X – Finalize lease agreement for 10,000 square foot retail storefront location.

6/15/202X – Begin build out of leased space.

6/30/202X – Finalize agreements with cosmetics distributors to schedule their upcoming product deliveries to the store.

7/1/202X – Kiera will meet with the web designer so they can get started developing guiltfreeglow.com

8/1/202X – Final walk-through and approval of the built-out beauty retail store.

8/2/202X – Begin social media marketing campaign of Guilt-Free Glow.

8/15/202X – The first shipment of store inventory arrives.

8/16/202X – Hire employees and begin training.

8/18/202X – Stocking and display of product inventory in anticipation of the Grand Opening.

9/1/202X – Grand Opening of Guilt-Free Glow.

Financial Plan

Key revenue & costs.

The revenue drivers for Guilt-Free Glow will come from the sales of cosmetics through the retail location and online store.

The cost drivers will be the cost of the cosmetics inventory, labor expenses, marketing expenses, rent, utilities, and overhead costs.

Funding Requirements and Use of Funds

Key assumptions.

The following outlines the key assumptions required in order to achieve the revenue and cost numbers in the financials and in order to pay off the startup business loan.

• Number of Initial Customers Per Month: 1000
• Average Item Cost: $20
• Annual Lease: $100,000

Financial Projections

Income statement, balance sheet, cash flow statement, cosmetics business plan faqs, what is a cosmetics business plan.

A cosmetics business plan is a plan to start and/or grow your cosmetics business. Among other things, it outlines your business concept, identifies your target customers, presents your marketing plan and details your financial projections.

You can easily complete your cosmetics business plan using our cosmetics Business Plan Template here .

What are the Main Types of Cosmetics Businesses?

There are a number of different kinds of cosmetics businesses , some examples include: Niche market cosmetics, high-end cosmetics, kids cosmetics, beauty blogger/influencer, or make-up artist.

How Do You Get Funding for Your Cosmetics Business Plan?

Cosmetics Businesses are often funded through small business loans. Personal savings, credit card financing and angel investors are also popular forms of funding.

This is true for a cosmetics business, a plan for a makeup company or a personal care products business plan.

What are the Steps To Start a Cosmetics Business?

Starting a cosmetics business can be an exciting endeavor. Having a clear roadmap of the steps to start a business will help you stay focused on your goals and get started faster.

1. Develop A Cosmetics Business Plan - The first step in starting a business is to create a detailed cosmetics business plan PDF or doc that outlines all aspects of the venture. This should include potential market size and target customers, the services or products you will offer, pricing strategies and a detailed financial forecast.  

2. Choose Your Legal Structure - It's important to select an appropriate legal entity for your cosmetics business. This could be a limited liability company (LLC), corporation, partnership, or sole proprietorship. Each type has its own benefits and drawbacks so it’s important to do research and choose wisely so that your cosmetics business is in compliance with local laws.

3. Register Your Cosmetics Business - Once you have chosen a legal structure, the next step is to register your cosmetics business with the government or state where you’re operating from. This includes obtaining licenses and permits as required by federal, state, and local laws. 

4. Identify Financing Options - It’s likely that you’ll need some capital to start your cosmetics business, so take some time to identify what financing options are available such as bank loans, investor funding, grants, or crowdfunding platforms. 

5. Choose a Location - Whether you plan on operating out of a physical location or not, you should always have an idea of where you’ll be based should it become necessary in the future as well as what kind of space would be suitable for your operations. 

6. Hire Employees - There are several ways to find qualified employees including job boards like LinkedIn or Indeed as well as hiring agencies if needed – depending on what type of employees you need it might also be more effective to reach out directly through networking events. 

7. Acquire Necessary Cosmetics Equipment & Supplies - In order to start your cosmetics business, you'll need to purchase all of the necessary equipment and supplies to run a successful operation. 

8. Market & Promote Your Business - Once you have all the necessary pieces in place, it’s time to start promoting and marketing your cosmetics business. This includes creating a website, utilizing social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter, and having an effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy. You should also consider traditional marketing techniques such as radio or print advertising. 

Learn more about how to start a successful cosmetics business:

• How to Start a Cosmetics Business

Other Helpful Business Plan Templates

Ecommerce Business Plan Template Beauty Supply Store Business Plan Template Retail Business Plan Template

From Idea to Foundation

Master the Essentials: Laying the Groundwork for Lasting Business Success. 

Funding and Approval Toolkit

Shape the future of your business, business moves fast. stay informed..

Discover the Best Tools for Business Plans

Learn from the business planning experts, resources to help you get ahead, how to write a cosmetic or skincare company business plan, your key to success, the ultimate guide to planning your beauty company.

This article will take you through the essentials of creating a business plan tailored to the cosmetic and skincare industry.

Read on to discover the secrets to crafting a winning business plan for your cosmetic or skincare company!

Who is this for?

Cosmetic Brand, Skincare Brand, Makeup Artist, Beauty Salon, Spa, Esthetician, Cosmetic Dentistry, Dermatologist, Plastic Surgeon, Beauty Supply Store, Online Beauty Retailer, Subscription Box Service, Cosmetic Manufacturing, Private Label Cosmetics, Cosmetic Packaging, Cosmetic Testing Laboratory, Beauty Product Distributor, Cosmetic Wholesaler, Beauty Product Marketing Agency, Beauty Product Photography, Beauty Blog, Cosmetic Ingredient Supplier, Cosmetic Product Trainer, Beauty School, Cosmetic Formulation Chemist, Cosmetic Regulatory Consultant, Cosmetic Product Development, Organic Skincare Brand, Natural Skincare Brand, Clean Beauty Brand.

Why You Should Read This Article

If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve got a brilliant idea for a cosmetic or skincare company that’s ready to take the industry by storm. But before you start mixing up formulas or designing packaging, there’s one crucial step you can’t afford to skip: writing a business plan.

What is a Business Plan?

A business plan is essentially a roadmap for your company’s future. It’s a comprehensive document that outlines your business model and concept, market analysis, operational strategy, financial projections, and more. Think of it as your company’s resume – it’s your chance to showcase your vision, your expertise, and your potential to investors, partners, and even yourself.

Why Do I Need a Business Plan?

Now, you might be thinking, “I’m a creative visionary, not a business person. Why do I need to bother with a boring old business plan?” Well, my friend, let me tell you – a solid business plan is absolutely essential for any entrepreneur looking to succeed in the competitive world of cosmetics and skincare.

Here’s why:

• Clarity and Focus: Writing a business plan forces you to think critically about every aspect of your business, from your target market to your production process to your financial projections. It helps you clarify your vision, set concrete goals, and develop a clear strategy for achieving them.
• Attract Funding: If you’re planning to seek funding from investors or loans from banks, a well-crafted business plan is non-negotiable. Investors in the beauty and personal care industry want to see that you’ve done your homework, that you understand your market, and that you have a realistic plan for turning a profit.
• Competitive Edge: The beauty and personal care industry is fiercely competitive, with new brands popping up every day. A strong business plan can help you stand out from the crowd by showcasing your unique value proposition and demonstrating your industry expertise.
• Decision-Making Tool: As you grow your business, your business plan will serve as a valuable decision-making tool. It provides a framework for evaluating new opportunities, measuring progress, and making strategic course corrections along the way.

But writing a compelling business plan for a cosmetic or skincare company isn’t just about filling in a generic template. To create a plan that truly sets you up for success, you need to dive deep into the unique challenges and opportunities of the beauty industry.

That’s where this guide comes in. We’ve pulled together insights from industry experts, successful entrepreneurs, and our own decades of experience to walk you through the key considerations and best practices for writing a winning business plan for your cosmetic or skincare company.

Whether you’re a skincare aficionado with dreams of launching your own clean beauty line or a makeup artist ready to turn your signature looks into a global brand, this guide will give you the tools and knowledge you need to put your best face forward (pun totally intended).

So grab a notepad, get ready to dive into some market research, and let’s start building the business plan that will bring your company to life!

The 6 Things You Must Consider Before Writing Your Cosmetics or Skincare Business Plan

In the glittering, Instagram-worthy world of cosmetics and skincare, a well-crafted business plan is your roadmap to success. But don’t be fooled by the industry’s pretty face – behind the scenes, it’s a massive, highly organized, efficient, and fiercely competitive arena where every detail matters. According to Statista, the revenue in the U.S. cosmetics segment is forecast to grow by 19.04 percent between 2023 and 2028, reaching a staggering $23.12 billion. Meanwhile, the U.S. skincare market is projected to generate $24.35 billion in revenue in 2024 alone, with a yearly growth rate of 2.94% through 2028.

If you want to carve off a chunk of this lucrative market for yourself, you better be prepared. Before you even think about writing your business plan, there’s a crucial pre-planning phase known as the “gestation” period that can make or break your startup. The Harvard Business Review’s analysis of the University of Michigan’s Panel Study of Entrepreneurship found that “the most successful entrepreneurs were those that wrote their business plan between six and 12 months after deciding to start a business.”

At Businessplan.com, we know that our Pre-Planning Process provides a solid framework for entrepreneurs across industries. But those in the cosmetics and skincare sector face unique challenges and opportunities. Here are six essential considerations to guide your pre-planning journey, ensuring your startup isn’t just another flash in the pan, but a brand built for lasting success in this demanding industry.

1. Syncing With Current and Emerging Industry Trends

Why it matters.

Aligning your business idea with current and future trends isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s a must-have. Cara Eaton, Sustainability Director at Croda , points out that innovation across various sectors offers exciting opportunities for impact . But here’s the thing: you need to understand these trends inside and out. Only then can you identify where your business can fill gaps, meet unmet needs, and anticipate what your customers will be clamoring for next. 

Connecting with “Know Your Customer”

So, how do you make sure your business idea is on point with industry trends? It all starts with getting up close and personal with your target customers. And no, we’re not talking about some half-hearted survey or focus group. To truly understand your customers’ functional, emotional, and social jobs-to-be-done , you need to conduct Pre-Vision Interviews with your competitors’ customers as part of the Know Your Customer step in the Pre-Planning Process.

These interviews are your golden ticket to uncovering what makes your customers tick, what makes them switch, and what they’re secretly wishing for. By diving deep into your competitors’ customers, you can spot opportunities for innovation and make sure your product or service is the answer to your customers’ prayers. This is how you validate, refine, or pivot your business idea early on, so you don’t end up pouring your blood, sweat, and tears into something that’s DOA.

2. Embracing a Consumer-Centric Approach to Product Development

Consumers are no longer satisfied with just a pretty package or a clever marketing campaign. They want products that deliver real results, align with their values , and elevate their skincare experience. The rise of products offering clinical benefits alongside sensory experiences is a testament to this shift. To stay relevant, you need to put your consumers at the heart of your product development process. This means digging deep into their needs, preferences, and pain points, and using these insights to guide every decision you make.

From Interviews to Insights

Remember those Pre-Vision Interviews we talked about in the Know Your Customer step? They’re not just a box to check off your pre-planning to-do list. These interviews are a goldmine of valuable insights that can shape your product development strategy. But here’s the catch: you need to know how to conduct these interviews effectively and, more importantly, how to analyze the data you collect.

This is where many aspiring entrepreneurs stumble. They go through the motions of conducting interviews but fail to extract the key insights that can make or break their product ideas. To avoid this pitfall, you need to approach the interview process with a clear framework and a set of targeted questions that get to the heart of your customers’ needs and desires. And once you have that raw data, you need to roll up your sleeves and dive into the analysis phase.

Refining Your Product Ideas

Analyzing your interview data is all about identifying patterns, themes, and opportunities. It’s about reading between the lines and uncovering the unmet needs and unexpressed wishes of your target market. And most importantly, it’s about being willing to use this information to objectively refine your product ideas.

This is where the rubber meets the road. You might have a vision for a groundbreaking new skincare product, but if your customer insights point in a different direction, you need to be willing to pivot. Embracing a consumer-centric approach means letting go of your ego and preconceived notions and letting your customers guide the way.

By integrating your customer insights into every stage of the product development process – from ideation to formulation to packaging – you’ll be able to create products that not only meet but exceed your customers’ expectations. And when you do that, you’ll earn more than just their business; you’ll earn their trust, loyalty, and advocacy.

3. Incorporating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) From the Start

In today’s beauty industry, DEI isn’t just a trendy acronym; it’s central to product-market fit. Consumers are demanding brands that not only talk the talk but also walk the walk when it comes to representing and celebrating diversity . By weaving DEI into the very fabric of your business from day one, you’ll be better positioned to connect with a broader consumer base and foster a more inclusive community around your brand.

Diversity in Customer Interviews

But here’s the thing: incorporating DEI isn’t just about the end product. It starts with the very first step of the Pre-Planning Process: Know Your Customer . When conducting competitor customer interviews, it’s critical to ensure that you’re gathering insights from a diverse range of backgrounds and perspectives.

Why? Because customers from different demographics, cultures, and life experiences will have vastly different needs, preferences, and pain points when it comes to cosmetics and skincare. By seeking out and listening to these diverse voices, you’ll be able to create products that resonate with a wider audience and avoid the pitfalls of a one-size-fits-all approach.

Building an Inclusive Brand

Incorporating DEI from the start isn’t just about doing the right thing; it’s also about building a brand that is relevant and resonant in today’s market. By prioritizing diversity in your product development, marketing, and corporate culture, you’ll be better equipped to meet the needs and expectations of an increasingly diverse consumer base.

Moreover, by fostering a workplace culture that values and thrives on diverse perspectives, you’ll unlock new sources of innovation and empathy in your business practices. And in an industry where understanding and connecting with your customers is everything, that’s a powerful competitive advantage.

4. Navigating Regulatory Compliance and Industry Standards

If you think regulatory compliance is just some boring paperwork, think again. In the high-stakes world of cosmetics and skincare, one misstep can spell disaster for your brand. And if you’re not factoring in the costs of compliance from day one, you’re setting yourself up for a nasty surprise down the line.

Don’t Get Blindsided

When you’re knee-deep in your Core Cost Analysis (CCA), it’s easy to focus on the obvious expenses like materials and direct labor. But if you’re not accounting for the myriad costs of meeting industry standards and regulations, you’re in for a rude awakening.

We’re talking safety testing, clinical trials, ingredient sourcing, labeling requirements – the list goes on. And if you think you can skimp on these costs and still come out on top, good luck with that.

Compliance as a Secret Weapon

But here’s the kicker: navigating compliance isn’t just about avoiding legal hot water. It’s also about building a brand that customers can trust. In a market where consumers are more savvy and skeptical than ever, and popular review sites like MakeupAlley and Beautypedia are just a click away,  a brand that prioritizes transparency and safety is going to stand out like a unicorn in a field of donkeys.

So when you’re crunching the numbers in your CCA, don’t just focus on the bare minimum. Factor in the costs of going above and beyond on compliance, and watch as it becomes your secret weapon in the battle for customer loyalty.

5. The Value of Finding Your Voice

Before you can craft a compelling brand voice, you need to know what you stand for. And that starts with your value propositions – the unique benefits and experiences you promise to deliver to your customers. As Dr. Brent Ridge , Co-Founder of Beekman 1802 , emphasizes, an authentically empathetic brand mission can forge deep, emotional connections with customers. But you can’t communicate that mission effectively without first defining your value propositions.

The Heart of Your Business Model

Your value propositions aren’t just a part of the Business Model Development step in the pre-planning stage– they’re the heart of it. When you’re developing your Business Model Canvas , your value propositions should be at the center, informing every other aspect of your business. From your customer segments to your channels to your revenue streams, every component of your business model should be designed to deliver on your value propositions.

Aligning Voice with Value

Once you’ve clearly defined your value propositions, you can start to develop a brand voice that authentically reflects them. Your brand voice is the personality and emotion you infuse into every interaction with your customers, from social media posts to packaging. It’s how you communicate your values, your mission, and your unique selling points in a way that resonates with your target audience.

By crafting your brand voice around your value propositions, you ensure that every touchpoint with your customers is aligned and working together to deliver on your brand promise. Your voice becomes an extension of your values, creating a consistent and cohesive brand experience that builds trust and loyalty with your customers.

6. Committing to Sustainability and Transparency from the Ground Up

Sustainability and transparency aren’t just buzzwords. Consumers are demanding that brands not only talk the talk but also walk the walk when it comes to ethical and sustainable practices. As Pamela Gill-Alabaster , Global Head of ESG & Sustainability at Kenvue , points out, companies need to be disclosing their ESG impacts with the same rigor and transparency as their financial reporting.

The crucial thing to understand: committing to sustainability and transparency isn’t just about checking boxes or appeasing consumers. It’s about building a brand that can stand the test of time. By integrating sustainable practices and transparency into your operations from the ground up, you’re not just aligning with consumer values – you’re future-proofing your business.

Operationalizing Sustainability

So how do you actually operationalize sustainability and transparency? It starts with the Operations in Detail phase of the Pre-Planning Process. This is where you take the key activities, resources, and partners outlined in your Business Model Canvas and turn them into actionable operations plans.

It’s about ensuring that sustainability and transparency are woven into every aspect of your operations. This means:

• Selecting suppliers and partners who share your commitment to sustainability and transparency
• Investing in sustainable technologies and practices throughout your supply chain
• Implementing robust tracking and reporting systems to ensure transparency and accountability
• Developing a company culture that prioritizes sustainability and transparency at every level

By taking a rigorous, detailed approach to operational planning, you can ensure that your commitment to sustainability and transparency is more than just lip service – it’s embedded in the very fabric of your business.

Get Up to Speed FAST!

Unsure where to start.

From Pre-Planning to Writing Your Business Plan

You’ve just explored the six key considerations every cosmetics and skincare entrepreneur should tackle before writing their business plan. And if you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed, that’s entirely normal. The truth is, the hard work of writing a business plan is actually in the pre-planning stage.

Now, this doesn’t mean there isn’t work left to do once you’ve laid the groundwork. But it does mean that the actual writing of your business plan needs to be based on the solid foundation you’ve built in the pre-planning phase.

As mentioned earlier, most successful new businesses spend six to 12 months in the pre-planning stage. That might seem like a long time, but trust me – it’s time well spent. So, if you haven’t already, bookmark this page and start setting yourself some pre-planning objectives. Go on, I’ll wait.

Oh, you’re back? Fantastic. So, you’ve done the entire Pre-Planning Process? How are you feeling? Still ready to write that business plan? Good, because here’s where the magic happens.

Want to increase your chances of success by 12%, especially knowing that half of businesses fail within five years of launch? Of course you do! Well, you might be surprised to know that the time you put into developing your business plan has a major impact.

Our friends over at Harvard Business Review have some eye-opening statistics on this. They found that the optimal time to spend on a business plan is three months. That’s right – three months of focused, strategic plan writing can increase your chances of creating a viable venture by 12%.

But here’s the kicker: spending any longer than three months on your plan is futile, mostly because the information used to inform the plan loses its currency. And spending just a month or two on the plan? That’s just as bad. 

Are you catching on to the theme here? Time. Planning a business properly is all about the time and effort you put in. 

So, are you ready to roll up your sleeves and do this right? Fantastic. The first thing you need to do is Understand Your Audience – and we’ll dive into that next.

Writing a Business Plan Tailored to Your Specific Audience

Alright, let’s get one thing straight: when it comes to writing your business plan, it’s not just about you. I mean, sure, you’re writing it for yourself (and that’s crucial), but you’ve also got to keep your audience in mind. And trust me, different audiences are looking for different things.

So, before you start scribbling away, take a moment to think about who you’re trying to impress. Are you pitching to investors? Applying for a bank loan? Trying to convince a landlord that your cosmetics startup won’t turn their property into a glittery disaster zone?

If you’re pitching to investors who specialize in early-stage cosmetics and skincare companies, you better believe they know their stuff. They’re not just looking for a pretty face (or product); they want to see that you’ve got the brains and the brand to back it up.

Take Shiseido , for example. When they launched their LIFT Ventures fund, they weren’t just throwing money at any old startup with a catchy name. They were looking for companies like Phyla and Patricks , who had a unique approach, a focus on science and wellness, and commercial traction to boot. Savvy investors are keeping a close eye on the latest trends and consumer preferences in the beauty industry, adapting their strategies to capitalize on the sector’s potential for growth, as highlighted in our article 9 Signs the Beauty Sector’s Investment Glow-Up Is on the Horizon , following a challenging year in 2023.

So, when you’re writing your plan for investors who happen to be beauty buffs, make sure you’re highlighting what sets you apart. Show them how your innovative technology or unique approach to the market is going to disrupt the industry and make them some serious cash.

On the other hand, if you’re applying for a bank loan or an SBA loan , you better be ready to get down to the nitty-gritty. These folks want to see detailed planning, comprehensive research, and a realistic assessment of your startup costs. They’re not interested in your cool logo or your influencer marketing strategy; they want to know that you’ve got a solid plan to pay them back.

So, when you’re writing your plan for the banks, make sure you’re dotting your i’s and crossing your t’s. Show them that you’ve done your homework, that you know your numbers inside and out, and that you’ve got a realistic plan to turn a profit.

The Bottom Line

At the end of the day, the success of your business plan hinges on its ability to meet the unique needs of its audience. Whether you’re going through the comprehensive Pre-Planning Process or using Model-Based Planning® to save time, the goal is the same: to create a well-thought-out document that not only serves as your own strategic roadmap but also convinces your audience that you’ve got what it takes to succeed in the competitive world of cosmetics and skincare.

So, before you start writing, take a moment to put yourself in your audience’s shoes. Do some research. What do they care about? What are they looking for? And how can you tailor your plan to show them that you’re the beauty brand they’ve been waiting for?

The Must-Haves When Writing Your Cosmetic and Skincare Company Business Plan

• Executive Summary: Your elevator pitch on steroids. Develop your narrative and give financiers the CliffsNotes version of your cosmetic and skincare company’s vision, unique value proposition, and why you’re the one to watch in this space.
• Market Analysis: Dive into the nitty-gritty research and analysis it takes to understand the current the beauty industry. Who’s your target audience? Who are your competitors, and how are you going to outmaneuver them? Show that you’ve done your homework and have a pulse on the market.
• Products & Specialization: What sets your cosmetic and skincare company apart? Are you the go-to for clean, vegan, and cruelty-free products? Spell it out, and don’t be afraid to toot your own horn.
• Operational Strategy: Give financiers a peek under the hood of your cosmetic and skincare company’s operations. From your supply chain management to your product development process, prove that you’ve got the chops to run a tight ship.
• Marketing & Sales: How are you going to get the word out and keep customers coming back for more? Lay out your strategy and implementation game plan, including your social media strategy, influencer partnerships, and any retail or e-commerce partnerships you’ve got up your sleeve.
• Management Team: Introduce the organizational structure and who’ll be leading your cosmetic and skincare company to glory. Highlight their track record, industry connections, and why they’re the dream team you need to succeed.
• Financial Projections: Don’t be shy about the numbers. Present your financial projections , including startup costs, revenue targets, and profitability timeline. Prove that your cosmetic and skincare company is a money-making machine waiting to happen.
• Appendices: Include any extra goodies that’ll give your business plan an edge, such as market research, customer testimonials, or letters of intent from potential retail partners.

