My friend and I have started making our own ejuice in the comfort of our apartment. We went to a smoke shop the other day and told the owner we made our own. He said he had been looking for a locally made juice and offered to put our product up on his shelves. He said he would pay us $3 per 15 ml bottle. Is that a fair price?
I sell mine for $3.40 per 15ml wholesale. But I also use glass bottles. If you buy supplies in bulk, you should be able to make a 15ml plastic bottles for less than $1. 200% profit is great, but you may be able to get more.
3.40! That's not bad! I see, where could I get my supplies in bulk though? Right now it costs us nearly $2 to make a single bottle.
Ask about the volume. How many bottles will they be moving monthly? Are they going to buy them straight from you or pay you when they sell? There's a lot that goes into selling your juice. You have to make sure you're paying yourself for the time you put in. You need to account for your margins. Are ALL of your flavors sourced reliably? What happens if you can't fill a certain flavor?
Sorry for all the reading. but you should definitely put it in perspective before you start selling to a B&M. They could drop you at any time and you could end up with a large amount stuck in inventory.
Okay, I get what you're saying. I'll be sure to fill in those details. He was very easy going with it. He told us we can do any amount of any flavor we want and all that he really specified was the nicotine levels. Thanks, I really appreciate it. He said he wants about 100 bottles per month to push.
I would definitely do a trial run with them. Sell them 100 bottles and don't repurchase inventory until you're sure they're going to re-order (ask them how it is on the last week of the month or so). The key to successfully building it into a business is to keep your inventory low. Only what you need. That's why it's important to have a reliable flavor source. (see this article http://smallbusiness.chron.com/advantages-low-inventory-levels-15997.html)
I know for a fact FA's lead times suck, TFA is very reliable but sometimes you need other flavors that they can't provide.
I'm just being over cautious considering the fact that we're really not talking more than about a hundred dollars to supply 100 bottles of juice a month, but if you're serious about starting a wholesale business, you should definitely develop some good business habits.
I've been thinking about doing this myself. How are you going to lable them?
I just use address labels that I got from office max and print em out using word.
I am trying to find something that is more presentable to a business. Thank you for your response though.
Normally a 30ml bottle goes for about $8.99 where I'm at, so if you divide by half economically a 15ml bottle would sell for about $4.50. If he's giving you $3 per bottle sold, then he's only making $1.50 per bottle.
So let's play with some numbers.
|Number Sold|His Profit|Your Profit| |:--:|:--:|:--:| |50|$75|$150| |100|$150|$300| |200|$300|$600| |500|$750|$1500|
Looks fair to me, also looks like a win, win, win. Customer wins, because they get good juice at a fair price in smaller quantities. You win cause you're making bank. He makes a bit of profit, too. So before you agree, I would ensure what he plans on selling them for. If it's too high, no one is gonna want to buy them, so I'd decline. Also, you should think about production. How many does he intend to sell per week/month? Is he going to buy them directly from you, or he'll give you a cut once they've been sold? Just some things to think about.
Very solid math! The only thing is that where I live they sell 15ML bottles for about $8-12 so that's quite a bit more profit for him.
Do you have a LLC and product liability? Do you know whats going into your juice or if the flavors are interacting with the plastic you are using. What happens when someone sues you? Taxes, state and federal. How consistent are your blends? What happens when you invest money and the FDA comes crashing down burning out the DIY and the x10000's of eliquid stores. Are you testing your nic??? the bottle might say 100mg but if they made a mistake and gave you 400mg and you just x4 the requested level of nic and gave some some dude a stroke. Or some mother leaves the bottle on the ground and a dog or a little babie eats it and they come suing you.
As long as you're selling nicotine, product liability insurance for an e-liquid vendor would be a business killer, unfortunately. It's too easy for a bottle to break in someone's pocket and make them ill, or for someone's dog to chew open the bottle, etc, etc. I couldn't imagine your quote being less than 50k per year, and that's just base coverage for a low volume business.
How customary is it for a liquid making business (both big and small) to have product liability insurance?