I have a beauty manufacturing business that started as a craft company, but the first product was makeup related and exploded so I caved to the email demand and rode it out in the cosmetics industry.
I don’t like makeup and dealing with the literal mess. Contract labor has gotten almost twice as expensive in the last 5 years since starting and quality has gone way down. I currently spend about 15-30 hours a month cleaning up sloppy jobs from $33/hr contact laborers who can’t seem to tightly screw a lid on a jar of makeup powder.
There are just some very tall challenges to solve if this is going to last, like manufacturing challenges-- how to cut labor costs for filling and downpacking ingredients. Also how to compete with competitors that have been reverse engineering key components of products we sell over the last 5 years. I don’t have the motivation to tackle it again.
Currently running at about $150-250k in annual revenue 2021: $30k salary w $32 net profit 2022: $39k salary w $8,000 net profit 2023: $34k base w $16k net projected
I work like 10 hours a week mainly putting out bullshit fires and moving inventory.
From reading around here I don’t really know if I’m at the scale that a broker would be appropriate as a first stop. Curious what viable options for these sizes of businesses can turn to for an asset sale-- if that’s even attractive to anyone.
Has anyone been through similar?
So excluding your salary the profit will be about $50k this year? Is this in the US? Do you have an IP or patents?
I’m interested, where’s the business located? How many employees? How many products? Warehouse? Reason for selling?
I feel you and can relate to your feeling of burnout. It really seems like you’re struggling a lot and that already for a long time.
Is there anything that you would want to do instead of this company? And I would be interested in what the one thing is that you loath most about your current business and job.
I think it’s more personal for me. I’m of the age where I’m looking to start a family in a big city. I don’t want to be dealing with makeup or the industry. Recovering and scaling would involve solving a difficult packaging engineering/contract labor issue and money to throw at marketing and branding.
Most importantly, social media and marketing need to be fine tuned for continued success and I loathe the idea of marketing it. I’ve had to do some on camera interviews for morning shows and local TV as the face of the brand and I don’t like it, I’m a guy who doesn’t use or care for makeup and it feels so fake and uncomfortable. Not to mention lonely running it solo. Would love a more stable job on a team and/or managing people in supply chain, or a venture with a partner(s).