To wrap up, remember that writing a business plan for your cosmetic or skincare company is not just a one-and-done exercise. As your business grows and evolves, so should your plan. Make a habit of revisiting and updating your plan regularly – at least once a year – to ensure that it stays relevant and actionable.

And most importantly, don’t let the process of writing a business plan intimidate you. Yes, it takes time, effort, and research, but it’s also an incredibly valuable opportunity to deepen your understanding of your industry, your customers, and your own business. By following the steps and best practices outlined in this guide, you’ll be well on your way to creating a business plan that sets your cosmetic or skincare company up for long-term success.

So what are you waiting for? It’s time to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and start turning your beauty business dreams into a reality. Your future customers (and investors) are waiting!

Unlock Your Beauty Brand's Potential

Expert business planning for cosmetic and skincare entrepreneurs.

Introducing the Expert Business Planning Bundle – your comprehensive toolkit for building a thriving cosmetic or skincare business. Curated specifically for beauty entrepreneurs, this bundle includes the Model-Based Planning® Worksheet, a cosmetic and skincare-specific business plan template, a powerful financial projection Excel model, and expert guides on leveraging these tools and AI to develop a winning plan. Invest in your beauty brand’s future and bring your vision to life.

Beauty Business Planning Essentials

Insider secrets for standout success.

Developed by the top business planning team in the U.S., our Expert Business Planning Bundle gives you the insider secrets and expert resources to create a standout business plan for your cosmetic or skincare venture. Leveraging these industry-specific tools and strategies will set you apart from the competition and position your beauty brand for success.

With this bundle, you will:

• Access insider knowledge and proven strategies used by the top business planning company in the U.S.
• Gain a competitive edge by leveraging expert resources tailored specifically to the cosmetic and skincare industry
• Harness the power of a cosmetic and skincare-specific template filled with targeted pro tips, insights, and instructions
• Streamline your planning process using the Model-Based Planning® Worksheet for Cosmetic and Skincare Companies
• Create professional financial projections with the included Excel model designed for beauty businesses
• Structure and organize your plan effectively using the curated cosmetic and skincare-focused business plan template
• Learn how to leverage these tools and AI to develop a compelling and comprehensive business plan
• Increase your chances of securing loans, investments, or approvals needed to bring your cosmetic and skincare vision to life

Use this bundle as your primary toolkit for crafting a cosmetic or skincare company business plan that unlocks the funding and support you need.

Don’t rely on generic templates when creating your cosmetic or skincare business plan. Instead, invest in a toolkit carefully curated by industry experts who have spent their careers helping beauty businesses succeed. The Expert Business Planning Bundle is the best investment you can make, as no other resource can match its depth, breadth, and practical wisdom tailored specifically to the cosmetic and skincare industry.

Our team has distilled their thousands of hours of experience working with successful beauty businesses into a comprehensive toolkit that saves you time, money, and prevents costly mistakes. This targeted, practical knowledge enables you to write a business plan that surpasses what even the best consultants could produce, customized to your unique needs and goals.

Whether you’re seeking funding, approvals, or simply want to set your cosmetic and skincare business up for long-term success, the Expert Business Planning Bundle is the ultimate resource to help you achieve your vision. With this toolkit, you’ll have the confidence and expertise to create a compelling business plan that unlocks the doors to the funding and support your beauty brand deserves.

Frequently Asked Questions

• How can I tailor my cosmetic and skincare business plan to attract potential investors?

To appeal to investors, highlight aspects that demonstrate profitability, scalability, and your competitive edge in the market. Emphasize your management team’s experience and expertise in the cosmetic and skincare industry, and showcase how your unique offerings and business model position you for success. Include financial projections that illustrate your growth potential and the return on investment that investors can expect.

• What information should I include in the business description section of my cosmetic and skincare business plan?

In the business description section, provide a comprehensive overview of your cosmetic and skincare company. This should include your business concept, target market, product or service offerings, unique selling points, location, brand design, market fit, differentiators, and your vision for impact on the industry. Be sure to clearly articulate how your company stands out from competitors and meets the needs of your target customers.

• How much personal information should I share about the management team in my cosmetic and skincare business plan?

When discussing your management team, include succinct biographies of key members, focusing on their relevant experience, skills, and contributions to the success of your cosmetic and skincare company. Highlight their expertise in areas such as product development, marketing, sales, or operations, and how their backgrounds align with the needs of your business. Avoid excessive personal detail and keep the information professional and relevant to your company’s goals.

• Should I highlight past success stories in my cosmetic and skincare business plan?

Yes, including past success stories can enhance your credibility and appeal to banks, investors, or other stakeholders. If you or your team members have previous experience in the cosmetic and skincare industry, showcase how these experiences have equipped you with valuable skills, insights, and networks that will contribute to the success of your current venture. This can help build confidence in your ability to execute your business plan and achieve your goals.

• What are the key elements of a company overview in a cosmetic and skincare business plan?

The company overview should provide a concise summary of the essence of your cosmetic and skincare business. This includes your company name, location, product or service offerings, and the experience you aim to provide for your customers. Additionally, outline your mission statement, core values, and long-term objectives, highlighting how these elements align with your target market and industry trends. This section should give readers a clear understanding of what your company represents and its goals for growth and success in the cosmetic and skincare market.

Welcome to Businessplan.com

Currently in beta test mode.

Products available for purchase are placeholders and no orders will be processed at this time.

Let’s craft the ultimate business planning platform together.

Have questions, suggestions, or want a sneak peek at upcoming tools and resources? Connect with us on X or join “On the Right Foot” on Substack .

This site uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.

Ok, Got It.

Privacy Policy

• Diploma in Organic Skincare Formulation
• The International Organic Skincare Entrepreneur Program
• Diploma in Organic Haircare Formulation
• Diploma in Beauty Brand Business Management
• The Lab at Formula Botanica
• Advanced Diploma in Organic Cosmetic Science
• Certificate in Organic Anti-Ageing Skincare
• Certificate in Natural Cosmetic Preservation
• Certificate in Cosmetic Stability Testing
• Free Training
• Your shopping bag is empty. Go to the shop

How to Write a Beauty Products Business Plan

Updated: 22 March, 2022

As a founder of a beauty brand start-up, you’ll need a clear vision, a well-written beauty products business plan and to have put some skin in the game in terms of hard work, time and funds. But how do you go about getting started on that all-important business plan and what should it contain?

In this blog post, we summarise the 10 key steps new beauty entrepreneurs need to work through to write a business plan for a cosmetics company. This is essential reading for anyone wondering how to start a beauty business from home as it makes you aware of just what you will need to think through and start planning for.

Running a cosmetic business requires you to be very organised. You will need a strong business plan that leads you through all of the main components of your cosmetic business. The relief is that your business plan does not need to be the size of a thesis. In fact, the more concise it is the better as you will be able to tackle it and feel like referring to it in the future.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Formula Botanica (@formulabotanica)

Our step-by-step video guide below is based on the business planning exercises we provide as part of our Diploma in Beauty Brand Business Management . The Diploma is an extensive, six-module course that takes you on an intensive journey from would-be entrepreneur to empowered founder armed with a structured business plan. Pre-enrol to find out more about this diploma and our other courses.

10-Step Guide to Your Beauty Products Business Plan

Step 1: why your beauty business needs a plan.

The first step is to set yourself a challenge: ask yourself why you are writing a business plan in the first place. There is no point in going through the motions of writing a beauty product business plan. You need to buy into the very concept of business planning.

We know that the thought of writing a business plan can seem daunting. However, your business plan is a necessary and very important strategic document as it focuses your energy, time and resources on a clear end game; not only that of launching a successful beauty business, but also of ensuring it has the potential to thrive longer term.

Your business plan isn’t just to show potential investors and otherwise hide away in a filing cabinet. It is a tool to refer to every time you are faced with important decisions. Your plan guides your decision-making and makes the everyday of running your beauty business simpler and smoother.

It will take time to write your business plan as it summarises the hard work you need to do beforehand in discovering your vision, working out your ‘why’ and what your brand stands for, what you’ll be selling, where you’ll be selling, who your competitors are and what your market gap is, and how you’ll fund your business. It also entails drafting a full financial plan, based on things like sales’ forecasts.

With this mindset challenge out of the way, let’s cover the key areas of your plan in the next steps.

Step 2: Your beauty brand mission and vision

We’ve seen many start-up beauty entrepreneurs rush into designing their branding before they have even worked out why they are in business. Before branding, come your vision and mission. Often confused and easily ignored, these two statements are the guiding lights of your business.

First, let’s define them. Your vision is about your bigger dreams. It isn’t simply that you want to make organic formulations to sell to anyone. Your vision statement sets out how you want to make a difference with your beauty brand. At Formula Botanica, our vision, in brief, is to make natural formulation as commonplace as cookery.

Your brand mission statement says how you intend to achieve that vision. At Formula Botanica, our mission is to ‘teach the world to formulate’. As you can see from our example, the mission is practical and active and states how we accomplish our vision – through teaching and our online courses.

When you write your brand vision and mission statements, you’re not writing boring, bland, catch-all statements. Coming up with why your beauty brand exists and how it serves your customers is not a quick back-of-the-envelope exercise either. It may take you weeks to define your vision and mission, but this is time well spent as these statements are the heart of your beauty business. Don’t move on to the next steps until you have total clarity on them.

Step 3: Your niche and customers

It’s all well and good having your vision and mission, but if you don’t know your niche in the beauty market nor much about whom you are selling to, then you might not have a business at all. We’re sure you’ve heard this advice a hundred times, but you need to know exactly who you’re going to be selling to. You need to understand who this type of person is, how they live and how they shop.

Once you know who your target customer is, all of a sudden everything clicks into place and becomes easier in terms of selling. You know which marketing messages work best for your customer, you know what they’re looking for and you know how to sell to them. When starting your beauty products business, you need to have a niche and that niche cannot be ‘organic’ or ‘natural’. There are so many untapped niches in the beauty industry, for instance, skincare for women in their fifties, skincare for certain types of athletes (swimmers, runners, etc.), and skincare for teenage boys.

Jot down bullet points about your ideal customer; include where they live, what other brands they buy, how they holiday, what their key skincare issues are and so on. Be brief but on point. Home in on a single person – often called your brand ‘avatar’. It might sound tedious to do, but once you have that person clearly in your mind, everything in your business will work to meeting their needs. Just ensure that you really do have a niche that exists.

We reported on some trends from In-Cosmetics Global , in Paris (April 2019). We’re not suggesting you need to keep up with the latest fad in the beauty industry, but do your market research thoroughly so you can decide where to position your brand and products.

Step 4: Your beauty products

Your business plan needs to detail your initial product(s) and explain what their sales’ proposition is and how they meet your target customers’ needs. This sounds simple to do, but believe us when we say we have seen new beauty entrepreneurs incur huge expenses as they change their direction and minds on products just after launching. Bringing new products on board can often be a way of diverting yourself from the hard task of marketing and sales.

When you learn to formulate natural skincare, you create a diversity of products without much thought about how they fit together as a range or as a beauty routine for customers. When you think like a business, you need to understand very clearly what you are selling and what proposition your products offer your target customers.

It is possible to launch with a single product, and there are well-known examples of beauty brands with only a ‘hero’ product to their name. If you are creating a range, work out how the products complement each other. Also, given issues of sustainable consumption, think about how a single product can demonstrate a unique selling proposition by multi-tasking.

Your range has financial implications so you need to decide how many products to launch with and which create a minimal viable range that makes sense for your budget and for your customers’ needs. Above all, your cosmetics’ range will need to demonstrate it has a place in the market and how it improves your customers’ lives.

Step 5: Your competitors

Yes, your competitors most certainly have a place in your skincare business plan. You, as the founder, bring your individual perspectives and experiences to your brand, so in one sense you have uniqueness built into the foundations of your beauty business. That said, you need to keep a close eye on the movers and shakers in your niche and in particular at your product range’s price point. Knowing your competitors keeps you on your toes and is information any investor will ask for, up front and early on.

It can be frustrating at times to research your competitors as their websites might be PR speak and not give much away. Look for interviews with the founders and follow them on all their social media to glean more. Competitor research can help you identify areas where your brand can thrive and can show you more effective ways to grow customer loyalty – and build your business. See what they are doing so that you know what’s working for them and what isn’t. Write a list of their strengths and weaknesses to see how you can do better. You also need to know where to position yourself in comparison to your competitors.

Don’t obsess about your competitors, but check in on what they are up to every few months. Your aim is not to copy them, but to control your beauty products’ conversation. Again, if you have clarity on the earlier steps – mission, vision, niche and customer – then you are on solid ground. It is just good business sense to know what is going on in the market.

Step 6: Your manufacturing strategy

Your manufacturing strategy is a large part of your business strategy. You need to decide whether you will be producing your beauty products yourself in your own (home) lab – according to Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) , using a contract manufacturer or opting for private label products. You need to define also which route suits you at launch and mention any plans to switch model later on.

Each model has its pros and cons depending on your mission and vision, as well as implications for important aspects of your business such as distribution, logistics, financing, and contractual obligations to retailers who stock your brand. How many units of products do you envisage creating a year? Which model suits your entrepreneurial ambitions and lifestyle? As you can see, your business model and manufacturing model go hand in hand. Having an end goal in sight is critical to shaping your overall business plan, the amount of capital you need to raise and the way you conduct your day-to-day operations.

There is no right or wrong choice here, but ensure you know the implications of whichever route your opt for. It might sound perfect making your own products at home in small artisanal batches, but we do know of beauty entrepreneurs who find their business sky rockets faster than they imagined. They then play catch up trying to find and fund outsourced manufacturing so they don’t let retail stockists down. This is a critical area of your business plan and needs you to consider your vision and ethos, as well as think about your own time, hiring staff, and your overall financial situation.

Step 7: Your retail strategy

We’ve seen many indie beauty entrepreneurs think they can sell direct to consumer from their website alone. To do this successfully, you need to invest in becoming a proficient digital marketer – or outsource the role. It can be tempting at the outset to want to sell directly from your own website because your keep all the profit yourself. However, although you receive lower profit margins by having your products stocked in stores and e-stores, retailers can help get your products sold and your brand known as they have a ready customer market; whereas you are unknown and have to build awareness of your brand from scratch.

The work you have done so far in defining your niche, customers, competitors and product range should indicate which retailers suit your brand best. Will your brand fit into the mass, so-called ‘masstige’, premium or luxury retail categories? And which retailers do you hope will stock your brand? What are their likely margins and what implications does this have for your manufacturing model and financial forecasts? Will you also work with distributors in certain markets, especially overseas, and again, how do their margins affect your bottom line?

You must address all these questions and more in your beauty business plan . It is no good working out how and where to sell once your products are all stacked in boxes in your living room or at a warehouse!

Step 8: Your funding

We might have left finances to last, but finding the money to fund your business is an issue that dominates your entire business plan. As you’ve seen, each previous step has financial implications. As we mentioned in our post on how to start a cosmetic business from home , you won’t be able to run a successful beauty brand without having a firm grip on finances. Having sound plans for raising finance at various junctures in your business is sound business practice.

Your business plan needs to cover the different types of funding options available to you now and in the future, whether ‘love money’ loaned from friends and family, bank loans or other sources such as crowdfunding. it needs to look at short-term and long-term sources of finance. You need to understand and pre-empt what your potential investors will ask you about financing and demonstrate in your business plan that you and your business are worth investing in.

Step 9: Your financial forecast

If you are reading this, it is likely you are thinking of starting an indie beauty business. As business plans are best written in the first year of your beauty business, you may well be pre-revenue when you draft it – or need it when pitching to investors. You may not have sales yet, but you can still show some key figures on the size of your market and your brand’s potential.

To introduce your financial forecast, you should include a timeline showing your milestones, such as when you started, your key achievements, any brand or packaging development, what stage you are at now, i.e. do you have a product in creation and how much have you invested or fund-raised so far? If you are already selling, then you can show how much investment has gone into the company already, what returns and sales you have and what your financial projections are.

There will be a need for you to factor in expenses you hadn’t thought of. One such ‘hidden’ expense we see many beauty entrepreneurs fail to predict is the need to cover retailers’ promotions. Stores generally expect you to contribute to their promotions of your products. Cashflow is everything in a business, even one selling successfully. You may face shortfalls of cash while waiting for retailers to pay you. That time lag means your day-to-day business can grind to a halt if your cash is tied up in stock and you have nothing to cover buying in more raw materials to keep production going or to cover promotions or seasonal campaigns.

As you can see, financial forecasting is about your day-to-day business, and this alone is one reason you need to revisit your business plan frequently. You need to keep an eye on your profit and loss sheets and map the trends monthly. Learn as much as you can yourself about financial forecasting and measuring your business’ financial health. Having an accountant or financial expert assist with this information can help you be better prepared both day to day and when talking about your finances to potential investors.

10: What to do with your plan now

Congratulate yourself. You have made it through the first draft of your business plan – or roadmap. But, now comes perhaps the hardest step of all; that of doing something useful with your business plan, as opposed to archiving it in some filing cabinet. This is a plan to revisit and adjust, and to assess your business’ health and performance against. It is not a document to present to banks and potential investors at the start of your business journey and then forget all about.

So, what exactly do you need to look at it for, and how often? Let’s take just a few examples of areas you will need to review.

First, you need to revisit your financial forecast monthly. See how your budgeting is measuring up against actual sales and expenses. Are things on track? Either way, yes or no, you will have a benchmark against which to measure your current business health. This information will guide you as you go forward.

Then, revisit your competitors and the overall market situation. How have things changed and how might this affect your product range, pricing or development? Be aware that you need time to get established in your market. Knee-jerk reactions can be costly. But use your plan to monitor things.

Examples of areas to review annually are your mission, vision and niche. Was your research when drafting the plan accurate? Have you proved the concept of your brand and product range? Access to a mastermind group of like-minded business founders, even in different sectors, or a mentor can help you work through any changes you think are necessary to your core statements. Again, think these through basing decisions on financials too.

Pre-enrol in a Formula Botanica course and learn how to start a cosmetic business

We hope our points have given you the outline of what you need in to think through in starting a beauty business. If you have a mission to create a beauty brand that’s bigger than yourself – a skincare brand, haircare line or makeup range that changes people lives – we can help you learn how to formulate your own products and all about bringing a brand to market.

Pre-enrol now in our Diploma in Beauty Brand Business Management – the ultimate online training programme in starting or growing your indie beauty brand. We like to refer to it as a Beauty Brand MBA. It is a combination of award-winning teaching materials and a web summit with 30+ influential speakers drawn from the best in the beauty and business community.

Or why not pre-enrol on one of our formulation diplomas and courses in skincare, haircare and cosmetic science to change your life through natural formulation? All our courses are fun and empowering and can be career changing.

Your start-up costs with a beauty business vary according to where you set your sights and relate very much to your personal goals and circumstances and not only to current funds and cash flow. The ballpark figure you find is around US $20,000 or similar in Euros. If you wish to outsource, initial start-up costs are high as most contract manufacturers require large minimum order quantities. Similarly, your branding and packaging also rack up costs especially if you are aiming at the more luxury end of the market. Writing a business plan to help you think through all the variables can give you a clearer idea of your beauty business start up costs and help you plan finances as your business grows. You can start on a small budget by making product at home to sell at local markets. Work out your personal goals and lifestyle needs first to have an idea of what costs you will face.

Indie beauty is flourishing and ever more skincare entrepreneurs find a niche and enter the market. But, finding a niche that resonates with customers is key to defining what type of beauty business to launch. Being clean, green, natural or even organic is not enough these days to necessarily differentiate your potential beauty business. Think carefully about how your beauty products will resolve the issues and fulfill the needs of a clear segment of consumers. Do not be all things all to people. By researching for and writing a beauty brand business plan, you will shape your ideas and define a viable product offer, customer base and route to market.

Join us at Formula Botanica, where tens of thousands of students and followers take our free and paid online courses to learn how to formulate organic skincare and haircare for themselves or to sell and also how to set up a beauty brand and business.

Leave us a comment

Liz is Formula Botanica’s Content Coordinator and joined our team in August 2020. Liz worked as a professional blogger, journalist and site developer for many years and was also part of the Formula Botanica student community. Read more about the Formula Botanica Team .

Natural Beauty Trends on Pinterest

Pinterest is the go-to platform for beauty trends. We round up Pinterest's 2021 beauty predictions and give tips on...

Start Your Own Natural & Organic Skincare Business – Step 16: Social Media

Starting Your Natural Skincare Business? Welcome to the 23 steps to start your organic and natural skincare business. Today’s video builds upon...

3 Business Mistakes That Are Slowly Killing Your Beauty Brand

You’ve got the perfect products. Your website is looking sharp. And you are busting your booty to really make...

7 Tips on Using Instagram for Indie Beauty

Want to use Instagram to market your indie beauty brand? Formula Botanica's 7 strategic tips on making the most...

Natural and Organic Beauty Market to reach $54bn by 2027

There has never been a better time to start your own organic beauty business. We’ve been saying this for...

Transforming the Beauty Media – an interview with Beauty Independent

Lorraine Dallmeier Lorraine Dallmeier is a Biologist, Chartered Environmentalist and the CEO of Formula Botanica, the award-winning online organic...

Organic beauty: debunking myths and misconceptions

Organic is the gold standard for cosmetics, but does it make them more expensive or less efficacious? We debunk...

5 sustainable practices for your indie beauty business

Sustainable beauty is about the journey not the destination. Our guide on sustainable beauty is packed with practical tips...

Leave a reply Click here to cancel the reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

FREE FOUNDATION COURSE

How to become an organic skincare formulator, free training, how to become an organic skincare entrepreneur, our top courses.

Our Top Posts

Green Beauty Podcast

Blog Categories

• Formulations
• Ingredients
• School News
• Our Graduates

Latest Blog Posts

Explore Our Website

• Our History
• Meet our Team
• School Reviews
• Scholarship Program

Formula Botanica Supports

We have planted 100,000 trees through TreeSisters.

JOIN OUR COMMUNITY

Free e-course sign up.

We love receiving your emails. We try to respond to all messages within 2 working days, but are often much faster!

Log in with your credentials

Forgot your details.

Upmetrics AI Assistant: Simplifying Business Planning through AI-Powered Insights. Learn How

• AI ASSISTANTS

Upmetrics AI Your go-to AI-powered business assistant

AI Writing Assist Write, translate, and refine your text with AI

AI Financial Assist Automated forecasts and AI recommendations

• TOP FEATURES

AI Business Plan Generator Create business plans faster with AI

Financial Forecasting Make accurate financial forecasts faster

Strategic Planning Develop actionable strategic plans on-the-go

AI Pitch Deck Generator Use AI to generate your investor deck

See how it works  →

AI-powered business planning software

Very useful business plan software connected to AI. Saved a lot of time, money and energy. Their team is highly skilled and always here to help.

- Julien López

• BY USE CASE

Starting & Launching a Business Plan your business for launch and success

Validate Your Business Idea Discover the potential of your business idea

Secure Funding, Loans, Grants Create plans that get you funded

Business Consultant & Advisors Plan seamlessly with your team members and clients

Business Schools & Educators Simplify business plan education for students

Students & Learners Your e-tutor for business planning

• Sample Plans
• WHY UPMETRICS?

Reviews See why customers love Upmetrics

Customer Success Stories Read our customer success stories

Blogs Latest business planning tips and strategies

Strategic Planning Templates Ready-to-use strategic plan templates

Business Plan Course A step-by-step business planning course

Ebooks & Guides A free resource hub on business planning

Business Tools Free business tools to help you grow

• Sample Business Plans
• Beauty Salon & Fitness

Skin Care Business Plan

People are increasingly opting for a healthier and better lifestyle these days. And for the same reason, there is an increasing demand for better skin care products as well.

Also, the rise of YouTube and the popularity gained by skincare has led to increasing demand for skin care products.

If you have innovative ideas to make skincare better, are a beauty enthusiast yourself, and can keep up with the changing beauty trends and demands then a skincare business might be your perfect match.

If you are planning to start a new skincare business, the first thing you will need is a skin care business plan . Use our skin care business plan example & start writing your business plan in no time.

Skin Care Business Plan Outline

This is the standard format of a business plan for a skincare business, and it includes all the key components that your plan should have.

Executive Summary

An executive summary part comes first in a business plan’s introduction.

Give a brief description of the skincare company, an introduction of all your skincare products, the concept, business models, goals, long-term and short-term plans, marketing strategy, & your direct competitors in the executive summary of the beauty products business plan.

The executive summary should catch the attention of your audience or investors to want to invest in your company.

Say goodbye to boring templates

Build your business plan faster and easier with AI

Plans starting from $7/month

1) Problem Definition & Validation

Here are a few questions to answer for validation:

• What issue (or group of issues) is your audience having related to your business industry?
• Which options are most feasible and have the biggest market value?
• Who are the people affected by these issues?

2) Solution

Now you know the problems and the audience you will serve, search for the solution you will provide for the problem.

3) Objectives

Describe the skin care business in detail. When an organization grows, its business objectives are the specific, quantifiable results that it wants to achieve. There are two types of goals: short-term (1-3 years) and long-term (3-5 or more years). Some of the goals might include: for instance

• Hiring 50+ employees in 3 years (short-term)
• 200+ customers in a year (short-term)
• 1 million repetitive orders in 5 years (long-term)
• 10 million sales in 5 years ( long-term)

4) Mission Statement

Your company’s mission statement outlines what it delivers, how it accomplishes this, and who it assists. It encapsulates the total worth of your product or service. Your company will achieve its vision if it stays true to its mission.

It’s important to keep your mission statement concise, precise, and explicit when you write it.

5) Keys To Success

Mention all of your company’s unique selling points. Check that your products are market-fit or not, look after your audience, and give them the exact solution that no one else is providing.

6) Financial Highlights

It describes a company’s historical financial situation (if available) as well as its future financial projections. This area of the plan includes supporting documents such as budgets and financial records, as well as funding requests.

Numbers are introduced in the financial section of the skin care business plan presentation.

Business Overview

A section of a business plan called the business overview gives a broad description of your skincare business. This part provides information about your business’s organization, values, mission, and products to the public. It can also show what distinguishes your business from rivals. This portion of the business plan is referred to as the “company description” or “summary”.

Products & Services

Provide information about all the products & services your skincare company will offer. Mention any plans you may have for all of the services and goods.

Your skincare business plan should also include any extra services you plan to offer. For example, “Free delivery above 50 or 100$ orders” or “Offer of 1+1 free products on certain days”.

Market Analysis

Educating yourself about the skincare sector is the first step. It helps in your understanding of the skincare industry.

The second benefit of market analysis is that it might enhance your marketing plan, especially if your analysis reveals market trends.

Your skin care business plan’s market analysis section has to address the following inquiries:

• How much money is invested in the skin care industry?
• The market is either growing or shrinking.
• Who are the market’s major rivals?
• Who are the main market suppliers?
• What patterns are influencing the sector?
• Relevant market size

By estimating the size of the market and then relating that number to your local population, you can gather the target audience.

SWOT Analysis

Make sure you’ve taken into account all of your company’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as the opportunities and threats it faces in the market, as SWOT analysis can help you develop a solid business plan.

For the skincare business also doing a SWOT analysis and defining its solutions is necessary. Using Upmetrics, you will be able to write and analyze every aspect of your skincare business plan.

Operational Plan

How you will carry out the objectives you outlined in the preceding areas is explained in your operations plan.

Describe the management team who is going to lead, along with their experience & expertise. How many personnel together can achieve those goals, and how many new ones you need to hire should also be mentioned here.

Mention all your goals and strategies for how to achieve them.

Financial Plan

Your 5-year financial statement should be broken out monthly or quarterly for the first year and then annually in the skin care financial plan even with the comparison with past data (if any).

Your income statement, balance sheet, cash flow statements, and financial forecasts are all parts of your financial statements.

Use our business plan app to forecast your financials for 5 years so that you can plan your long-term goals too.

Download a sample skin care business plan

Need help writing your business plan from scratch? Here you go;  download our free skin care business plan pdf  to start.

It’s a modern business plan template specifically designed for your skin care business. Use the example business plan as a guide for writing your own.

To impress investors or to predefine your business strategies: write a skin care business plan for your business. Using this skin care business plan template (PDF) , you will have a better understanding of the skincare market, your rivals, and your target audience.

The Quickest Way to turn a Business Idea into a Business Plan

Fill-in-the-blanks and automatic financials make it easy.

Ready To Start Planning Your Business?

Write your business plan swiftly & rapidly with Upmetrics. You can write, customize, forecast, collaborate, make a pitch, & ideate all in the same platform, so what are you waiting for?

Start writing a skincare business plan with us today.

Customize Business Plan

Using our business plan app, one can customize business plans per their requirements.

Use the top-notch business plan creator to impress investors, & achieve your dream of a successful skincare business.

Related Posts

Medical Spa Business Plan

Beauty Supply Store Business Plan

Business Problems Statement with Example

Steps for Creating a Business Plan

AI Business plan Creator

3 Year Business Plan

About the Author

Upmetrics Team

Upmetrics is the #1 business planning software that helps entrepreneurs and business owners create investment-ready business plans using AI. We regularly share business planning insights on our blog. Check out the Upmetrics blog for such interesting reads. Read more

Plan your business in the shortest time possible

No Risk – Cancel at Any Time – 15 Day Money Back Guarantee

Popular Templates

Create a great Business Plan with great price.

• 400+ Business plan templates & examples
• AI Assistance & step by step guidance
• 4.8 Star rating on Trustpilot

Streamline your business planning process with Upmetrics .

How To Write a Winning Skin Care Business Plan + Template

Creating a business plan is essential for any business, but it can be especially helpful for skin care businesses who want to improve their strategy or raise funding.

A well-crafted business plan outlines your company’s vision and documents a step-by-step roadmap of how you will accomplish it. To create an effective business plan, you must first understand the components essential to its success.

This article provides an overview of the key elements that every skin care business owner should include in their business plan.

Download the Ultimate Business Plan Template

What is a Skin Care Business Plan?

A skin care business plan is a formal written document describing your company’s business strategy and feasibility. It documents the reasons you will be successful, your areas of competitive advantage, and it includes information about your team members. Your business plan is a key document that will convince investors and lenders (if needed) that you are positioned to become a successful venture.

Why Write a Skin Care Business Plan?

A skin care business plan is required for banks and investors. The document is a clear and concise guide to your business idea and the steps you will take to make it profitable.

Entrepreneurs can also use this as a roadmap when starting their new company or venture, especially if they are inexperienced in starting a business.

Writing an Effective Skin Care Business Plan

The following are the key components of a successful skincare business plan:

Executive Summary

The executive summary of a skin care business plan is a one- to two-page overview of your entire business plan. It should summarize the main points, which will be presented in full in the rest of your business plan.

• Start with a one-line description of your skin care company
• Provide a summary of the key points in each section of your business plan, which includes information about your company’s management team, industry analysis, competitive analysis, and financial forecast, among others.

Company Description

This section should include a brief history of your company. Include a short description of how your company started and provide a timeline of milestones your company has achieved.

You may not have a long company history if you are just starting your skincare business. Instead, you can include information about your professional experience in this industry and how and why you conceived your new venture. If you have worked for a similar company or been involved in an entrepreneurial venture before starting your skin care firm, mention this.

You will also include information about your chosen skin care business model and how, if applicable, it differs from other companies in your industry.

Industry Analysis

The industry or market analysis is an essential component of a skincare business plan. Conduct thorough market research to determine industry trends and document the size of your market. 

Questions to answer include:

• What part of the skin care industry are you targeting?
• How big is the market?
• What trends are happening in the industry right now (and if applicable, how do these trends support your company’s success)?

You should also include sources for your information, such as published research reports and expert opinions.

Customer Analysis

This section should include a list of your target audience(s) with demographic and psychographic profiles (e.g., age, gender, income level, profession, job titles, interests). You will need to provide a profile of each customer segment separately, including their needs and wants.

For example, a skincare business’ customers may include:

• Women aged 25-40 who are working professionals
• Middle-aged women aged 45-60 who are stay-at-home moms

You can include information about how your customers decide to buy from you as well as what keeps them buying from you.

Develop a strategy for targeting those customers who are most likely to buy from you, as well as those that might be influenced to buy your products or skin care services with the right marketing.

Competitive Analysis

The competitive analysis helps you determine how your product or service will differ from competitors and what your unique selling proposition (USP) might be that will set you apart in this industry.

For each competitor, list their strengths and weaknesses. Next, determine your areas of competitive advantage; that is, in what ways are you different from and ideally better than your competitors.

Below are sample competitive advantages your skin care business may have:

• Extensive knowledge of the latest skincare industry trends and how to apply them
• Proven track record of successful product launches
• Strong relationships with key retailers
• Robust social media following
• Highly qualified and experienced management team

Marketing Plan

This part of the business plan is where you determine and document your marketing plan. . Your plan should be laid out, including the following 4 Ps.

• Product/Service : Detail your product/service offerings here. Document their features and benefits.
• Price : Document your pricing strategy here. In addition to stating the prices for your products/services, mention how your pricing compares to your competition.
• Place : Where will your customers find you? What channels of distribution (e.g., partnerships) will you use to reach them if applicable?
• Promotion : How will you reach your target customers? For example, you may use social media, write blog posts, create an email marketing campaign, pay-per-click advertising, or launch a direct mail campaign. Or, you may promote your skin care business via a combination of these marketing channels.

Operations Plan

This part of your skincare business plan should include the following information:

• How will you deliver your product/service to customers? For example, will you do it in person or over the phone?
• What infrastructure, equipment, and resources are needed to operate successfully? How can you meet those requirements within budget constraints?

You also need to include your company’s business policies in the operations plan. You will want to establish policies related to everything from customer service to pricing, to the overall brand image you are trying to present.

Finally, and most importantly, your Operations Plan will outline the milestones your company hopes to achieve within the next five years. Create a chart that shows the key milestone(s) you hope to achieve each quarter for the next four quarters and then each year for the following four years. Examples of milestones for a skincare business include reaching $X in sales. Other examples include launching a new product line, hiring key personnel, and opening new locations.

Management Team

List your team members here, including their names and titles, as well as their expertise and experience relevant to your specific skin care industry. Include brief biography sketches for each team member.

Particularly if you are seeking funding, the goal of this section is to convince investors and lenders that your team has the expertise and experience to execute on your plan. If you are missing key team members, document the roles and responsibilities, you plan to hire for in the future.

Financial Plan

Here, you will include a summary of your complete and detailed financial plan (your full financial projections go in the Appendix). 

This includes the following three financial statements:

Income Statement

Your income statement should include:

• Revenue : how much revenue you generate.
• Cost of Goods Sold : These are your direct costs associated with generating revenue. This includes labor costs and the cost of any equipment and supplies used to deliver the product/service offering.
• Net Income (or loss) : Once expenses and revenue are totaled and deducted from each other, this is the net income or loss.

Sample Income Statement for a Startup Skin Care Business

Balance sheet.

Include a balance sheet that shows your assets, liabilities, and equity. Your balance sheet should include:

• Assets : All things you own (including cash).
• Liabilities : This is what you owe against your company’s assets, such as accounts payable or loans.
• Equity : The worth of your business after all liabilities and assets are totaled and deducted from each other.

Sample Balance Sheet for a Startup Skin Care Business

Cash flow statement.

Include a cash flow statement showing how much cash comes in, how much cash goes out and a net cash flow for each year. The cash flow statement should include:

• Cash Flow From Operations
• Cash Flow From Investments
• Cash Flow From Financing

Below is a sample of a projected cash flow statement for a startup skin care business.

Sample Cash Flow Statement for a Startup Skin Care Business

You will also want to include an appendix section which will include:

• Your complete financial projections
• A complete list of your company’s business policies and procedures related to the rest of the business plan (marketing, operations, etc.)
• Any other documentation which supports what you included in the body of your business plan.

Writing a good business plan gives you the advantage of being fully prepared to launch and/or grow your skincare company. It not only outlines your business vision but also provides a step-by-step process of how you are going to accomplish it.

Now that you know what should be included in a skincare business plan, it’s time to start writing your own. The template below includes everything discussed in this article, so feel free to use it as a starting point.  

Finish Your Skin Care Business Plan in 1 Day!

• June 13, 2023
• How to Make a Good Cosmetics Business Plan

The cosmetics business plan plans are the blueprint of any successful cosmetic business model. To create a proper business plan, you need to understand your business and its objectives. 

In this article, we’ll explain why it’s important to conduct market research and define your business concept and objectives. We’ll also explain why it’s essential to consider marketing, competitor analysis, advertising, partnerships, and even packaging when starting operations in a business.

Step 1: Conduct Market Research

The first step to starting a cosmetics business is conducting market research. To get the best from market research, you have to consider the overall market size and trends, consumer preferences, and look out for businesses that can be close competitors. Let’s explore these in more detail. 

Understand Market Size and Trends

If you want to grow in the cosmetic business and retain your customers, you have to be fully aware of some history behind cosmetic industry trends. According to Grand View Research, the cosmetic industry had a market size that is valued at 262.21 billion dollars in 2020 and is expected to extend further by 4.2% between 2023 – 2030.

Knowing the history behind the cosmetics industry will help you understand what your brand’s place is in the market, and how to develop from there. Understanding market trends can help to make informed decisions on what pattern to adopt for marketing cosmetic products.

Analyze Consumer Preferences

Let’s face it, not everyone likes the same thing. What you may like, another may find unsuitable for their needs. As a cosmetic industry, you have to accurately analyze what your target customers may want, and take their preferences into account when trying to make your product and construct a business plan for cosmetic products.

For example, some people may find several ingredients in a skincare product more helpful for their oily skin, while others may find it too harsh or irritating to their dry skin. Younger people may prefer airtight bottles with better precision, while older people may have no problems with any bottle packaging.

Investigate Competitive Landscape

No matter what industry you find yourself in, competition is stiff. However, competitive landscapes vary across industries, which is why it is important to do your research on the competition.

As a young business, you need to gather information about bigger cosmetic product companies like Nivea, Dove, Gillette, Pantene, and L’Oreal. Also, you can also keep tabs on fast-developing companies like Fenty Beauty. Including this in your cosmetics business plan will help you understand how to beat the competition and come out on top as one of your industry’s leaders.

Step 2: Define Business Concepts and Objectives

A strong and sturdy business concept and cosmetics company business plan will make your objectives more achievable and will hasten your progress. Let’s see this in more detail.

Business Concept

As mentioned earlier, a cosmetics company’s business plan and business concept helps to analyze how valuable your business idea is, how well it will solve a problem, your target audience, and their interest in the problem itself. Doing this helps you understand whether that business idea is worth investing in in the first place.

Here are different business concepts needed for natural, organic, and healthy beauty.

● Natural/Organic Beauty

Natural/organic beauty products are popular among a niched target audience, and they tend to look out for some details when picking their products. Organic beauty business concepts include the production of cosmetic products using only natural or organic ingredients. 

Recently, there has been an increase in the number of natural or organic beauty product users. This is why it is important to include organic products in a cosmetic product lineup.

● Luxury/High-end Beauty

Undoubtedly, there are many luxury cosmetic products out there, and they currently dominate the cosmetic industry. Luxury or high-end beauty products need well-detailed business concepts and objectives in order to beat the competition. 

Luxury/high-end brands often focus on getting quality, highly-customizable packaging. When you come across this kind of packaging, you’re most likely going to feel a sense of exclusivity and sophistication. In your business plan for cosmetic products, you have to include the cost and pricing for this packaging.

● Healthy Beauty

Cosmetics are made with ingredients that foster healthy skin. Different skin types react to cosmetics differently, but promoting a healthy beauty product will ensure that only the finest healthy ingredient is used on skin care products

Some of the healthy ingredients used in cosmetics are Aloe vera, green tea extract, shea butter, and chamomile. Aloe vera can hydrate the skin and reduce inflammation, shea butter improves the skin’s elasticity with its rich supply of vitamins A and E, and chamomile on the other hand is helpful on sensitive skin to promote better skin health.

Increasing market share and establishing a strong brand identity are key objectives for a cosmetic business’ growth.

● Increase Certain Market Share

One of the most essential objectives is obtaining a substantial portion of the market share. Not surprisingly, larger cosmetic businesses control a good amount of market share. That said, smaller, emerging cosmetic businesses’ primary objectives should be to take away some of this market share from their larger counterparts.

They can do this by improving the quality of their product and being innovative. Instead of focusing on the products of the existing larger cosmetic businesses, adequate research should be carried out to produce a more innovative formula that will yield a better result. This way, smaller businesses can garner the attention of cosmetic lovers and achieve their marketing objectives.

● Establish a Strong Brand Identity

Brand identity lets your customers know who you are, what you bring to the table, and your company’s values and personality. In order to attract your target audience, you need to include plans on how to gradually develop your brand identity into your brand’s business plan. 

Brand identity can be established in the form of a unique brand name and logo, design consistency in the brands’ visual or audiovisual materials, and catchy phrases. 

● Expand the Product Line 

A good cosmetics business plan often includes plans for expansion. If you sell a certain cosmetic product, you will most likely want to branch out and sell other types of cosmetic products. If the brand has mainly been selling skincare products, the brand’s product line can be expanded to include makeup products, hair products, and even fragrances.

For a better marketing result, you can create multiple business plans for different types of products such as a makeup business plan for makeup products, and a skincare business plan for skin care products.

Step 3: Identify Target Customers

Without identifying the kind of customers you want, it’ll be challenging to get sales and attract customers to your brand. Here are these types of target customers in greater detail.

● Beauty Enthusiasts

Beauty enthusiasts are often highly interested in all the best and latest cosmetic and skincare products. Additionally, they are highly interested in the latest beauty trends. These types of people use exclusive and innovative cosmetic application products like rollers. To attract these types of customers, your brand also needs to keep up with these trends.

Luckily, you can find many of these beauty enthusiasts closely following thought leaders in this industry on various social media channels and forums. For these target customers, you may need to include digital and offline marketing campaigns and create a detailed makeup business plan and skincare business plan. 

● Budget-Conscious Consumers

Budget-friendly consumers take their money into account when choosing their products. Because these consumers closely track how much they spend on products, they will only consider a particular product if it’s affordable, and fits into their budget.

To get these kinds of people, you have to make sure many of them can comfortably afford your product by leveraging on price strategies. Not surprisingly, these customers shy away from luxurious brands, choosing to purchase multi-purposed products instead.

● Minimalists

Minimalists prefer a simplified skincare and makeup routine. Unlike beauty enthusiasts, they don’t focus on getting the newest cosmetic products. Rather, they choose products with high functionality, allowing them to minimize their expenditure and the number of skincare products they buy.

Minimalists like to live their lives with less clutter, and generally choose to live simpler lifestyles. In the case of cosmetic products, they like to use as few products as possible. So, if you want to attract these types of people, make sure you develop a minimalist makeup business plan and skincare business plan that have these people’s best interests at heart.

Step 4: Conduct a Competitor Analysis 

In order to conduct an effective competitor analysis, you have to analyze their product offerings, brand position, pricing strategies, and distribution channels. Let’s see these in more detail.

Analyze Competitors’ Product Offerings

Product offerings help to present a unique value proposition to a consumer. For a business to become successful, it has to include detailed plans on how to present its product’s unique value proposition to its customers. Nivea’s unique value proposition is to protect the skin of the entire family.

Many cosmetic companies offer an array of products that make it hard for new businesses to break into the market and compete. For example, Nivea offers cosmetic products like hair care products, skincare products, and even deodorant for males and females. Analyzing these competitors and their products will make you weigh your options and determine how best to enter the market.

Analyze Competitors’ Brand Position

Brands like Nivea have taken steps to maintain a strong brand positioning. Before getting your business off the ground, make sure you understand your competitors’ position and how much influence they have on the market.

Contrary to popular belief, brand positioning isn’t just slapping catchy tag lines and fancy logos on your web and social media pages. Effective brand positioning will make your brand favorable and valuable to your consumers. 

Analyze Competitors’ Pricing Strategies

Strategic pricing is another way to infiltrate the market. If you want to figure out the best pricing, take a quick survey of all your competitors and their pricing. 

For example, if Nivea and other big brands’ hair care products are being sold for an average of $50, try to figure out a way to sell your products significantly or slightly lower. This way, you can attract budget-conscious customers who want more for less. 

Analyze Competitors’ Distribution Channels

Analyzing distribution channels helps you figure out the best distribution channel for your business.

In addition to traditional distribution channels like wholesaling and retailing, E-commerce has emerged as one of the biggest distribution channels in the beauty industry. If you’re a smaller cosmetic company trying to find its footing, E-commerce is a good way to get orders coming in. 

Step 5: Develop Product Line and Brand Strategy

Brand strategy and product lines can make or break your brand. Big brands like Pantene and Dove have solid brand strategies and diverse product lines for inclusivity. 

Product lines and breaks strategies involve developing core product lines and seasonal collections, brand storytelling, and collaborations with influencers. Let’s look into these points. 

Product Line Strategies

The best product line strategies are creating a core product line and a product line specific to a particular season or holiday period. 

● Core Product Line

Your brand is more likely to stand out if it has a core product line. Having this improves your brand’s ability to stand out, and makes your products accessible to more diverse audiences. Collections like the Gold series collection owned by Pantene have become so popular that it has won multiple awards in the cosmetic industry. 

● Seasonal Collections

Seasonal collections are exactly what they sound like seasonal. We have different cosmetic care needs during various seasons, so it’s essential for your brand to take that into account. Also, during periods like Christmas and Easter, it’s important to have collections in order to divert attention toward your brand and increase sales.

Brand Strategies

Telling your brand story and collaborating with thought leaders and influencers in your industry are amazing ways to drive your business’ growth and infuse some personality.

● Tell the Brand Story

Every brand has a story. Brands have missions, goals, and visions peculiar to them that drive them forward, and communicating this mission to your audience will boost your customer acquisition and retention. For example, Nivea is now a household name, as it has sold itself as a family-oriented cosmetic care company. 

● Collaborations with Influencers

 Influencers will always be able to drive customers to patronize your brand, and it’s important to include them in your cosmetics business plan. Not only do they bring customers, but they put your brand in the cosmetic industry’s limelight and make them favorable to your desired customers.

Step 6: Define Marketing and Sales Strategies 

Marketing and sales is another essential part of a successful skincare business plan. Now, digital marketing, retail partnerships, and advertising have proven to be the most effective ways to promote your brand. Here are the facts:

Digital Marketing

Due to the integration of technology and, specifically, the internet, into the cosmetic industry, business has booked like never before. Search engines and social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram can create massive awareness for your brand and also enable you to create and maintain a positive relationship with your customers.

Retail Partnerships

Wholesale and retail partnerships will always remain powerful ways to get new customers fast. For increased reach, you can reach out to select retail stores within and outside your area. More often than not, these businesses are open to opportunities that will make them more money. 

Also, retail partnerships help with your brand positioning and improve customers’ trust in your brand. For instance, there is a higher chance of selling a cosmetics product if a retailer talks to the customer about the product.

Online and Offline Advertising

Advertising has become a highly extreme marketing tool, and it is now used by large and small cosmetic brands alike. 

Offline advertising involves guerilla marketing campaigns, using billboards, flyers, posters, and so on. On the other hand, online advertising involves running ads on search engines and social media. Make sure to include a good blend of both into your skincare business plan and marketing efforts.

Step 7: Outline Operational and Plans

Without plans for operations, a business plan is as good as useless. Supply chain management and quality control are important factors to consider when making plans for operation. Here are these factors in more detail. 

Supply Chain Management

Supply chain management is the management of the flow of goods, data, services, and finances related to a particular business, from the state of manufacture to the state of consumer consumption. 

If you want good customer loyalty and avocation on a cosmetic product, you have to make this process as smooth and quality as possible. Additionally, efficient supply chain management saves costs and hastens the delivery process to the final consumer. 

Quality Control

Quality control is a set of procedures that your product will be subjected to in order to ensure that it meets the criteria for quality. In order to avoid your brand putting out inconsistent quality, you will most likely face a lot of customer satisfaction issues that you have to meet. 

Quality standards have been put in place in the cosmetic industry, starting from ingredient selection which should strictly follow the INCI (International Nomenclature of Cosmetic Ingredients) list of approved ingredients. 

Also, microbiological testing is carried out on cosmetic products to ensure that they are not contaminated, and are not harmful to cosmetics users.

Step 8: Outline Financial Plans

Financial planning is the backbone of any business plan. Creating a cash flow forecast and a profitability analysis is key to your business’s growth and profitability. Let’s take a look at these factors. 

Create a Cash Flow Forecast

Cash flow forecasts typically predict a company’s future financial position; a company’s cash flow involves receivables and expected payments from various sources. Cash flow also involves money from future sales of assets, grants, bills, and miscellaneous expenses.

That said, a cosmetics company can create a cash flow forecast to track how much the business is estimated to spend in the future. Doing this will help to plan for times when the company’s low on cash.

Profitability Analysis

Profitability analysis is the calculation and analysis of the profits of a business. The cosmetic industry has a different net profit margin that is affected by the company size, location of the business, availability of competitors, and the business strategy used. All these are determining factors in deciding on the cost of a product, and the profit that can be gotten from the product.

Customize Your Ideal Cosmetic Bottle Packaging

One of the trends in cosmetics involves developing an ideal bottle packaging that speaks for your brand. These trends revolve around making eco-friendly packaging and maintaining thoughtful pre-sale and post-sale services. 

Eco-Friendly Cosmetic Packaging Materials

Eco-friendly cosmetic packaging is becoming increasingly common, and many customers now look out for this. Luckily, Cosmopacks have created highly customizable packaging for brands worldwide using bamboo, Post-consumer recycled plastics, glass, and bioplastics.

Our list of cosmetic packaging includes:

• Cosmetic bottle
• Cosmetic jars
• Cosmetic tubes
• Makeup packaging
• Recycled cosmetic bottle

Thoughtful Pre-Sale and Post-Sale Service

We offer thoughtful pre-sale and post-sale services that include efficient consultation and communication, printing and sampling, production and warehousing, and inspection and shipment of all our packaging products to our customer’s desired locations.

Creating a skincare business plan can seem like a herculean task, but taking the time to add these details above can make all the difference. Effective marketing and customer service, competitor analysis, cosmetic packaging plans, operational plans, and market research are all integral to your brand’s success in the short and long term.

Cosmopacks offers amazing, highly customizable bottle packaging for brands worldwide. Their objective is to find the best way to reflect your brand’s identity by creating tailored packaging options and eco-friendly packaging. 

Get in touch with us by visiting our website or reaching out to us through our various helpline channels. 

Share This Blog:

Get A Free Quote

Table of contents.

You might also enjoy

Exploring the Best Cosmetic Packaging Solutions for Your Products

Finding the best cosmetic packaging solutions is paramount in the

Bottling Brilliance: A Comprehensive Guide to Various Types of Bottle Tops for Every Packaging Need

In the world of cosmetics, where the packaging is almost

How to Lock a Pump Bottle: Mastering Pump Bottle Security with Our Packaging Solutions

 In today’s fast-paced world, the significance of efficient, secure packaging

Sustainability From Start To Finish

Cosmetic Packaging

• Cosmetic Bottle
• Cosmetic Tube
• Cosmetic Jar
• Makeup Packaging

Why Choos Us

• OEM Solution
• Sustainability
• Full Service
• Lean Manufacturing

Umbrella Industry Zone,Songxia Town, Shangyu City 312300, Zhejiang, China

+1 626 203 5398

[email protected]

Copyright © 2024, Cosmopacks. All rights reserved. Powered By MML.

• Terms & Conditions

Speak To Our Team Now

Send your inquiry right now.

How to Start a Profitable Cosmetic Business [11 Steps]

By Nick Cotter Updated Feb 05, 2024

Business Steps:

1. perform market analysis., 2. draft a cosmetic business plan., 3. develop a cosmetic brand., 4. formalize your business registration., 5. acquire necessary licenses and permits for cosmetic., 6. open a business bank account and secure funding as needed., 7. set pricing for cosmetic services., 8. acquire cosmetic equipment and supplies., 9. obtain business insurance for cosmetic, if required., 10. begin marketing your cosmetic services., 11. expand your cosmetic business..

When starting a cosmetics business, it's crucial to gain a comprehensive understanding of the market landscape. A thorough market analysis will provide insights into your target audience, competitors, and prevailing trends, helping you tailor your products and marketing strategies effectively.

• Analyze your target demographic: Understand the age, gender, income level, and preferences of your potential customers to create products that meet their needs.
• Study competitors: Examine other cosmetic brands in your niche, noting their product offerings, pricing, marketing tactics, and customer reviews to identify gaps and opportunities.
• Assess market trends: Keep abreast of the latest trends in the beauty industry, such as natural ingredients, sustainable packaging, or technological innovations in product formulation.
• Regulatory landscape: Familiarize yourself with the regulations governing cosmetics in your target markets to ensure compliance and avoid legal pitfalls.
• Supply chain analysis: Identify potential suppliers and distributors, evaluating their reliability, quality, and cost to establish a robust supply chain.

Are cosmetic businesses profitable?

Yes, cosmetic businesses can be highly profitable depending on the size and operations of the business. Factors such as pricing strategies, targeted marketing, strong customer service and a wide range of products and services can help to increase revenue and profits for a cosmetic business.

Creating a comprehensive business plan is a critical step in launching your cosmetic business. It will serve as a roadmap for your company, outlining your business objectives, strategies, and how you plan to achieve success. Here are the key components you should include in your cosmetic business plan:

• Executive Summary: Summarize your business concept, the products you will offer, your target market, and financial highlights.
• Company Description: Detail the background of your business, the mission statement, and what makes your cosmetics unique.
• Market Analysis: Research the cosmetic industry, identify your target demographic, and analyze your competition.
• Organization and Management: Outline your business structure, ownership details, and the qualifications of your management team.
• Products Line: Provide a detailed description of your cosmetic products, including benefits, ingredients, and product lifecycle.
• Marketing and Sales Strategy: Describe how you plan to attract and retain customers, including pricing, promotion, and distribution strategies.
• Funding Request: If seeking investment, specify the amount needed, how it will be used, and long-term financial strategies.
• Financial Projections: Offer an analysis of the financial outlook for your business, including forecasted income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements.
• Appendix: Provide supporting documents, such as resumes, product pictures, legal agreements, or other pertinent information.

How does a cosmetic business make money?

A cosmetic business typically makes money by selling their products, such as beauty products and makeup, online or in retail stores. They also make profit from their services such as facials, waxing, and hair styling. For example, a cosmetic business might target young women in their twenties and thirties who are interested in beauty products and services as a primary target audience. They can also expand by offering special discounts or partnering with other businesses to increase exposure.

Developing a cosmetic brand is an exciting step that allows you to translate your vision into a physical product that customers can experience. Your brand is much more than just your logo or product; it represents your company's identity, values, and promise to your customers. Here's how you can build a compelling cosmetic brand:

• Define your brand identity: Decide on the core values, mission statement, and the unique selling proposition (USP) that sets your brand apart from competitors.
• Identify your target audience: Understand who your products are for—demographics, preferences, and buying behaviors—to tailor your brand to meet their needs.
• Design a memorable logo and packaging: Create a logo and packaging that not only stands out but also aligns with your brand identity and appeals to your target audience.
• Create a strong online presence: Develop a professional website and engage on social media platforms to build relationships with your customers and create brand loyalty.
• Ensure brand consistency: Make sure all your marketing materials, products, and customer service experiences consistently reflect your brand identity and values.

How to come up with a name for your cosmetic business?

When deciding on a name for your cosmetic business, the most important thing to do is to reflect your unique style and vision. Think about what you want the name to represent and evoke in your customers. It's helpful to do some research for inspiration and brainstorm with friends and family. Once you've come up with a few strong contenders, create social media accounts with the names to test them out. Consider how it looks written, how it sounds when spoken, and if people remember it easily. With time and consideration, you’ll come up with the perfect name for your cosmetic business.

Now that you've laid the groundwork for your cosmetic business, it's time to make it official. Registering your business is a critical step that will formalize its existence and provide you with the legal rights to operate. Follow these essential steps to ensure your business is registered correctly and compliant with all regulations:

• Choose a Business Structure: Decide if your business will be a sole proprietorship, partnership, limited liability company (LLC), or corporation. Each has different legal and tax implications.
• Register Your Business Name: Secure your brand by registering the business name with the appropriate state authorities, ensuring it's unique and not already in use.
• Obtain an Employer Identification Number (EIN): If you're in the United States, apply for an EIN from the IRS for tax purposes, even if you don't have employees.
• Register for Taxes: Register with your state tax agency to obtain a tax identification number, workers' compensation, unemployment, and disability insurance.
• Acquire Necessary Permits and Licenses: Check with your local city or county about required permits and licenses, including those specific to cosmetic businesses, such as health and safety certificates.

Resources to help get you started:

Explore vital resources designed for cosmetic entrepreneurs, featuring publications, industry reports, newsletters, and more for insights on market trends, operational strategies, and business growth advice:

• Beauty Inc: A comprehensive publication from WWD focusing on the business of beauty, covering trends and executive movements with deep dives into brand strategies. Visit Beauty Inc .
• Cosmetics Business: Offers global industry news, reports, and market analysis, providing insights on product innovation, marketing strategies, and regulatory updates. Visit Cosmetics Business .
• Beauty Independent: A digital publication targeting independent beauty entrepreneurs and startups, featuring news, interviews, and resources for growing a beauty brand. Visit Beauty Independent .
• Mintel Beauty & Personal Care: Provides market research reports, trends, and consumer insight in the beauty and personal care sectors, aiding in strategic decision-making. Visit Mintel .
• Euromonitor International: Offers in-depth market reports and data analytics for the beauty industry, including competitive analysis and consumer behavior insights. Visit Euromonitor .
• Global Cosmetic Industry (GCI) Magazine: Delivers content on business, marketing, and trends within the global beauty industry, with resources for cosmetic entrepreneurs. Visit GCI Magazine .
• The Beauty Makers Newsletter: A curated newsletter that provides insights, trends, and case studies on beauty brand innovations and market growth strategies. Subscribe to The Beauty Makers Newsletter .

Starting a cosmetic business requires careful consideration of the legal requirements to ensure compliance with local, state, and federal regulations. Acquiring the necessary licenses and permits is a crucial step in legitimizing your business and avoiding legal issues. Below is a guide to help you understand what you may need:

• Research the specific regulations in your area by contacting the local health department, as requirements can vary significantly from one jurisdiction to another.
• Obtain a business license from your city or county government, which is a general requirement for operating any business legally.
• Check with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for any regulations regarding the safety and labeling of cosmetic products, as the FDA oversees cosmetic safety in the United States.
• Register your business with the state, which may involve getting a seller's permit or sales tax license if you plan to sell products directly to consumers.
• Ensure compliance with the Federal Fair Packaging and Labeling Act (FPLA), which requires accurate labeling of cosmetic products, including ingredients and net contents.
• Consider certifications from organizations like the Environmental Working Group (EWG) or Leaping Bunny if you're committed to non-toxic or cruelty-free cosmetics, as these can serve as additional selling points.

What licenses and permits are needed to run a cosmetic business?

It will depend on the specific nature of the cosmetic business, as well as the country or state in which it is located. Generally, any business selling cosmetics will need to obtain a general business permit and a seller's permit. Depending on the location, they may also need additional licenses such as a health permit or special product licensing. Additionally, if selling online, then an e-commerce license may also be required. In addition to permits and licenses, there may be other regulations such as meeting certain standards for cosmetics formulations or labeling requirements. It is best to research the applicable laws and regulations for the location where the business is located to make sure all applicable permits and licenses are obtained prior to operating the business.

Starting a cosmetic business requires careful financial management to ensure smooth operations. One of the essential steps is to open a business bank account, which separates your personal and business finances and simplifies accounting. If your business plan indicates a need for additional capital, you'll also need to secure funding through various available options. Here are the key points to consider:

• Choose a bank that offers business banking services and has experience with small businesses, ideally in the cosmetics industry.
• When opening your account, bring your business registration documents, EIN (Employer Identification Number), and personal identification.
• Look into different types of business accounts—some may offer benefits such as free transactions or interest earnings on balances.
• For funding, consider a business loan from a bank or credit union, or explore alternative financing options such as investors, crowdfunding, or small business grants.
• Prepare a strong business plan and financial projections to increase your chances of securing a loan or investment.
• Keep in mind the importance of maintaining a good credit score, as it can significantly impact your ability to obtain financing.

Establishing the right pricing strategy is crucial for the success of your cosmetic business. It balances customer satisfaction, value perception, and your business's profitability. Consider the following guidelines when setting prices for your cosmetic services:

• Cost Analysis: Calculate the total cost of providing each service, including products, labor, overhead, and any additional expenses, to ensure your prices cover these costs and yield a profit.
• Market Research: Investigate the pricing of competitors to understand the market rate for similar services. This helps in positioning your services competitively without underselling or overpricing.
• Value-Based Pricing: Consider the value and results your services provide to customers. If your services offer unique benefits or superior results, you may price them higher.
• Tiered Pricing Structure: Offer different pricing levels based on service complexity or results to cater to a wider range of clients and their budgets.
• Discounts and Packages: Introduce discounts or bundle services in packages to incentivize larger purchases while maintaining your overall profit margins.
• Psychological Pricing: Use pricing psychology, such as pricing services just below a whole number (e.g., $99 instead of $100) to make the price more appealing.
• Adjustment Over Time: Regularly review and adjust your prices to reflect changes in costs, market conditions, and the perceived value of your services.

What does it cost to start a cosmetic business?

Initiating a cosmetic business can involve substantial financial commitment, the scale of which is significantly influenced by factors such as geographical location, market dynamics, and operational expenses, among others. Nonetheless, our extensive research and hands-on experience have revealed an estimated starting cost of approximately $28000 for launching such an business. Please note, not all of these costs may be necessary to start up your cosmetic business.

Starting a cosmetic business requires careful selection of equipment and supplies to ensure quality production and customer satisfaction. It's crucial to invest in the right tools and ingredients that will enable you to create exceptional cosmetic products. Below is a guide to help you acquire the necessary equipment and supplies:

• Research Suppliers: Look for reputable suppliers who offer high-quality raw materials, packaging, and cosmetic equipment. Consider their delivery times, minimum order quantities, and reviews from other cosmetic businesses.
• Quality Ingredients: Purchase cosmetic-grade ingredients such as oils, pigments, and active components. Ensure they come with appropriate safety data sheets and certificates of analysis.
• Lab Equipment: Obtain lab equipment like mixers, pH meters, and heat sources for product formulation. For small-scale production, hand mixers and basic labware may suffice.
• Packaging: Choose packaging that aligns with your brand image and protects your products effectively. Consider sustainability and user experience in your packaging choices.
• Safety Gear: Prioritize safety with gloves, goggles, and lab coats to protect yourself during product formulation and manufacturing.
• Labeling Machine: A labeling machine can streamline the process of applying labels to your products, ensuring a professional look and compliance with labeling regulations.

List of software, tools and supplies needed to start a cosmetic business:

• Business Plan Software - $35-200
• Cosmetic Product Labels - $50-150
• License & Permits – $25-300
• POS System - $500-3000
• Packaging Supplies - $50-200
• Website Design and Hosting - $100-1000
• Logo & Brand Identity Design – $100-500
• Inventory Management System –$30-1000
• Marketing Campaigns - $100-2000
• Credit Card Reader - $50-200

Securing the appropriate business insurance is a critical step in safeguarding your cosmetic venture. It ensures that you are protected against unforeseen risks and liabilities that may arise. Here are some key points to consider when obtaining business insurance for your cosmetic business:

• Assess your risks: Evaluate the potential risks associated with your cosmetic business, such as product liability, customer injuries, or property damage.
• Research insurance options: Look into various types of insurance, including general liability insurance, product liability insurance, professional liability insurance, and property insurance.
• Consult with an insurance broker: An experienced broker can help you understand the specific insurance requirements for your business and find the best coverage options.
• Compare quotes: Obtain insurance quotes from multiple providers to ensure you are getting competitive rates and comprehensive coverage.
• Understand policy details: Carefully review the terms and coverage limits of each policy, paying attention to any exclusions or additional endorsements that may be necessary.
• Stay compliant: Ensure that your insurance coverage meets all legal requirements and industry standards for your cosmetic business.
• Review and update regularly: As your business grows and changes, periodically reassess your insurance needs to ensure your coverage remains adequate.

Marketing is a crucial aspect of launching your cosmetic services, as it helps attract and retain customers. Here's how you can start promoting your business effectively:

• Identify Your Target Audience: Understand who your ideal customers are and tailor your marketing strategies to meet their specific needs and preferences.
• Develop a Strong Brand Identity: Create a memorable logo, choose a color scheme, and develop a voice that reflects your business ethos to establish brand recognition.
• Optimize Your Online Presence: Build a professional website, engage on social media platforms, and consider SEO strategies to improve visibility.
• Leverage Social Media Marketing: Use platforms like Instagram and Facebook to showcase your products, share before-and-after photos, and engage with followers.
• Collaborate with Influencers: Partner with beauty influencers who can authentically promote your services to their audience.
• Offer Promotions and Discounts: Entice new customers with introductory offers or bundle deals to encourage them to try your services.
• Invest in Local Advertising: Consider local print, radio ads, or sponsor community events to raise awareness in your area.
• Collect and Share Customer Testimonials: Positive reviews and word-of-mouth referrals are powerful; encourage satisfied customers to share their experiences.

After establishing the foundation of your cosmetic business, it's time to focus on growth. Expansion is critical for longevity and success in the competitive beauty industry. Here are some strategies to help you expand your cosmetic business effectively:

• Diversify Your Product Line: Introduce new products that complement your existing range. Consider customer feedback, market trends, and innovation to keep your offerings fresh and appealing.
• Extend Your Market Reach: Explore new markets by targeting different demographics or expanding internationally. Online marketplaces and social media platforms can be powerful tools for reaching a global audience.
• Enhance Online Presence: Invest in a robust e-commerce platform and optimize your website for SEO. Utilize digital marketing strategies to drive traffic and conversions.
• Collaborate with Influencers: Partner with beauty influencers and bloggers to tap into their followers and gain credibility within the community.
• Attend Trade Shows: Participate in beauty expos and trade shows to network with industry professionals, showcase your products, and gain exposure.
• Seek Strategic Partnerships: Form alliances with other businesses to offer bundled products or services, reaching new customers and adding value.
• Customer Loyalty Programs: Create programs that reward repeat customers to foster loyalty and encourage word-of-mouth marketing.

Essentials of a Cosmetics Business Plan: How to Write One

• Written by 440 Industries
• Business Planning , Cosmetics , Fashion Merchandise
• September 21, 2021

The cosmetic business umbrella has three vital areas. They include color cosmetics, aka makeup, fragrance, and skincare. Although these areas are closely related, they fall under different consumer personal cosmetic routines. In this blog, we will discuss the proper way to develop your cosmetic business plan. Irrespective of the type of cosmetic business you want to start, this foolproof guide may just increase your chances of success.

Before we get started, how big is the cosmetic industry? In 2020, the value of the trade stood at 483 Billion USD. The numbers escalated steeply in 2021, bringing the value of the cosmetic industry at approximately 511 Billion USD. Better still, the annual compound growth rate of the sector stands at 4.75%, meaning that the value of the cosmetic industry could rise to 716 Billion USD by 2025.

• Introduction

Cosmetic Industry Consumer Trends

Is a cosmetic business plan necessary, essentials of writing a cosmetics business plan.

The consumer trends in the cosmetic industry are nothing short of heartwarming. With pop culture and good grooming being an in-thing in the current fashion landscape, those in the cosmetic business are making fortunes. Generally, today’s consumers are open to spending a little more just to get high-quality products.

Moreover, the purchasing power of emerging nations is a force to reckon. Cosmetics are today more globalized than ever before, making the landscape favorable for international cosmetic companies. Locals in various countries are receptive to buying high-quality products from these companies that are not available locally. 

As you can tell from the above statistics, cosmetic products have a favourable audience willing to spend what it takes to look their best. Hence, you may be wondering whether developing a cosmetic business plan is worth the effort. Well, it is. Even with a growing demand for cosmetics, you need a plan to expand your exposure and make the most of the serious business opportunities.

Think of your business plan as a vital strategic document that dictates where you should focus your resources, time, and energy.  Generally, the program gives you a clear view of the game and what you intend to achieve. The tool will come in handy whenever you need to make crucial decisions that may make or break your venture. For most serious entrepreneurs, a business plan helps ensure that the everyday running of their ventures is as smooth and straightforward as possible.

Running a business requires you to make strategic moves. The cosmetic venture is no exception. Setting up a detailed strategy and ensuring your cosmetic business plan covers all ground is paramount. 

Here are essential components you must include in the plan:

Business Mission and Vision

Your mission statement is the first thing to include in your cosmetic business plan. Think of it this way; the statement will be a navigation tool that gives a story about your plans for the future of your company. Moreover, the statement indicates the purpose of your work, making it simpler to identify your company goals and remain committed to achieving your vision.

Generally, the mission and vision statement is the bedrock of your business. It should play three vital roles, which include:

• Communicate the purpose of your venture
• Give direction to your development strategy
• Identify measurable company objectives you can use to gauge the success of your business strategy

Identify Your Business Niche and Audience

There is a whole world of cosmetic products out there. Consequently, you need to define your unique path into the industry to know your target audience . For instance, if you opt to specialize in good grooming products, the chances are that your target consumers are young people and the business class. That said, it will be easy for you to analyze their likes and preferences. Most importantly, you can study their trends and learn how they shop. This is crucial information you can use to move your venture to the next level.

Once your cosmetic business plan focuses on a specific audience, things will suddenly begin to fall in place. You will now have a good idea about the marketing strategies that are likely to work. In the end, if you choose skincare for seniors as your business niche, you may not want to use marketing strategies that mainly work for the youth.

Choose Your Range Of Products

Again, there is a whole world of beauty products available in the market. For instance, if you focus on natural products as your niche, it makes sense to centre your cosmetic business plan on products that fit well together. Most importantly, these products must attract the attention of your target customers.

Launching one product and exclusively selling it is not all doom. However, you may want to consider a bit of product diversity, especially if you are just getting started. Cross-selling or up-selling products that fall under the same classification may just be a good idea. Remember that according to current consumer trends, people use multiple cosmetics in combination. Focusing on one product alone may have profound financial implications that a young business may not bear.

Cosmetics Business Plan; Know the Competition

The next important step of developing your cosmetic business plan is to identify your competitors. The cosmetic industry is ripping fortunes. Hence it makes sense to know the movers and shakers within your chosen product niche . The idea is to know everything about them. Yes, everything about them. This includes their product range, their prices, marketing strategies, and more. This information will help you decide what to do to remain unique and keep pace with respected names within your line of business.

Develop a Manufacturing Strategy

So, do you intend to produce your unique range of cosmetic products? If you do, you need to have a manufacturing strategy. Typically, there are two options you have. One, you could opt to manufacture the products in person from your lab. Two, you could contract a manufacturer to do the hard work on your behalf. Either way, it is crucial to have a plan that ensures a smooth stream of products into your business.

Each of the two strategies has profound pros and cons. For instance, it’s easy to manage quality assurance when producing your cosmetics from your lab. On the downside, this can be a financially challenging option. On the other hand, working with a manufacturer may be cheaper. In this case, it is essential to plan on vital aspects such as logistics, contractual obligations, and finances. Irrespective of your choice, make sure it works well for your business model and aligns with your mission and vision.

Spruce Up Your Retail Strategy

Here’s the deal, you are likely not to grow to your best potential if you opt to sell directly to your consumers and in person. Even if you are a top-notch digital marketer, expanding your profit margins may be an uphill task if you opt not to outsource. Naturally, it is easier to hit your profit goals when you distribute your stock to retailers and e-stores that match your product niche.

Again, nothing is as important as developing a retail strategy that aligns with your product niche. At this point, you know your targeted customers, your competitors, and most importantly, your chosen range of products. With this in mind, deciding where your cosmetics fit naturally should not be a hurdle.  Having a solid retail strategy is an integral part of ensuring the success of your cosmetic business plan.

Cosmetics Business Plan; Keep an Eye on Financing 

If your goal is to create a cosmetic business empire, it may not be necessary to have a million dollars in capital. However, having the funds to keep your operations running is as important as having a solid cosmetic business plan. Assuming you already have your capital, the next step is to analyze the financial implications of various essential actions, including your manufacturing and retail strategy. The idea is to have a grip on your funds, and by extension, ensure smooth operations.

There are different ways to finance a business . One, you could opt for a safer option and depend on loans from your friends or family. Two, you could turn to a financial institution such as a bank for the much-needed resources. Three, you may choose to involve investors and split the profits. The essential thing is to have a financial plan that keeps your business doors open without significantly impacting your bottom line.

Develop a Clear and Detailed Financial Prognosis

With a detailed financial prognosis, it should now be easier to get your business up and rolling. Think of it this way, your business may not be “thriving,” but you will have a draft to make your deal attractive to investors. Furthermore, even with no sales, you will have a clear plan of the steps you will take and how you will rip profits. Generally, a financial prognosis will give you a good idea of your brand’s potential.

As the name implies, a financial prognosis is a forecast or rather an opinion beforehand. Ideally, it is a systematic projection of the expected economic trends through financial statements. You need to have some past business financial, cash flow, and fund-flow records that allow you to predict what you can achieve in a future date if you follow a specific cosmetic business plan.

A detailed financial prognosis must include the following elements:

• Pro-forma income statements
• Pro-forma balance sheets
• Business cash budget

A Great Online Class: Introduction to Professional Makeup Techniques by Domestika

If you are interested in learning more about professional makeup techniques for your business, we recommend taking a look at the online class “Introduction to Professional Makeup Techniques” by Domestika.

The course is currently under promotion, but you can use the discount code: T_BROWNLEES-PROMO to get an additional 10% discount on your purchase. This online class offered by Domestika, at a very inexpensive price covers all you need to know to create both bold, and understating looks by mastering makeup techniques. If you apply to the course through the link below you’ll be supporting 440 Industries, and we thank you for it!

Opinions matter

There you have it, a detailed guide highlighting the essentials of a cosmetic business plan. We hope that our tips are instrumental in helping you make or upgrade your current strategies. As we part ways, there are three crucial things to remember. First, this is not a standard guide that works for every business. If you make your business plan and fail to bear the intended fruit, all is not lost; develop a personalized plan. Second, mistakes are an essential part of growing as an entrepreneur. They help you identify areas that need improvement. Third, it’s never a bad idea to seek professional assistance from experts in the field, especially once your business starts booming.

If you’re interested in reading up more about successful strategies to market your fragrance business, we’ve got a post right on that. You’ll also find a list of the most profitable, expensive, and successful fragrances sold worldwide. Here’s the link!

Was This Article Helpful?

You're never to cool to learn new things, here are sources for further research.

Please note: 440 Industries is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Fashion Marketing

Retail marketing, fashion entrepreneurship, fashion finance.

MORE ARTICLES FROM OUR BLOG

Why Is Shein So Cheap?

Explore why is Shein so cheap. In this post we’re going to explore the marketing strategies that Shein affordable fashion.

How to Dress for a Job Interview in the Fashion Industry

In this post, we’re looking at how to dress for a fashion interview. Enjoy!

The Revival of the Fanny Pack and Why It Remains So Popular

In this post, we’re looking into the revival of the fanny pack, enjoy!

5 Reasons why Starting a New Fashion Brand is Hard (in 2023)

In this post, we’re look at 5 reasons that make starting a fashion business this year, a challenge.

440 Industries Disclaimer, Credits and acknowledgements. Privacy Policy

Copyright © 440 industries 2024.

How to Write a Beauty Salon Business Plan: Complete Guide

• December 29, 2023
• Beauty & Wellness

Whether you’re looking to raise funding from private investors or to get a loan from a bank (like a SBA loan) for your beauty salon, you will need to prepare a solid business plan.

In this article we go through, step-by-step, all the different sections you need in your business plan for a beauty salon . Use this template to create a complete, clear and solid business plan that get you funded.

1. Executive Summary

The executive summary of a business plan gives a sneak peek of the information about your business plan to lenders and/or investors.

If the information you provide here is not concise, informative, and scannable, potential lenders and investors will lose interest.

Though the executive summary is the first and the most important section, it should normally be the last section you write because it will have the summary of different sections included in the entire plan.

Why do you need a business plan for your beauty salon?

The purpose of a business plan is to secure funding through one of the following channels:

• Obtain bank financing or secure a loan from other lenders (such as a SBA loan )
• Obtain private investments from investment funds, angel investors, etc.
• Obtain a public or a private grant

How to write your beauty salon’s executive summary?

This section should not exceed 1 to 2 pages and provide a brief outline of the objectives and purpose of your business, market analysis & marketing strategies, company structure & key people, financial plan, and financial ask.

Here is an overview of the different points you must address in your executive summary:

Business Overview

Introduce your company and briefly describe your business model. For example, you may provide specialized beauty services only (such as skin care only, or manicure & pedicure only, etc.) or a full-service beauty salon (where you provide all types of possible services related to overall beauty including hair care, facial, skin care, manicure & pedicure, nail care & nail art, etc.).

Again, if you are offering a full-service beauty salon with a specific focus on something like skin care while the remaining services are auxiliary services, mention that, too. Also, provide a brief idea of what problem you are trying to solve.

Market Analysis

Provide a deep market analysis that backs your decision to open a beauty salon. The market analysis will include information like who your competitors are, your strengths and weaknesses, your target audience and their beauty needs, etc.

People & Management

Mention your key partners and why you have selected them along with their relevant industry experience. Also, speak about your staff requirements and the management hierarchy.

Financial Plan

How much profit and revenue do you expect in the next 5 years? When will you reach the break-even point and start making profits? It is ideal to include a chart depicting your key financials such as revenue, gross profits, and net profit

Funding Ask

What loan/investment/grant are you seeking? How much do you need? How long will this last?

2. Beauty Salon Business Overview

This is the section where you will describe your beauty salon business in detail. Try to answer the following questions concisely:

• Why do you want to open a beauty salon and what problem will your beauty salon solve?
• How big will be the facility and how many appointments will you serve daily (approximate value)?
• Will you have standard operating hours or extended business hours?
• Where is the location and why did you select that location?
• Will you provide only services, or will you sell products, too?

Include as many questions as possible to create a convincing overview to keep your potential investors and lenders hooked.

Let’s now look at the different sub-sections that you must include:

a) History of the Project

If you are yet to open your first beauty salon business, you may not have a business history to share. However, you can share your training and past industry experiences. You can even demonstrate your passion and interest for the beauty or wellness industry.

This is also where you should explain why you decided to create this business today. Did you find a gap in the market? Is there a lot of demand for manicure and pedicure treatments but few salons to accommodate customers?

Or are you trying to open a new format of beauty salon, offering a unique experience and treatments to your customers, effectively differentiating yourself from your competitors in your area?

b) Beauty Salon Business Model

This section must include the following information:

• Are you building your beauty salon from the ground up or are you purchasing an existing one?
• Will you allow advanced bookings through channels like a website or a mobile app, or will you allow walk-in customers or both?
• Will you focus only on services, or will you sell beauty products, too? 
• If you want to sell products, too, how do you intend to upsell them?
• Will you offer home visits, and if so, what will be the area of operation for that?
• Do you intend to extend your services into spa, bridal & wedding makeups, full body massage, etc?

Provide a thorough description of your business model so that the potential lenders and investors can make financial assessments and projections.

c) Target Audience

Give here an overview of your target audience. For example, answer the following questions:

• Will it be a unisex beauty salon or a gender-specific beauty salon?
• Is there a specific age group that you are targeting?
• What is the average disposable income of your target audience?
• How frequently do your target audience visit beauty salons?
• How much do they spend per month / per year in beauty treatments on average?

d) Beauty Salon Products & Services

Your beauty salon will primarily be a service-oriented business. However, that doesn’t mean you will not (or you cannot) sell related products. Outline your products and services in this section. Something like this will suffice:

e) Legal structure

Finally, your business overview section should specify what type of business structure you want. Is this a corporation or a partnership (LLC)? Who are the investors? How much equity percentage do they own? Is there a Board of Directors? If so, whom? Do they have experience in the industry?

Beauty Salon Financial Model

Download an expert-built 5-year Excel financial model for your business plan

3. Beauty Salon Market Analysis

It is vital that you demonstrate a deep market knowledge to your potential investors and lenders. For example, if you are offering expensive haircare or skincare procedures in a low-income or middle-class area, you may run into losses.

Similarly, if you are not following the latest hairstyles and trends, or if you don’t offer a wide range of facials, skincare services, you may find it difficult to attract customers.

a) Market Trends

If you are offering haircuts and hair makeup, you must be aware of the latest trends. Similarly, there may be new types of facials and acne treatments available that people may be looking for. Fashion is always a time-bound thing, and so is hairstyle.

For example, if you are offering skin care services like facials, you may want to offer services like :

• LED light therapy (to deal with bruising & acne)
• Intense pulsed light treatment (deal with facial pigmentation)
• Hollywood lift (a non-surgical skin-tightening for sagging skin), etc.

b) Competitor Analysis

The objective of the competitive analysis of your business plan should establish that starting a beauty salon in your area makes sense.

For example, there might be few competitors despite a lot of demand. Or, for example, existing competitors might not be adapted to the latest customer trends, effectively losing business to newcomers.

In your competitive analysis, try to include the following information:

• Number of competing beauty salons or full-service beauty salons in your area
• Their target audience
• The list of products and services they are offering
• The number of stations each salon has
• Their marketing strategy
• Their strengths and weaknesses
• Their reputation as a brand

Beauty Salon SWOT Analysis

Along with the competitive analysis, you must also perform a SWOT analysis . SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

Here you must provide the following information:

• Strengths : Examples – you may have years of industry experience, or you may be a celebrity hairstylist or aesthetician, or you may be offering unique services that no other competing beauty salon is offering
• Weaknesses : Examples – you may not have enough experience with Millennials, or you may not have enough funds for sufficient inventory, etc.
• Opportunities : Examples – unlike your competitors, you may be offering a full-service beauty salon experience with all services related to hair, skin, nails, and face under a single roof
• Threats : Examples – the emergence of new beauty salons that can possibly take a slice of your potential customer base or existing beauty salons reducing their prices to counter your presence

Both competitive analysis and SWOT analysis can help you to come up with innovative marketing strategies that you can use to gain new customers and even chip off your competitor’s customer base.

d) Customers

This is the segment where you provide a detailed analysis of your target audience. The analysis must include things like:

• Demographic distribution of your target customers (you can find data at census.gov )
• Average monthly family income (this will give you an idea of the spending capacity)
• The frequency of beauty salon visits (this will give you a fair idea of the number of customers you can expect in a month)
• Current hair, nail, & beauty trends in the location you want to operate in and the factors that influence those trends
• What channels do the customers use to share the end results of their beauty salon visits? For example, people may post their new hairstyle or nail art on Instagram & Facebook, but share their salon interaction experience on Twitter
• Things that your target audience like and dislike about the existing beauty salons (this will tell you what you must do and things you can do to improve their experience)
• What is the average amount they spend per visit?
• Do they engage in beauty-related activities at home? (This will tell you whether you can sell products such as hair oils, skin lightening creams, etc.)
• Do they like to use coupons and gift cards? (If yes, you may open a separate revenue stream by offering such products)

You can add more questions if you need to complete your customer or target audience study. The best way to get the answers is to conduct direct surveys and interact with your potential customer base. However, you will also find some data from competitive analysis.

A complete understanding of your target audience can help you develop sales and marketing strategies that can beat your competitors and give you an edge.

4. Beauty Salon Marketing Strategy

This is the section of your beauty salon business plan where you should outline your customer acquisition strategy: how do you plan to attract new customers?

Try to answer here the following questions:

What are your Unique Selling Points (USPs)?

• What marketing channels will you use?
• How do you intend to track the success of your marketing strategy?
• What is your CAC or customer acquisition cost?
• What is your marketing budget?
• What introductory promos and offers do you intend to provide for attracting new customers?
• Will you offer gift cards to open an upfront revenue stream?
• Will you sell products? If yes, how do you intend to upsell them for revenue maximization?

Let’s expand a bit on a few questions below:

What marketing channels do Beauty Salons use?

A few marketing channels that beauty salons typically use are:

• Google My Business listing
• PPC ads and social media ads
• Social media promotions and user engagement on platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, TikTok, etc.
• Email marketing
• Print ads, flyers, hoardings & billboards, etc.

You need to use all marketing channels. You can focus on a few (2 to 3 is more than enough). However, make sure that you include social media marketing as one of the options because it can help you to connect and continuously interact with your customers. In addition to that, social media can help you to go viral.

Also, do not forget to provide a fair and nearly accurate estimate of your marketing budget. Failure to display a well-planned and adequate cash flow for advertising and marketing can lead to investors losing confidence.

In other words, how do you differentiate yourself vs. competitors? This is very important as you might need to win customers from competitors.

A few examples of USPs are:

• We are a full-service beauty salon offering services like haircare, bridal makeups, manicure & pedicure, skin treatments & facials, & body massage under a single roof because potential customers dislike the idea of hopping from one door to another to get all their needs fulfilled
• We are a full-service beauty salon with a focus on manicure & pedicure treatments
• We use only 100% organic and natural haircare products to prevent side effects usually caused by chemically heavy cosmetic beauty products
• We will use our proprietary range of hair care and beauty products that will not be available with any other competing beauty salon

5. Management & People

You must address 2 things here:

• The management team and their experience/track record
• The organizational structure: what are the different teams and who reports to whom?

Small businesses often fail because of managerial weaknesses. Thus, having a strong management team is vital. Highlight the experience and technical knowledge of salon managers that you intend to hire to oversee your beauty salon business.

Describe their duties, responsibilities, and roles. Also, highlight their previous experience and explain how they succeed in their previous roles.

It is also important that you explain how their experiences and qualifications help you in implementing the beauty salon services you are proposing.

Organizational Structure

Even if you haven’t already hired anyone, it is important that you provide a chart of the organizational structure of your company. Typical roles for a beauty salon may include: salon managers, hair director, hairstylists, cosmetologists, pedicurist, aesthetician, massage therapist, electrologist, makeup artist, salon/shampoo assistants, receptionists, etc.

6. Beauty Salon Financial Plan

The financial plan is perhaps, with the executive summary, the most important section of any business plan.

Indeed, a solid financial plan tells lenders that your business is viable and can repay the loan you need from them. If you’re looking to raise equity from private investors, a solid financial plan will prove them your beauty salon is an attractive investment.

There should be 3 sections to your financial plan section:

• Your historical financials (only if you already operate the business and have financial accounts to show)
• The startup costs of your project (if you plan to open a new salon, renovate your salon, etc.)
• The 5-year financial projections

Historical Financials (if any)

In the scenario where you already have some historical financials (a few quarters or a few years), include them. A summary of your financial statements in the form of charts e.g. revenue, gross profit and net profit is enough, save the rest for the appendix.

If you don’t have any, don’t worry, most new businesses don’t have any historical financials and that’s ok. If so, jump to Startup Costs instead.

Beauty Salon Startup Costs

Before we expand on 5-year financial projections in the following section, it’s always best practice to start with listing the startup costs of your project. For a beauty salon, startup costs are all the expenses you incur before you start to receive customers and make money.

Startup costs vary based on a number of factors such as the location and size of your salon, the quality of the equipment, design and furniture, whether you rent or buy the space, etc.

On average, beauty salons cost anywhere from $63,500 to $179,000 to start depending on whether you plan to lease the commercial space or buy it. Indeed, if the latter, you would have to take a loan and make a substantial deposit upfront instead.

Beauty Salon 5-Year Financial Projections

In addition to startup costs, you will now need to build a solid 5-year financial model as part of your business plan for your beauty salon.

Your financial projections should be built using a spreadsheet (e.g. Excel or Google Sheets) and presented in the form of tables and charts in your business plan.

As usual, keep it concise here and save details (for example detailed financial statements, financial metrics, key assumptions used for the projections) for the appendix instead.

Your financial projections should answer at least the following questions:

• How much revenue do you expect to generate over the next 5 years?
• When do you expect to break even?
• How much cash will you burn until you get there?
• What’s the impact of a change in pricing (say 15%) on your margins?
• What is your average customer acquisition cost?

You should include here your 3 financial statements (income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statement). This means you must forecast:

• The number of customers over time ;
• Your expected revenue ;
• Operating costs to run the business ;
• Any other cash flow items (e.g. capex, debt repayment, etc.).

When projecting your revenue, make sure to sensitize pricing and the number of customers as a small change in these assumptions will have a big impact on your revenues.

When it comes to the costs, consider both startup and operating costs. For more information on how much it costs to start and run a beauty salon in the US, read our complete guide here .

7. Funding Ask

This is the last section of the business plan of your beauty salon. Now that we have explained what your beauty salon is about, what’s your strategy, where you go and how you get there, this section must answer the following questions:

• How much funding do you need?
• What financial instrument(s) do you need: is this equity or debt, or even a free-money public grant?
• How long will this funding last?
• Where else does the money come from? If you apply for a SBA loan for example, where does the other part of the investment come from (your own capital, private investors?)

If you raise debt:

• What percentage of the total funding the loan represents?
• What is the corresponding Debt Service Coverage Ratio ?

If you raise equity

• What percentage ownership are you selling as part of this funding round?
• What is the corresponding valuation of your business?

Use of Funds

Any business plan should include a clear use of funds section. This is where you explain how the money will be spent.

Will you spend most of the loan / investment to buy the real estate and do the renovations and design of the salon? Or will it cover mostly the cost of the salaries the first few months?

Those are very important questions you should be able to answer in the blink of an eye. Don’t worry, this should come straight from your financial projections. If you’ve built solid projections like in our beauty salon financial model template , you won’t have any issues answering these questions.

For the use of funds, we recommend using a pie chart like the one we have in our financial model template where we outline the main expenses categories as shown below.

Privacy Overview

Cosmetics Store Business Plan [Sample Template]

By: Author Tony Martins Ajaero

Home » Business ideas » Beauty Care Industry » Beauty Supply Store

Are you about starting a cosmetic retail shop? If YES, here is a complete sample cosmetics store business plan template & feasibility report you can use for FREE .

The cosmetics business is a trade that requires little or no technical skills . It is part of the businesses whose skills you can pick – up very easily from books or from online video tutorials at no cost. As such, you can open a cosmetics store in your neighborhood.

Without a shadow of doubt, a cosmetics and beauty store business is indeed a profitable business because it is a fact that people all over the world make use of cosmetics, perfumes, toiletries and personal grooming products. The running cost for this type of business is pretty low and if you are able to secure a strategic high traffic location or a good shop in a shopping mall.

You can be rest assured to rake in good returns from your cosmetics and beauty store especially if it is well – stocked with cosmetics, perfumes, toiletries and personal grooming products from various manufacturers in the united states, France, Italy and other countries of the world.

A Sample Cosmetics Store Business Plan Template

1. industry overview.

A cosmetic, beauty and fragrance store is a retail outlet where different cosmetics, perfumes, toiletries and personal grooming products et al are sold. Businesses in this line of business include beauty supply stores, specialty cosmetics stores and fragrance stores et al

Starting a cosmetic, beauty and fragrance store is a very easy business to start and it is not so capital intensive- especially if you choose to start on a small scale in a small community. Getting the right brands that people want to buy and good stock keeping records are the secrets of running a retail business such as cosmetics, beauty and fragrance store.

In recent times, it has been observed that the Cosmetics, Beauty and Fragrance Stores industry shows a moderate level of market share concentration, with the leading brands (L Brands, Sephora, Sally Beauty Holdings Inc. and Ulta Salon, Cosmetics and Fragrances Inc.) accounting for over half of the available market share in the United States of America.

Industry concentration has increased in recent years due to rapidly increasing demand for specialty beauty retailers like Sephora and Ulta Salon , Cosmetics and Fragrances Inc. Going forward, the industry concentration is projected to continue increasing over the next five years as consumer-spending levels rise and people turn to well-known, trusted stores for their fragrance, beauty and cosmetics needs.

The Beauty, Cosmetics & Fragrance Stores Industry is a thriving sector of the economy of the United States, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Nigeria and Canada and in most countries of the world. Statistics has it that in the United States of America alone.

The Beauty, Cosmetics & Fragrance Stores Industry generates a whooping sum of well over $21 billion annually from more than 91,236 registered fast Beauty, Cosmetics & Fragrance Stores scattered all around the United States of America. The industry is responsible for the employment of well over 230,572 people.

Experts project the cosmetics industry to grow at a 4.7 percent annual rate. L Brands, Sephora, Sally Beauty Holdings Inc. and Ulta Salon, Cosmetics and Fragrances Inc. are the leaders in The Beauty, Cosmetics & Fragrance Stores Industry; they have the lion market share in the industry.

No doubt, expansive product selections and skilled employees have driven revenue for the Cosmetics, Beauty and Fragrance Stores industries.

So also with the increase in youth-targeted cosmetics, the expansion of male-specific products and of course the reformulation of anti – aging products have given specialty beauty stores a new collection of cosmetics, beauty and fragrance products to offer customers.

Going forward, per capita disposable income will continue to rise and the revenue generated from this industry will also enjoy positive growth. If you are contemplating to start your own cosmetics, beauty and fragrance store business in the United States, you should endeavor to carry out a thorough market survey and feasibility studies .

Despite the fact that this line of business is a thriving and profitable venture, if you get some key factors wrong before starting your own cosmetics, beauty and fragrance store business, then you are likely going to struggle to stay afloat.

But over and above, cosmetics, beauty and fragrance store business is a thriving and profitable business especially if you are creative and ready to take on the available market within the location where your business.

2. Executive Summary

Spotless Cosmetics, Beauty & Fragrance Stores is a standard and licensed cosmetics, beauty and fragrance store business that will be based in Carson City – Nevada, USA.

We have been able to secure a corner piece property (store facility) where we intend to launch our first cosmetics, beauty and fragrance store before venturing out to opening our store outlets cum franchise in strategic locations all around Nevada and key cities in the United State of America.

Our business goal as a standard and licensed cosmetics, beauty and fragrance store business is to become the number one choice of residence in the whole of the communities where we intend opening our stores.

We are set to retail a wide range of Hair care and shower products , cosmetics, skin care products, fragrances, nail care products, deodorant and shaving products, sun care, baby care and other related product set al from different manufacturers both from the United States of America and from other countries.

We have been able to secure permits from all relevant departments in the State of Nevada to run the business. Spotless Cosmetics, Beauty & Fragrance Stores is set to redefine how neighborhood based cosmetics, beauty and fragrance store business should be run, not just in Carson City – Nevada, but also in the whole of the United States of America.

This is why we have put plans in place for continuous training of all our store keepers and other back office staff members at regular interval. No doubt the demand for hair care and shower products, cosmetics, skin care products, fragrances, nail care products, deodorant and shaving products, sun care, baby care and other related products is not going to plummet any time soon.

Which is why we have put plans in place to continue to explore all available market around the communities where we intend opening our chains of stores. In the nearest future, we will ensure that we create a wide range of distribution channels via franchising. 

3. Our Products and Services

At Spotless Cosmetics, Beauty & Fragrance Stores we will be involved in retailing cosmetics, retailing perfumes, retailing toiletries, and retailing personal grooming products et al from different manufacturers both from the United States of America and from other countries.

Our intention to start Spotless Cosmetics, Beauty & Fragrance Stores is to maximize profit from the cosmetics, beauty and fragrance stores retailing industry and we will do all that is permitted by the law in the US to achieve our corporate aim and ambition. Here are the products that will be found in our stores;

• Hair care and shower products
• Skin care products
• Nail care products
• Deodorant and shaving products
• Sun care, baby care and other products

4. Our Mission and Vision Statement

• Our vision as a standard cosmetic, beauty and fragrance store business is to become the number one choice in the whole of Carson City and also to be amongst the top 2leading cosmetics, beauty and fragrance stores in the State of Nevada before our 5 th anniversary.
• Our mission is to build a highly successful, profitable all round business; a cosmetic, beauty and fragrance store business that will grow from one store to chains of stores in different locations all around Nevada and other key cities in the United States of America.
• We want to become a one stop cosmetics, beauty and fragrance shop.

Our Business Structure

We are aware that the success of any business depends on the foundation on which the business is built on, which is why we have decided to build our cosmetics, beauty and fragrance store business on the right business foundation.

As a matter of fact, we are set out to build a cosmetics, beauty and fragrance store business that will favorably compete with some of the leading brand in the industry such as L Brands, Sephora, Sally Beauty Holdings Inc. and Ulta Salon, Cosmetics and Fragrances Inc. in the United States of America and Canada.

We want to build a business of dedicated workforce who will go all the way to ensure that our customers are satisfied. In other to achieve this, we aware that it takes a business with the right employees and structure to achieve all what we have set to achieve.

Which is why will be putting structures and standard operating processes in place that will help us meet our clients demand and run the business on autopilot. The success of our cosmetics, beauty and fragrance store business will be anchored on the team not on any individual.

With the nature of cosmetics, beauty and fragrance store business we intend running and the plan to open chains of stores in various locations all around Nevada and key cities in the US, we are only expected to employ more than it is required to run a conventional cosmetics, beauty and fragrance store business. In view of that, we have decided to hire qualified and competent hands to occupy the following positions;

• Chief Executive Officer (Owner)
• Store Manager
• Human Resources and Admin Manager

Merchandize Manager

Sales and Marketing Manager

• Accountants / Cashiers
• Customer Services Executive

5. Job Roles and Responsibilities

Chief Executive Officer – Owner:

• Increases management’s effectiveness by recruiting, selecting, orienting, training, coaching, counseling, and disciplining managers; communicating values, strategies, and objectives; assigning accountabilities; planning, monitoring, and appraising job results; developing incentives; developing a climate for offering information and opinions; providing educational opportunities.
• Creates, communicates, and implements the organization’s vision, mission, and overall direction – i.e. leading the development and implementation of the overall organization’s strategy.
• Responsible for fixing prices and signing business deals
• Responsible for providing direction for the business
• Responsible for signing checks and documents on behalf of the company
• Evaluates the success of the organization
• Reports to the board

Admin and HR Manager

• Responsible for overseeing the smooth running of HR and administrative tasks for the organization
• Maintains office supplies by checking stocks; placing and expediting orders; evaluating new products.
• Ensures operation of equipment by completing preventive maintenance requirements; calling for repairs.
• Updates job knowledge by participating in educational opportunities; reading professional publications; maintaining personal networks; participating in professional organizations.
• Enhances department and organization reputation by accepting ownership for accomplishing new and different requests; exploring opportunities to add value to job accomplishments.
• Defining job positions for recruitment and managing interviewing process
• Carrying out staff induction for new team members
• Responsible for training, evaluation and assessment of employees
• Responsible for arranging travel, meetings and appointments
• Oversees the smooth running of the daily office activities.

Store Manager:

• Responsible for managing the daily activities in the store
• Ensures that proper records of goods are kept and our racks and warehouse does not run out of products
• Ensures that the store facility is in tip top shape and goods are properly arranged and easy to locate
• Interfaces with third – party suppliers (vendors)
• Controls goods distribution and supply inventory
• Supervises the workforce in the cosmetics, beauty and fragrance store sales floor.
• Manages vendor relations, market visits, and the ongoing education and development of the organizations’ buying teams
• Helps to ensure consistent quality of cosmetics, beauty and fragrance products on our rack
• Responsible for the purchase of goods and products for the organizations
• Responsible for planning sales, monitoring inventory, selecting the merchandise, and writing and pricing orders to vendors
• Ensures that the organization operates within stipulated budget.
• Manages external research and coordinate all the internal sources of information to retain the organizations’ best customers and attract new ones
• Models demographic information and analyze the volumes of transactional data generated by customer purchases
• Identifies, prioritizes, and reaches out to new partners, and business opportunities et al
• Identifies development opportunities; follows up on development leads and contacts; participates in the structuring and financing of projects; assures the completion of development projects.
• Responsible for supervising implementation, advocate for the customer’s needs, and communicate with clients
• Develops, executes and evaluates new plans for expanding increase sales
• Documents all customer contact and information
• Represents the company in strategic meetings
• Helps to increase sales and growth for the company

Accountant / Cashier:

• Responsible for preparing financial reports, budgets, and financial statements for the organization
• Provides managements with financial analyses, development budgets, and accounting reports; analyzes financial feasibility for the most complex proposed projects; conducts market research to forecast trends and business conditions.
• Responsible for financial forecasting and risks analysis.
• Performs cash management, general ledger accounting, and financial reporting
• Responsible for developing and managing financial systems and policies
• Responsible for administering payrolls
• Ensures compliance with taxation legislation
• Handles all financial transactions for the organization
• Serves as internal auditor for the organization

Sales Girls and Sales Boys

• Sells our cosmetics, beauty and fragrance products to our customers
• Ensures that all contacts with clients (e-mail, walk-In center, SMS or phone) provides the client with a personalized customer service experience of the highest level
• Through interaction with customers on the phone, uses every opportunity to build client’s interest in the company’s products and services
• Manages administrative duties assigned by the human resources and admin manager in an effective and timely manner
• Consistently stays abreast of any new information on the organizations’ products, promotional campaigns etc. to ensure accurate and helpful information is supplied to customers when they make enquiries
• Responsible for cleaning the store facility at all times
• Ensures that toiletries and supplies don’t run out of stock
• Cleans both the interior and exterior of the store facility
• Handles any other duty as assigned by the store manager.

6. SWOT Analysis

Because of our drive for excellence when it comes to running a standard cosmetics, beauty and fragrance store business, we were able to engage some of the finest business consultants in Carson City – Nevada to look through our business concept.

Together we were able to critically examine the prospect of the business and to access ourselves to be sure we have what it takes to run a standard cosmetics, beauty and fragrance store business that can compete favorably with leading brand such as L Brands, Sephora, Sally Beauty Holdings Inc. and Ulta Salon, Cosmetics and Fragrances Inc. in the United States of America and Canada.

In view of that, we were able to take stock of our strengths, our weakness, our opportunities and also the threats that we are likely going to be exposed to in Carson City – Nevada and also in other cities that we intend opening our chains of stores. Here is a of what we got from the critically conducted SWOT Analysis Spotless Cosmetics, Beauty & Fragrance Stores;

Our location, the Business model we will be operating on (selling franchise and opening chains of stores in various locations), varieties of payment options, wide range of hair care and shower products, cosmetics, skin care products, fragrances, nail care products, deodorant and shaving products, sun care, baby care and other related products et al from different manufacturers both from the United States of America and from other countries.

Our excellent customer service culture will definitely count as a strong strength for Spotless Cosmetics, Beauty & Fragrance Stores.

A major weakness that may count against us is the fact that we are a new cosmetics, beauty and fragrance store outlet and we don’t have the financial capacity to compete with multi – million dollars cosmetics, beauty and fragrance stores like L Brands, Sephora, Sally Beauty Holdings Inc. and Ulta Salon, Cosmetics and Fragrances Inc. when it comes to retailing cosmetics products at a rock bottom prices.

• Opportunities:

The fact that we are going to operate our cosmetics, beauty and fragrance store in one of the busiest streets in Carson City – Nevada provides us with unlimited opportunities to sell our cosmetic products to a large number of people.

We have been able to conduct thorough feasibility studies and market survey and we know what our potential clients will be looking for when they visit our cosmetics, beauty and fragrance store; we are well positioned to take on the opportunities that will come our way.

Just like any other business, one of the major threats that we are likely going to face is economic downturn. It is a fact that economic downturn affects purchasing / spending power. Another threat that may likely confront us is the arrival of a new cosmetics, beauty and fragrance store or even a supermarket that retails cosmetics in same location where ours is located.

7. MARKET ANALYSIS

• Market Trends

Cosmetics, beauty and fragrance store cum retailing business has been in existence for as long as human started trading goods, which is why you can easily find mom and pop shops scattered all around world. In most cases, those people that you find running mom and pop business in a very small scale in a street corner may not have the education that would want them to aspire to run the business on a large scale.

Just like in any retailing business, it is common to find cosmetics, beauty and fragrance stores locating their business in a location with the right demographic composition and a place that is visible to their target market.

Lastly, it is a common trend to find cosmetics, beauty and fragrance stores that are determined to stay top if the game retail a wide range of hair care and shower products, cosmetics, skin care products, fragrances, nail care products, deodorant and shaving products, sun care, baby care and other related products et al from different manufacturers both from the United States of America and from other countries.

With that, they can be considered a one stop cosmetics, beauty and fragrance shop and if they retail in rock bottom prices, then they are going to stay atop for a long time.

8. Our Target Market

As a matter of fact, the cosmetics, beauty and fragrance stores industry has one of the widest ranges of customers; everybody on planet earth has one or more things that they would need from cosmetics, beauty and fragrance store- be it an adult or a kid.

It is difficult to find people around who don’t patronize cosmetics, beauty and fragrance stores. In view of that, we have positioned our cosmetics, beauty and fragrance store to service the residence of Carson City – Nevada and every other locations where we intend opening our chains of cosmetics, beauty and fragrance stores.

We have conducted our market research and we have ideas of what our target market would be expecting from us. We are in business to retail a wide range of cosmetics, beauty and fragrance products to the following groups of people;

• Bachelors and Spinsters
• Corporate Executives
• Business People
• About to wed couples
• Expectant Mothers
• Sports Men and Women

Our Competitive Advantage

A close study of the cosmetics, beauty and fragrance stores industry reveals that the market has become much more intensely competitive over the last decade. As a matter of fact, you have to be highly creative, customer centric and proactive if you must survive in this industry.

We are aware of the stiffer competition and we are well prepared to compete favorably with other leading cosmetics, beauty and fragrance stores in Carson City – Nevada and throughout the United States.

Spotless Cosmetics, Beauty & Fragrance Stores is launching a standard cosmetics, beauty and fragrance store that will indeed become the preferred choice of residence of Carson City – Nevada.

Our cosmetics, beauty and fragrance store is located in a corner piece property on a busy road directly opposite one of the largest residential estates in Carson City – Nevada. We have enough parking space that can accommodate well over 20 cars per time.

One thing is certain, we will ensure that we have a wide range of cosmetics, beauty and fragrance products available in our store at all times. It will be difficult for customers to visit our store and not see the product that they are looking for.

One of our business goals is to make Spotless Cosmetics, Beauty & Fragrance Stores a one stop cosmetics, beauty and fragrance shop. Our excellent customer service culture, various payment options and highly secured facility will serve as a competitive advantage for us.

Lastly, our employees will be well taken care of, and their welfare package will be among the best within our category (startups cosmetics, beauty and fragrance stores) in the industry meaning that they will be more than willing to build the business with us and help deliver our set goals and achieve all our aims and objectives.

We will also give good working conditions and commissions to freelance sales agents that we will recruit from time to time.

9. SALES AND MARKETING STRATEGY

• Sources of Income

Spotless Cosmetics, Beauty & Fragrance Stores is in business to retail a wide range of cosmetics, beauty and fragrance products to the residence of Carson City – Nevada. We are in the cosmetics, beauty and fragrance stores industry to maximize profits and we are going to go all the way out to ensure that we achieve or business goals and objectives.

In essence, our source of income will be the retailing of a wide range of cosmetics, beauty and fragrance products at affordable prices. We will retail products such as;

10. Sales Forecast

One thing is certain when it comes to cosmetics, beauty and fragrance stores, if your store is well stocked and centrally positioned, you will always attract customers cum sales and that will sure translate to increase in revenue generation for the business.

We are well positioned to take on the available market in Carson City – Nevada and we are quite optimistic that we will meet our set target of generating enough income / profits from the first six month of operations and grow the business and our clientele base.

We have been able to critically examine the cosmetics, beauty and fragrance stores industry and we have analyzed our chances in the industry and we have been able to come up with the following sales forecast. The sales projection is based on information gathered on the field and some assumptions that are peculiar to startups in Carson City – Nevada.

Below are the sales projection for Spotless Cosmetics, Beauty & Fragrance Stores, it is based on the location of our business and other factors as it relates to cosmetic stores start – ups in the United States;

• First Fiscal Year-: $240,000
• Second Fiscal Year-: $450,000
• Third Fiscal Year-: $750,000

N.B : This projection is done based on what is obtainable in the industry and with the assumption that there wouldn’t be any major economic meltdown and there won’t be any major competitor offering same products and customer care services as we do within same location. Please note that the above projection might be lower and at the same time it might be higher.

• Marketing Strategy and Sales Strategy

Before choosing a location for Spotless Cosmetics, Beauty & Fragrance Stores, we undertook a thorough market survey and feasibility studies in order for us to be able to be able to penetrate the available market and become the preferred choice for residence of Carson City – Nevada.

We have detailed information and data that we were able to utilize to structure our business to attract the numbers of customers we want to attract per time. We hired experts who have good understanding of the cosmetics, beauty and fragrance stores industry to help us develop

In other to continue to be in business and grow, we must continue to sell the cosmetics, beauty and fragrance products that are available in our store which is why we will go all out to empower or sales and marketing team to deliver. In summary, Spotless Cosmetics, Beauty & Fragrance Stores will adopt the following sales and marketing approach to win customers over;

• Open our cosmetics, beauty and fragrance store in a grand style with a party for all.
• Introduce our store by sending introductory letters alongside our brochure to organizations, households and key stakeholders in Carson City – Nevada
• Ensure that we have a wide range of cosmetics, beauty and fragrance from different brands at all times.
• Make use of attractive handbills to create awareness and also to give direction to our cosmetics, beauty and fragrance store
• Position our signage / flexi banners at strategic places around Carson City – Nevada
• Position our greeters to welcome and direct potential customers
• Create a loyalty plan that will enable us reward our regular customers
• Engage on road shows within our neighborhood to create awareness for our cosmetics, beauty and fragrance store.

11. Publicity and Advertising Strategy

Despite the fact that our cosmetics, beauty and fragrance store is well located, we will still go ahead to intensify publicity for the business. We are going to explore all available means to promote our business.

Spotless Cosmetics, Beauty & Fragrance Stores has a long term plan of opening chains of stores in various locations all around Nevada and key cities in the United States which is why we will deliberately build our brand to be well accepted in Carson City before venturing out.

As a matter of fact, our publicity and advertising strategy is not solely for winning customers over but to effectively communicate our brand. Here are the platforms we intend leveraging on to promote and advertise Mama Jay Cosmetic Stores;

• Place adverts on community based newspapers, radio stations and TV stations.
• Encourage the use of word of mouth publicity from our loyal customers
• Leverage on the internet and social media platforms like; YouTube, Instagram, Facebook ,Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Badoo, Google+  and other platforms to promote our business.
• Ensure that our we position our banners and billboards in strategic positions all around Carson City – Nevada
• Distribute our fliers and handbills in target areas in and around our neighborhood
• Contact corporate organizations, households, landlord associations and schools by calling them up and informing them of Spotless Cosmetics, Beauty & Fragrance Stores and the products we sell
• Advertise our cosmetics, beauty and fragrance store business in our official website and employ strategies that will help us pull traffic to the site
• Brand all our official cars and vans and ensure that all our staff members and management staff wears our branded shirt or cap at regular intervals.

12. Our Pricing Strategy

Pricing is one of the key factors that gives leverage to retail business like cosmetics, beauty and fragrance stores, it is normal for consumers to go to places (retail outlets) where they can get cosmetics, beauty and fragrance products at cheaper price.

Which is why big player in the cosmetics, beauty and fragrance stores industry like L Brands, Sephora, Sally Beauty Holdings Inc. and Ulta Salon, Cosmetics and Fragrances Inc et al will attract loads of consumers. Products in their stores are tagged with the cheapest price you can get anywhere in the United States.

We know we don’t have the capacity to compete with L Brands, Sephora, Sally Beauty Holdings Inc. and Ulta Salon, Cosmetics and Fragrances Inc. but we will ensure that the prices of all the cosmetics, beauty and fragrance products that are available in our store are competitive with what is obtainable amongst cosmetics, beauty and fragrance stores within our level.

• Payment Options

The payment policy adopted by Spotless Cosmetics, Beauty & Fragrance Stores is all inclusive because we are quite aware that different customers prefer different payment options as it suits them but at the same time, we will ensure that we abide by the financial rules and regulation of the United States of America.

Here are the payment options that Spotless Cosmetics, Beauty & Fragrance Stores will make available to her clients;

• Payment via bank transfer
• Payment with cash
• Payment via POS
• Payment via online bank transfer
• Payment via check
• Payment via bank draft

In view of the above, we have chosen banking platforms that will enable our client make payment for farm produces purchase without any stress on their part. Our bank account numbers will be made available on our website and promotional materials to clients who may want to deposit cash or make online transfer for the purchase of products from our stores.

13. Startup Expenditure (Budget)

In setting up any business, the amount or cost will depend on the approach and scale you want to undertake. If you intend to go big by renting a place, then you would need a good amount of capital as you would need to ensure that your employees are well taken care of, and that your facility is conducive enough for workers to be creative and productive.

This means that the start-up can either be low or high depending on your goals, vision and aspirations for your business. The tools and equipment that will be used are nearly the same cost everywhere, and any difference in prices would be minimal and can be overlooked.

As for the detailed cost analysis for starting a cosmetics, beauty and fragrance store business; it might differ in other countries due to the value of their money. These are the key areas where we will spend our start – up capital;

• The Total Fee for Registering the Business in the United States of America – $750.
• Legal expenses for obtaining licenses and permits as well as the accounting services (software, P.O.S machines and other software) – $3,300.
• Marketing promotion expenses for the grand opening of Spotless Cosmetics, Beauty & Fragrance Stores in the amount of $3,500 and as well as flyer printing (2,000 flyers at $0.04 per copy) for the total amount of $3,580.
• Cost for hiring Consultant – $2,500.
• Insurance (general liability, workers’ compensation and property casualty) coverage at a total premium – $2,400.
• Cost for payment of rent for 12 month at $1.76 per square feet in the total amount of $53,300.
• Cost for Shop remodeling (construction of racks and shelves) – $5,000.
• Other start-up expenses including stationery ( $500 ) and phone and utility deposits ( $2,500 ).
• Operational cost for the first 3 months (salaries of employees, payments of bills et al) – $60,000
• The cost for Start-up inventory (a wide range of hair care and shower products, cosmetics, skin care products, fragrances, nail care products, deodorant and shaving products, sun care, baby care and other related products et al from different manufacturers both from the United States of America and from other countries.) – $75,000
• Storage hardware (bins, rack, shelves, food case) – $3,720
• Cost for store equipment (cash register, security, ventilation, signage) – $3,750
• The cost for the purchase of furniture and gadgets (Computers, Printers, Telephone, TVs, Sound System, tables and chairs et al): $4,000.
• The cost of Launching a Website: $600
• The cost for our opening party: $3,000
• Miscellaneous: $10,000

We would need an estimate of $350,000 to successfully set up our cosmetics, beauty and fragrance store in Carson City – Nevada. Please note that this amount includes the salaries of all the staff for the first month of operation.

Generating Funding / Startup Capital for Spotless Cosmetics, Beauty & Fragrance Stores

Spotless Cosmetics, Beauty & Fragrance Stores is a family business that is solely owned and financed by Mrs. Peace Osteen and her immediate family members. We do not intend to welcome any external business partners, which is why we have decided to restrict the sourcing of the start – up capital to 3 major sources.

These are the areas we intend generating our start – up capital;

• Generate part of the start – up capital from personal savings
• Source for soft loans from family members and friends
• Apply for loan from my Bank

N.B: We have been able to generate about $100,000 (Personal savings $80,000 and soft loan from family members $20,000) and we are at the final stages of obtaining a loan facility of $250,000 from our bank. All the papers and document have been signed and submitted, the loan has been approved and any moment from now our account will be credited with the amount.

14. Sustainability and Expansion Strategy

The future of a business lies in the numbers of loyal customers that they have the capacity and competence of the employees, their investment strategy and the business structure. If all of these factors are missing from a business (company), then it won’t be too long before the business close shop.

One of our major goals of starting Spotless Cosmetics, Beauty & Fragrance Stores is to build a business that will survive off its own cash flow without the need for injecting finance from external sources once the business is officially running.

We know that one of the ways of gaining approval and winning customers over is to retail our products a little bit cheaper than what is obtainable in the market and we are well prepared to survive on lower profit margin for a while.

Spotless Cosmetics, Beauty & Fragrance Stores will make sure that the right foundation, structures and processes are put in place to ensure that our staff welfare are well taken of. Our company’s corporate culture is designed to drive our business to greater heights and training and retraining of our workforce is at the top burner.

As a matter of fact, profit-sharing arrangement will be made available to all our management staff and it will be based on their performance for a period of six years or more. We know that if that is put in place, we will be able to successfully hire and retain the best hands we can get in the industry; they will be more committed to help us build the business of our dreams.

Check List / Milestone

• Business Name Availability Check : Completed
• Business Registration: Completed
• Opening of Corporate Bank Accounts: Completed
• Securing Point of Sales (POS) Machines: Completed
• Opening Mobile Money Accounts: Completed
• Opening Online Payment Platforms: Completed
• Application and Obtaining Tax Payer’s ID: In Progress
• Application for business license and permit: Completed
• Purchase of Insurance for the Business: Completed
• Leasing of facility and remodeling the shop: In Progress
• Conducting Feasibility Studies: Completed
• Generating capital from family members: Completed
• Applications for Loan from the bank: In Progress
• Writing of business plan: Completed
• Drafting of Employee’s Handbook: Completed
• Drafting of Contract Documents and other relevant Legal Documents: In Progress
• Design of The Company’s Logo: Completed
• Graphic Designs and Printing of Packaging Marketing / Promotional Materials: In Progress
• Recruitment of employees: In Progress
• Purchase of the Needed furniture, racks, shelves, computers, electronic appliances, office appliances and CCTV: In progress
• Creating Official Website for the Company: In Progress
• Creating Awareness for the business both online and around the community: In Progress
• Health and Safety and Fire Safety Arrangement (License): Secured
• Opening party / launching party planning: In Progress
• Compilation of our list of products that will be available in our store: Completed
• Establishing business relationship with vendors – suppliers of cosmetics, beauty and fragrance products: In Progress

Related Posts:

• Beauty Supply Store Business Plan [Sample Template]
• Eyelash Extension Store Business Plan [Sample Template]
• Beauty Counter Manager Business Plan [Sample Template]
• Lip Gloss Line Business Plan [Sample Template]
• 5 Licenses & Permits You Need to Open a Beauty Supply Store

Beauty Salon Business Plan Template

If you want to start a beauty salon business or expand your current one, you need a business plan.

Over the past 20+ years, we have helped over 5,000 entrepreneurs and business owners create business plans to start and grow their beauty salons.

Below are links to each section of an example beauty salon business plan template:

Next Section: Executive Summary >

Beauty Salon Business Plan FAQs

What is the easiest way to complete my beauty salon business plan.

Growthink's Ultimate Salon Business Plan Template allows you to quickly and easily complete your salon or beauty bar business plan.

Where Can I Download a Beauty Salon Business Plan PDF?

You can download our  beauty salon business plan sample pdf  here.

Our beauty salon business plan PDF template is a free resource to help you get started on your own business plan. This is a business plan template you can use in PDF format for a beauty bar or salon.

What Is a Salon Business Plan or Beauty Bar Business Plan?

A business plan provides a snapshot of your salon as it stands today, and lays out your growth plan for the next five years. It explains your business’s goals, business model, the type of services you will offer (beauty services, spa services, nail services, skin care services and/or hair salon services), management team, target market, and a marketing plan for the many ways you can reach new and existing clients. It also includes market research to support your plans and allow you to find the perfect salon location.

A comprehensive financial plan is also key to include so you can show investors the potential viability of your business.

Why Do You Need a Business Plan for a Beauty Salon?

If you’re looking to start a beauty bar or salon or grow your existing business, you need a business plan. A business plan will help you raise funding, if needed, and plan out the growth of your new salon in order to improve your chances of success. Your business plan is a living document that should be updated annually as your company grows and changes.

What Are the Sources of Funding for a Beauty Salon?

With regards to funding, the main sources of funding for a new beauty salon are bank loans and angel investors. With regards to bank loans, banks will want to review your business plan and gain confidence that you will be able to repay your loan and interest. To acquire this confidence, the loan officer will not only want to confirm that your financials are reasonable. But they will want to see a professional salon business plan. Such a plan will give them the confidence that you can successfully and professionally operate your own business.

The second most common form of funding for any type of salon is angel investors. Angel investors are wealthy individuals who will write you a check. They will either take equity in return for their funding, or, like a bank, they will give you a loan. 

This is all true for a new salon business plan or a plan to grow an existing salon business.

BEAUTY SALON BUSINESS PLAN OUTLINE

• Beauty Salon Business Plan Home
• 1. Executive Summary
• 2. Company Overview
• 3. Industry Analysis
• 4. Customer Analysis
• 5. Competitive Analysis
• 6. Marketing Plan
• 7. Operations Plan
• 8. Management Team
• 9. Financial Plan
• 10. Appendix
• Beauty Salon Business Plan Summary

Other Helpful Business Plan Articles & Templates

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

SAMPLE BUSINESS PLAN FOR COSMETICS BUSINESS.

2020, SAMPLE BUSINESS PLAN BY AKAMPURIRA BRIAN

This plan is to set up a cosmetic shop in the name of " Briox Cosmetics Enterprise ", which will be located in Easy View Arcade Garage street Mbarara. The cosmetic shop will be a sole proprietorship owned by Akampurira Brian. I will use startup capital of 52,380,000 Uganda shillings. UGX 34,380,000 will be owners’ equity and the remaining UGX 18,000,000 will be a bank loan which will be secured from centenary bank at 10% interest rate. The key personnel at the cosmetic Enterprise will include Senior manager, buying inputs and overall supervisory work, operations and production staff, sales and marketing staff, skin therapy and hairdressing staff, record keeping and accounting, stock control and direct selling staff The key objective of the cosmetic shop will be to provide fresh quality cosmetics to our clients to enable them improve their general skin beauty, to obtain maximum customer satisfaction through continued quality production, to obtain continuous production and supply of our products to the customers, to create customer loyalty to our products such that they become well pronounced in the customer minds. To achieve our objective, the cosmetic shop will employ strategies such as: Offering quality, body skin lotions, oils and herbal cosmetics that help fight the skin diseases made from fresh fruit and vegetable which are nutritious through adequate research and proper mixture of the lotions, oils and herbal ointments to meet the standard skin contents and characteristics of customers in the market through advertisement by use of sign posts, direct selling and radio stations, offering special incentive to our regular clients, offering our cosmetics at relatively lower prices for market penetration, creating a conducive environment for our clients, employing people who understand the meaning of customer care and meaning of quality by giving them samples for use as a way of expanding our markets especially among the young children, youth and women. All this encompasses our strategies that include, communication strategy, supplier relationship strategy, marketing strategy, competitive strategy and human resource strategy. The vision of the cosmetic shop will be ‘To be the leading suppliers of quality, fresh and health skin booting cosmetics product’ Our mission will be, dedicated at improving the skin health and body look and appearance of our client. "We seek to become the recognized leader in our targeted local and international market for carrying a diverse line of in demand cosmetics including perfumes, makeup, and other accessories that will have a competitive edge towards customer satisfaction and retention at attractive prices. Our major customers will be corporate employees, students, market vendors, tourists and retailers who will be consuming a range of our products including; Perfumes 1st class, Lemon body lotion, Hair relaxer cream, Avocadoes body cream smoother and Hair glow. Our forms/ ways of distribution will include, through Retailers, distributors and wholesalers who will buy and sell in bulk to our final customers which we cannot sell to directly we shall also sell directly to the customers because we have a high customer traffic at our main outlet in Mbarara. We shall as well be using a van that will be leased to distribute to our customers who order in large quantities. In terms of our legal responsibilities, the following taxes apply to our business, sales tax, employees’ income tax, national social security fund and Mbarara Municipal Council Tax and other licenses like trading license, and Uganda National Bureau of Standards license. We shall as well need to the insurance for our business and also carry out other social responsibilities like corporate social responsibility, being environmentally friendly, and ensuring cleanliness of Mbarara town. Our products are costed and priced after comparison with our major competitor’s prices and costing information acquired through market research. We have as well carried out cash flow estimates to ensure that our business does not run out of cash. Our startup capital has been allocated to what we intend to start our business with that is renting building for two months, buying machines for mixing the inputs, Machines, leasing van, buying furniture and fittings, massage equipment, cloths and uniforms and other necessary things to start with including the employee salaries for the first two months. This plan will be effective on 1st January 2018 and that is when my business will begin in Mbarara Easy View Arcade.

Related Papers

Mauricio Quintero

Isla De Arriaran Revista Cultural Y Cientifica

Francisco Casimiro

TEKNOOBGA KITCHEN

JUAL KEJU BUBUK CHEESE POWDER SAUS KEJU CHEESE CREAM SAUCE HARGA MURAH DISTRIBUTOR | 0813-1435-1985

BISNIS WARALABA AYAM GORENG CRISPY ya Gan? Simak produk spesial dari kita dulu yuk. Kalau juragan pengen bikin menu spesial kafe-resto agan, kita punya cheese sauce powder, salted egg / tepung telur asin, whipped cream bubuk, cheese tea powder dan bubuk creamer premium nih gan. BISNIS WARALABA AYAM GORENG CRISPY Memang menarik, sedangkan yang spesial dari kita yang pertama adalah SALTED EGG POWDER / BUBUK SAUS TELUR ASIN ALA TEKNOBOGA. Trend restoran cepat saji masa kini, selain menggunakan saus-saus / bumbu pada umumnya, juga menyajikan menu makanan-cemilan dengan siraman saus telur asin / salted egg sauce. Tekstur yang creamy dan gurih, unik memang cocok dipadukan dengan berbagai hidangan.

Ashton Bradley

Marine and Freshwater Research

Greg Ferguson

Population structure in marine teleosts is often investigated to aid conservation and fisheries management (e.g. to assess population structure to inform restocking programs). We assessed genetic population structure of the important estuary-associated marine fish, mulloway (Argyrosomus japonicus), within Australian waters and between Australia and South Africa. Genetic variation was investigated at 13 polymorphic microsatellite markers. FST values and Bayesian estimates in STRUCTURE suggested population differentiation of mulloway within Australia and confirm strong differentiation between South Africa and Australia. The 12 Australian sample sets fell into one of four spatially separated genetic clusters. Initially, a significant signal of isolation-by-distance (IBD) was evident among Australian populations. However, further investigation by decomposed-pairwise-regression (DPR) suggested five sample sets were influenced more by genetic-drift, rather than gene-flow and drift equilib...

Journal of Histochemistry & Cytochemistry

Human cells in culture (HEp-2) were infected with herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) at multiplicities of infection varying from 0.2 to 10, and fixed 6, 12, 18 and 24 hr after infection. Infection-related antigens were detected by an indirect double antibody (peroxidase conjugated goat anti-rabbit to rabbit anti-herpes simplex virus type 2) immunoenzymatic staining reaction that rendered infection-related antigens visible by light microscopy. A corresponding series of laser flow cytophotometric experiments yielded reproducible large-angle (1-19 degrees) laser-light scattering distributions that depended upon multiplicities of infection and the location of the infection-related antigens in the infected cells.

Ray Vanderby

Laila Vejsbjerg

Pakistan Journal of Biological Sciences

Saleh Mwafy

The Medical Journal of The Islamic Republic of Iran

Mohammad Reza Zargarzadeh

The hydroalcoholic extracts of dried ligulate florets of Calendula ojficinalis L., dried leaves of Plantago major L., and dried aerial parts of Vinca major L. were prepared and used as the main active ingredients of two types of anti-anorectal disease ointments and suppositories. Benzocaine was used in one of the formulations, while a mixture of belladonna dry extract and ephedrine sulfate was used in the other. The effects of both prepared formulations were investigated in patients suffering from anorectal diseases, using relevant placebos for comparison. The results indicated that the prepared drugs were significantly effective in the treatment of anorectal diseases. Formulations containing benzocaine proved to be more effective in patients suffering from hemorrhoids, while formulations con­ taining belladonna dry extract and ephedrine sulfate were more effective in anal fissure and proctitis.

RELATED PAPERS

Indian Journal of Traditional …

Anju Kapoor

Dinda Kartika

Paediatrics and Child Health

haresh kirpalani

Prace Naukowe Uniwersytetu Ekonomicznego we Wrocławiu

benedykt olszewski

Giuseppe Forlani

hjhjgfg freghrf

Journal of Family Violence

Stella Babalola

American Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences

mortaza zivdar

Sarah Galvão

The American Journal of Cardiology

André Vincentelli

Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences / Journal Canadien des Sciences Neurologiques

RELATED TOPICS

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

Free Hair and Beauty Salon Sample Business Plan PDF

Elon Glucklich

6 min. read

Updated February 7, 2024

Looking for a free,  downloadable hair and beauty salon sample business plan Word doc  or  PDF  to help you create a business plan of your own? Bplans has you covered.

Keep in mind that you don’t need to find a sample business plan that exactly matches your business. Whether you’re launching an upscale, full-service salon in a bustling city or a neighborhood barbershop, the details will be different, but the bones of the plan will be the same.

Are you writing a business plan for your salon because you’re seeking a loan? Is your primary concern building a clear roadmap for growth? Either way, you’re going to want to edit and customize it so it fits your particular company.

No two salons are alike. Your business model will be different if you’re renting space to independent hairstylists, rather than taking on employees, for example. So take the time to create your own financial forecasts and do enough market research so you have a solid plan for success.

• What should you include in a hair and beauty salon business plan?

Your hair and beauty salon business plan doesn’t need to be hundreds of pages—keep it as short and concise as you can. You’ll probably want to include each of these sections:

• Executive summary
• Company summary and funding needs
• Products and services
• Marketing plan
• Management team
• Financial plan

One of the things that makes a salon business plan different from some service-based business plans is that you might decide to offer a combination of products and services.

Maybe you’ll sell shampoo, beard oil, or other cosmetics and beauty products, in addition to offering services like haircuts, manicures, or massages. If that’s the case, make sure you include your ideas for upselling products to customers to increase the value of every appointment you book.

Here’s an example of a salon business plan outline.

Brought to you by

Create a professional business plan

Using ai and step-by-step instructions.

Secure funding

Validate ideas

Build a strategy

• The 7 elements of an effective hair and beauty salon business plan

1. Executive Summary

The  executive summary  provides a high-level overview of your business plan. It should outline the objectives of your hair and beauty salon, such as to offer high-quality services, to expand the client base, or to break into a new market.

Your salon’s mission statement should describe its purpose and what sets it apart from competitors. For example, you may aim to offer a personalized experience for each customer or provide eco-friendly hair and beauty services.

The keys to success are the factors that will help your salon thrive. These may include a prime location, hiring experienced staff, excellent customer service, or a unique product and service range.

2. Company Summary and Funding Needs

The company summary offers a detailed overview of your salon, including its legal structure , location, and history. Also, it highlights your salon’s funding needs if you are seeking financial support.

Clearly state how much funding you need, what you will use it for, and how it will benefit the salon. For instance, you may need funds to renovate the premises, purchase equipment, or boost marketing efforts.

3. Salon Products and Services

This section should detail the products and services your hair or beauty salon will offer. These may include haircuts, hair treatments, manicures, pedicures, massages, and beauty treatments.

If you plan to retail beauty products such as shampoos, conditioners, or skin care items, include this information too. Highlight any unique services or products that differentiate your salon from competitors.

4. Salon Marketing Plan and Analysis

Your marketing plan should outline the strategies you will use to attract and retain customers. These strategies might include social media advertising, loyalty programs, partnerships with local businesses, and special promotions.

Additionally, you should conduct a thorough market analysis. Understand your target customers, their preferences, and their spending habits. Identify your competitors, their strengths and weaknesses, and how you can differentiate your salon.

5. Salon Management Team

The management team section provides information about the salon’s key personnel. This could include the salon owner, managers, stylists, beauticians, and other staff members. Highlight their roles, responsibilities, qualifications, and experience.

If you plan to rent chairs to independent stylists rather than hiring employees, describe how this arrangement will work and the advantages it offers for your business.

6. Financial Plan and Forecasts

Your financial plan should present detailed financial projections, including revenue, costs, and profitability. Include a cash flow statement, income statement, and balance sheet. This section should clearly demonstrate the salon’s potential profitability and financial viability.

Also, outline your pricing strategy. How have you priced your services and products, and how do these prices compare with competitors? What are your wage costs, and how will they affect your profitability?

7. Appendix

The appendix includes any additional supporting documents that complement your business plan. This might be market research data, lease agreements, employee contracts, or licensing and permit documents.

While not always necessary, the appendix can provide valuable context and proof to support your business plan’s content.

• Crafting a Successful Salon Business Plan: Key Considerations

Understanding your target clientele’s needs is crucial to writing a hair or beauty salon business plan that you can put into action. To ensure your business plan is the foundation of a growing operation rather than just checking boxes, ask yourself whether you’re taking these considerations into account.

1. Comprehensive Services Offering

In the beauty industry, customer preferences vary significantly, and staying versatile in your offerings can help cater to a broader clientele. Include a wide range of services that cater to different demographics. You may also consider offering unique or specialized services that distinguish your salon from others.

2. Pricing Strategy

Pricing can make or break your salon. Competitive pricing attracts customers, but your pricing should also cover your costs and ensure profitability. Effective market research can help you understand the average cost of services in your area, which you can use to set your prices competitively.

3. Salon Atmosphere

The ambiance of a salon plays a significant role in attracting and retaining customers. Consider factors like décor, cleanliness, and customer service when planning your salon.

4. Staff Training and Expertise

Quality service is crucial in the hair and beauty industry since word-of-mouth exposure from existing clients is a major driver of new business. Investing in ongoing staff training ensures that your team stays updated with the latest trends, techniques, and customer service skills.

5. Digital Presence

Although word of mouth is one business driver, many of today’s customers research online before visiting a salon. Having a strong online presence, including a well-designed website, effective search engine optimization and active social media accounts, can significantly boost your business.

• Download your free hair and beauty salon sample business plan PDF

Download this  hair and beauty salon sample business plan PDF  for free right now, or visit Bplans’ gallery of more than  550 sample business plans  if you’re looking for more options.

There are  plenty of reasons  salon business owners can benefit from  writing a business plan —you’ll need one if you’re seeking a loan or investment.

Even if you’re not seeking funding, the process of thinking through every aspect of your business will help you make sure you’re not overlooking anything critical as you grow.

Elon is a marketing specialist at Palo Alto Software, working with consultants, accountants, business instructors and others who use LivePlan at scale. He has a bachelor's degree in journalism and an MBA from the University of Oregon.

Table of Contents

Related Articles

7 Min. Read

How to Write a Bakery Business Plan + Sample

10 Min. Read

How to Write an eCommerce Business Plan + Template

6 Min. Read

How to Write a Fix-and-Flip Business Plan + Free Template PDF

12 Min. Read

How to Write a Food Truck Business Plan (2024 + Template)

The Bplans Newsletter

The Bplans Weekly

Subscribe now for weekly advice and free downloadable resources to help start and grow your business.

We care about your privacy. See our privacy policy .

The quickest way to turn a business idea into a business plan

Fill-in-the-blanks and automatic financials make it easy.

No thanks, I prefer writing 40-page documents.

Discover the world’s #1 plan building software

How to Write a Fashion Business Plan in 10 Easy Steps

• Published: May 28, 2023
• By: Yellowbrick

Have you ever dreamed of making a splash in the world of fashion? Do you possess the creative flair and keen business sense needed to dress the world in your unique vision? If you’re nodding your head, it’s time to strut your stuff and create a fashion business plan  that’ll make investors sit up and take notice.

Fear not, we’re here to help with this 10-step guide that will assist you in crafting a blueprint tailor-made for success . So grab a cup of coffee, and let’s dive in together, preparing you to take the fashion industry by storm!

Find Your Fashion Niche

First things first,  what’s your style , darling ? Are you all about haute couture or do you fancy yourself as the next streetwear sensation? Identifying your niche is crucial to setting the foundation of your business plan. Ask yourself: who’s your target audience? What makes your brand unique? Answering these questions will help you carve out your place in the fashion world.

Executive Summary: Give ‘Em the Runway Rundown

Think of your executive summary as the teaser trailer for your business plan. It should be concise , snappy , and give your readers a taste of what’s to come . Summarize your company’s mission, its unique selling points, and your strategy for growth. Remember, first impressions count, so make it fabulous!

Company Description: Flaunt Your Brand’s Personality

Here’s where you  spill the beans about your company . What’s the story behind your brand? How will it make a difference in the fashion industry? Describe your company’s history, structure, and culture. Don’t forget to mention any milestones or achievements that make you stand out from the crowd.

Market Analysis: Study Your Style Scene

You’ll need to  do some legwork to get the lowdown on your target market . Analyze trends, competitors, and your audience’s buying habits. Who are the big players in your niche? What are the gaps in the market? Uncover the secrets to your competitors’ success and learn how to make your brand shine even brighter.

Product Line: Show Off Your Fashion Forwardness

Here’s your chance to strut your stuff and flaunt your designs . Detail your product line, including sketches, materials, and price points. How will your collection evolve over time? What’s your plan for future collections? Give readers a sneak peek into your fashion-forward world and leave them wanting more.

Marketing and Sales Strategy: Work That Catwalk!

Now that you’ve got your fabulous designs, how do you plan to spread the word ? Outline your marketing strategy, touching on advertising, social media, influencers, and PR. Describe your sales channels and how you’ll reach your target audience. Remember, in the fashion world, you’ve got to work to make it!

Operational Plan: Behind the Seams

In this section, delve into the nitty-gritty of your day-to-day operations . Discuss your production process, suppliers, and inventory management. How will you ensure quality control? What’s your plan for scaling up as your business grows? Give readers a behind-the-scenes look at the nuts and bolts of your fashion empire.

Management and Organization: Assemble Your Style Squad

No one can run a fashion empire alone.  Introduce your readers to your team , highlighting their experience and expertise . How will your organizational structure support your business’s growth? Be sure to discuss any advisors or mentors who’ll help guide you on your journey to the top.

Financial Projections: Crunching the Couture Numbers

Fashion may be all about glamor and glitz, but at the end of the day, it’s still a business. In this section, lay out your financial projections ,  including revenue , expenses , and profit . Create a comprehensive budget and cash flow statement to demonstrate your financial savvy. Don’t forget to address any potential risks and how you’ll mitigate them. After all, a solid financial plan is your ticket to fashion stardom.

Appendices: The Cherry on Top

Wrap up your fashion business plan with any additional information or documentation that supports your case. This might include market research data, design patents, or even letters of intent from potential buyers. Think of the appendices as the finishing touches to your plan – the cherry on top that ties everything together.

A Runway-Ready Business Plan

And there you have it – a 10-step guide to crafting a fashion business plan that’s equal parts style and substance. With your runway-worthy blueprint in hand, you’re now ready to take the fashion world by storm . So go on, dazzle investors, and watch your designs light up the catwalks. After all, the sky’s the limit when you’ve got a plan that’s dressed to impress!

But wait, before you dive headfirst into the world of fashion business, remember that it’s essential to keep learning and expanding your knowledge . To help you achieve even greater success, consider enrolling in the Fashion Industry Essentials Course  offered by Yellowbrick.

Taught by esteemed faculty from the prestigious Parsons School of Fashion  and leading industry insiders, this course covers essential aspects of the business side of fashion, including:

• Visual style
• Portfolio design
• Fashion production
• Marketing & PR

Featuring five enthralling online modules and a range of skill-building activities, you can progress at your own pace, tailoring the learning experience to suit your needs. Each module typically takes between 3 to 5 hours to complete.

And the cherry on top? You’ll have the extraordinary opportunity to learn from industry powerhouses  like Elaine Welteroth, Brandon Maxwell, and Rebecca Minkoff. Upon completing the course, you’ll be awarded a  non-credit certificate of completion from Parsons , showcasing your commitment to the fashion industry.

So, are you ready to strut your stuff? Don’t hesitate! Begin crafting your fashion business plan and enroll in the Fashion Industry Essentials Course  today to stay ahead of the curve. Empower yourself with the knowledge and skills to make your mark on the fashion world!

Enter your email to learn more and get a full course catalog!

• Hidden hide names
• Hidden First Name
• Hidden Last Name
• Name This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

More from Yellowbrick

Yellowbrick Recognized as Top EdTech Company in North America by TIME and Statista

We are thrilled to announce that Yellowbrick has been named the leading EdTech company in North America and sixth globally in the prestigious “World’s Top

Mastering the Art of Backline Tech: Tips & Tricks for Technicians

Explore the exciting role of a backline technician, gain insights into essential skills, career growth opportunities, and steps to achieve success in the live music industry.

Top 5 Video Streaming Challenges: How to Overcome Them

Explore video streaming challenges and strategies to overcome them, from bandwidth limitations to DRM issues. Dive into the dynamism of the video streaming industry.

ABOUT YELLOWBRICK

• Work at Yellowbrick
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Use

STUDENT RESOURCES

• Scholarships
• Student Login
• Beauty Business Essentials
• Beauty Industry Essentials
• Ecommerce Essentials
• Fashion Business Essentials
• Fashion Industry Essentials
• Footwear Business Essentials
• Gaming & Esports Industry Essentials
• Global Sports Management
• Hospitality Industry Essentials
• Music Industry Essentials
• Performing Arts Industry Essentials
• Product Design Essentials
• Sneaker Essentials
• Streetwear Essentials
• TV/Film Industry Essentials
• UX Design Essentials

©2024 Yellowbrick · All Rights Reserved · All Logos & Trademarks Belong to Their Respective Owners

Money latest: Popular music magazine closes months after online relaunch – but 90s lad mag is back

Q magazine has abruptly closed just months after its relaunch due to "business reasons" - but Loaded is back. Read this and the rest of today's consumer and personal finance news - and leave a comment - below.

Monday 20 May 2024 14:22, UK

• August interest rate cut on cards - economists
• Virgin Trains could return to West Coast route
• Popular music magazine closes months after online relaunch – but 90s lad mag is back
• Two big moments this week - here's what's happening 

Essential reads

• Money Problem : 'My second-hand Ford is being written off with a known issue - but no one is taking responsibility'
• How to sell your home without an estate agent
• Tourist taxes to watch out for in popular holiday destinations
• Basically... What is PIP - and what could government changes mean?
• Best of the Money blog - an archive

Ask a question or make a comment

Young twin sisters have gone viral on TikTok after fuming over the prices charged by an ice cream man. 

In a video posted on the social media site, Marnie and Mylah rant after being quoted £9 for two ice creams. 

"There's an ice cream van there selling two ice creams with two chewing gums in it for bloody £9," one of the twins says. 

She adds that the ice cream van who visits her street usually charges between £1 and £2 for an ice cream. 

"He's going to get nowhere with that," she says. 

To make the situation even worse, she's outraged that he only accepts "bloody card". 

"Bloody hell. It's bloody well bad," she says. 

The average price of a 450ml - 1 litre tub of ice cream is currently £3.39 - up 6.3% since last year, the latest data from the Office for National Statistics show. 

The ice cream van industry has been plagued with difficulties, from rising running costs and rubbish weather. 

According to the Ice Cream Alliance, the market is worth a huge £1.4bn. 

Sky News contacted the ICA, the industry's trade association, for comment. 

A popular music magazine has been closed down just months after being relaunched online. 

Q, which originally closed after 34 years in 2020, was revived as an online publication nearly six months ago after a licensing deal was struck by New-York based Empire Media Group. 

But its surprise closure, which came to light on Friday, means a team of six full-time staff have lost their jobs.

Writer Will Harris is one of them, saying he'd lost his "first full-time employment in a dozen years".

Writing on Substack , he said the move had been a "business decision" but that staff had been working long hours to "make it the best publication" possible. 

"We worked our shifts, worked before and after our shifts, and delivered consistently top-shelf content that was, to our way of thinking, exactly the sort of thing that a new incarnation of Q Magazine should offer," he wrote. 

Editor-in-chief Andrew Barker said the decision to shut the magazine down "came with no advance warning, and no indication that anything was wrong". 

"To say that we were shocked and devastated would be a colossal understatement." 

Sky News has contacted Empire Media Group for comment. 

Separately, last week saw the return of a 90s lads mag Loaded.

The magazine relaunched its website after disappearing nine years ago, offering a £9 monthly membership. 

As part of its revival, it has changed its tagline from "for men who should know better" to "for men who know better". 

"The relaunch of the platform is a digital rebellion for the modern man who refuses to fit into a stereotype, from the finest in music, sports, film, and anything else that is of interest," it said in a statement. 

"Loaded is about building a space where men challenge each other, celebrate wins, and tackle all that matters to them." 

Virgin Trains has applied for a licence that could see it return to running rail services on the West Coast route between London and Glasgow, five years after losing its contract.

The company had operated the service, which runs from London Euston via Birmingham and Manchester to Scotland, for 22 years before Avanti West Coast took over in 2019.

The company has now applied to the regulator - the Office of Rail and Road - for an Open Access licence. If granted, it means Virgin Trains receives no subsidy and runs services alongside the franchise, at its own risk.

A spokesperson for Virgin Group told Sky News: "While this application is just the first step towards exploring what might be possible, we think Open Access is the way forward.

"Open Access increases consumer choice and competition both of which Virgin has always supported."

By Sarah Taaffe-Maguire , business reporter

After four weeks of rises the Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) 250 index of the 101st to 350th most valuable companies on the London Stock Exchange has begun a fifth week in positive territory - up 0.54%. 

If it ends this week higher than now it'll be the best run it has had since before the pandemic, in December 2019. 

The most valuable companies on the London Stock Exchange - the FTSE 100 index - also started the week on a high, up 0.22%. Mexican mining company Fresnillo is the best performing company of the day so far with shares up 3.17% as copper hit an all-time peak.

The oil price is staying lower than all of April and most of March at $84.24 for a barrel of Brent crude oil - the benchmark price. 

A pound is equal to $1.2696 or €1.1675. 

The average salary advertised on job sites increased by 0.45% to £38,810 in April, according to vacancies website Adzuna. 

Only two sectors - legal and travel - experienced a fall in the average salary being offered.

"[This] demonstrates rising business confidence throughout the UK and that companies are keen to hire specialist staff," said Andrew Hunter, co-founder of Adzuna. 

"They are willing to pay well for new team members too."

He said the East Midlands continued to see the largest annual increases for the fifth month in a row - helped by roles in science, tech and professional services.

Every Monday we get an expert to answer your money problems or consumer disputes. Find out how to submit yours at the bottom of this post. Today's question is...

We bought a Ford C-Max second hand four years ago. It's less than eight years old now with 77,000 miles. Our garage says the car is a write-off due to a known issue with EcoBoost engines. Ford refuses to pay for repairs. Anything I can do? Rory Raftery

Rory did not leave his contact details so we haven't been able to talk to the dealership - but we had some luck with Ford. First though,  Scott Dixon, from The Complaints Resolver , lays out your basic rights...

Your contract is always with the trader who sold you the goods (in this case the garage), not the manufacturer.

Any reference to warranties is irrelevant, as the Consumer Rights Act 2015 overrides this and gives you an implied statutory warranty for free for up to six years in England and Wales and five years in Scotland.

The act states that goods ought to be:

• Fit for purpose
• As described
• Satisfactory quality
• Last a reasonable length of time

As we are past six months since you bought the car, the onus is on you to prove it had inherent faults when it was sold. 

I would seek an independent report to reinforce your case and dispute. Given that this has been a well-known issue with EcoBoost engines for quite some time, the trader who sold you the vehicle should have carried out additional checks.

A cursory Google search reveals that a loss of engine power and serious valve damage is commonplace on higher mileage EcoBoost engines.

I would check to see if this vehicle has been subject to a recall. Also check the MOT history to see if any advisory notices were flagged and not remedied before you bought the vehicle.

Is the garage a member of The Motor Ombudsman? You can check that too here .

How did you pay for it? 

You should always pay at least a deposit by credit card if possible, as it gives you additional free protection and joint liability under S75 Consumer Credit Act 1974 for purchases over £100.

If you paid a deposit by credit card, contact your credit card provider and say you want to raise a S75 dispute and claim for a faulty car.

They will ask for more details – say the supplier is in "breach of contract" under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and has supplied a defective/faulty car. You have exhausted all options with the retailer and cannot resolve your dispute.

If the car is on finance, they bought the defective vehicle from the dealer and own it. You can go down the same route and raise a S75 claim against them for a breach of contract under the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

If you reach a stalemate with the credit card provider or finance company, ask for a deadlock letter setting out their final position so you can submit a formal complaint (with the final response/deadlock letter) to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS).

They do not like cases being referred to the FOS as it costs them money. The FOS will examine documents given to you as the customer at the point of sale. The dealership is responsible for any representations made in those documents. You are seeking to reject the car, so make this clear.

Offers made will be calculated on the anticipated lifespan of the goods – time of use and depreciation. Ask for any offers made to be evidenced with calculations to ascertain how the amount has been arrived at.

Car dealerships will often cite that they are entitled to deduct 45p a mile for use on refund calculations when you try to reject a faulty vehicle. This is a scam. The FOS has ruled that 25p a mile is fair and acceptable, so keep that in mind when any offers are made.

Statutory limitations on any consumer dispute is six years in England and Wales and five years in Scotland from the date the goods were received.

This does not detract from the expected lifespan of the goods – it is simply a limit on the time you have to resolve the dispute under the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

Options and next steps

If all else fails, you could take your case to the small claims court if it was England, or follow simple procedure in Scotland .

Ford response

A Ford spokesperson told the Money team: "Ford is confident in the robustness and reliability of its EcoBoost engine technology when the stated guidelines for maintenance and service are followed. 

"Ford UK is happy to investigate service support and/or compensation measures for any customer who believes they have had an EcoBoost engine issue and is happy to review cases with a full-service history for vehicles up to 10 years old with less than 150,000 miles.

"For any customers in the UK whose vehicle meets these parameters, you can speak to our customer relationship team and contact details can be found on our website here ."

Ford offered to look at this specific case - but sadly Rory didn't leave contact details for us to pass on.

This feature is not intended as financial advice - the aim is to give an overview of the things you should think about.  Submit your dilemma or consumer dispute via:

• The form above - make sure you leave a phone number or email address
• Email [email protected] with the subject line "Money blog"
• WhatsApp us  here

A tiny Mexican taco stand has won a Michelin star. 

El Califa de Leon in Mexico City offers just four types of tacos, with McDonald's prices, no reservations and plates served in plastic bags.

"The secret is the simplicity of our taco. It has only a tortilla, red or green sauce, and that's it. That, and the quality of the meat," chef Arturo Rivera Martinez told AP. 

He's also probably the only Michelin-starred chef who, when asked what beverage should accompany his food, answers: "I like a Coke." 

Thousands of time a day, he grabs a fresh, thinly sliced fillet of beef from a stack and slaps it on the grill, tosses a pinch of salt over it, squeezes half a lime on top, and grabs a soft round of freshly rolled tortilla dough onto the solid metal slab to puff up.

After less than a minute - he won't say exactly how long because "that's a secret" - he flips the beef over with a spatula, flips the tortilla, and very quickly scoops it onto a plate - then calls out the customer's name who ordered it. 

Asked how it felt to get a Michelin star, he said in Mexico City slang, "esta chido ... esta padre," or "it's neat, it's cool". 

El Califa de Leon, which was founded in 1968, is the only taco stand among the 16 Mexican restaurants given one star, as well as two eateries that have got two stars.

Other than perhaps one street food stand in Bangkok, it is probably the smallest restaurant ever to get a star

Half of the 100 square-foot (9.29 square-metre) space is taken up by a solid steel plate grill.

The other half is packed with standing customers, and an assistant who rolls out the rounds of tortilla dough constantly.

The prices are quite high by Mexican standards: the tacos range in price from 53 Mexican pesos to 82 Mexican pesos - that works out at around £2.50 to £4. 

Waitrose's new Ottolenghi range has proved popular with customers, with sales reportedly 97% higher than predicted. 

The nine products created in partnership with restaurateur Yotam Ottlenghi launched in 275 stores last month. 

It marked the supermarket's first major deal with a celebrity chef since it ended its tie-up with Heston Blumenthal last year. 

According to The Grocer, demand has been "unprecedented", with five of the nine lines unavailable online last week. 

We checked and it seems stocks have since been replenished. 

Waitrose told the news outlet performance of the range had "exceeded expectations", with sales 97% higher than anticipated. 

The Pomegranate Harissa Paste has proved to be the top seller for the first two weeks.

The products have a 20% launch discount until 18 June.

A slim majority of economists believe the Bank of England will start cutting interest rates in August.

Thirty-eight of 71 polled by Reuters expect a cut to 5% in August - compared with 31 opting for June and two for September.

BoE governor Andrew Bailey said earlier this month that once they start falling, rates could dip lower than markets had been forecasting - prompting hope that mortgage holders could see rates closer to 3% next year.

The base rate has sat at 5.25%, a 16-year high, since August.

The aim was to reduce inflation by encouraging saving rather than spending, which tends to slow price rises.

Inflation has fallen dramatically from 11.1% in October to 3.2% in March - and April's figure, to be announced at 7am on Wednesday, is likely to put it closer to the target of 2%.

The next base rate decision is on 20 June.

"The reason I'm currently leaning a little bit more towards August rather than June is that with signs the economy is doing okay, the BoE is unlikely to feel the need to rush into cutting interest rates," said Dean Turner, chief eurozone and UK economist at UBS Global Wealth Management.

"They have time to ensure further progress on services inflation and wage pressures."

We're back for another week of consumer news, personal finance tips and all the latest on the economy - with two big moments playing out this week.

This is how the week in the Money blog is shaping up...

Today : Every week we ask industry experts to answer your Money Problems . Today, a reader's car has been written off with a known fault but they say no one is taking responsibility.

Tuesday : This week's  Basically...  explains everything you need to know about the FTSE.

Wednesday : It's inflation day - an announcement at 7am is expected to reveal that inflation returned to around the target level of 2% in April. But forecasters have been consistently off in the past year or two. We'll also have another Michelin chef picking their best Cheap Eats .

Thursday : Savings Champion  founder Anna Bowes will be back with her weekly insight into the savings market.

Friday : The energy price cap for July-September will be announced - with a drop predicted. We'll also have everything you need to know about the mortgage market this week with the guys from Moneyfacts.

Running every weekday, Money features a morning markets round-up from the  Sky News business team  and regular updates and analysis from our business, City and economic correspondents, editors and presenters -  Ed Conway ,  Mark Kleinman ,  Ian King ,  Paul Kelso  and  Adele Robinson .

You'll also be able to stream  Business Live with Ian King on weekdays at 11.30am and 4.30pm.

Bookmark  news.sky.com/money  and check back from 8am, and through the day, each weekday.

The Money team is Emily Mee, Bhvishya Patel, Jess Sharp, Katie Williams, Brad Young and Ollie Cooper, with sub-editing by Isobel Souster. The blog is edited by Jimmy Rice.

Be the first to get Breaking News

Install the Sky News app for free