Beard Oil Business Plan, With a 12-Month Projection

A beard oil business plan sets out the products you'll make and who buys them, what a bottle costs and sells for, the cosmetics rules that apply, and the first year month by month. Beard oil has the margins every maker wants: about a dollar of oils in a bottle that sells for $22. That's exactly why the category is crowded, and why the plan's real work is the selling, not the making: getting into barbershops, standing out online, and turning one bottle into a balm, a refill and a gift set. In the example below, a personal care maker in Colorado sells beard oil direct and to barbershops, beard balm and gift sets, makes a profit from month 1, and ends the year about $42,000 ahead on $68,200 of sales, after paying $20 an hour for the making and $500 a month for marketing and samples. Below is a description example, each part of the plan, the claims and records, the projection, the startup budget, and a free template.

The short version

• Describe the business in a paragraph: the products, where you sell, the workspace, the goals.
• Cost a bottle with your time in it: oils, essential oils, the dropper bottle, the box and the filling.
• Price direct and barbershop wholesale separately; barbershops reorder and reach the right customers.
• Add a balm and a gift set: same customers, a bigger order.
• Keep the claims to grooming: "grows your beard" or "treats itch" makes it a drug.
• Budget for marketing; in a crowded category, selling is the biggest job.
• TaroStack keeps formulas, ingredient lots and every batch together. More below.

Part 1: the business description

Juniper & Ash, a made-up personal care maker in Boulder, Colorado, I use in these examples, writes:

Juniper & Ash makes beard oil and beard balm in small batches with jojoba and argan oils, sold at markets, online, and wholesale to barbershops, with gift sets for the holidays. Every bottle carries a batch code and a way to reach us. In our first year we plan to supply 20 barbershops.

Part 2: what a bottle and a tin cost

The oils are under a third of a bottle's cost; the bottle, box and label are more. A gift set, the oil and balm with a comb in a gift box, costs $12.74: $5.80 for the oil and balm, $2.00 for the comb, $2.50 for the box, a dollar of assembly and $1.44 of card fees. How a formula's percentages turn into a cost per bottle is in how to calculate cost per ounce.

Part 3: customers and prices

A barbershop bottle leaves $7.83, less than half a direct one, but 20 barbershops reordering a dozen bottles a month is 240 bottles sold to exactly the right customers, with a barber recommending them. How to set a wholesale price a shop will accept is in how to price handmade items for wholesale.

Part 4: claims and records

Beard oil that softens and conditions a beard is a cosmetic. One that claims to grow a beard, stop hair loss, or treat dandruff or a skin condition is a drug, with much stricter rules, so keep the label and the listing to grooming. Under MoCRA, a small business is excused from facility registration and product listing but not from reporting serious adverse events, keeping adverse event records, and keeping records that back up each product's safety, and every label needs a US address, phone number or website for reactions. Fragrance and essential oils are a known source of skin reactions, so keep their use levels in the formula and their supplier lots on each batch. What counts as small is in MoCRA for small businesses, and what goes on the label is in cosmetic labeling requirements. This is general information, not legal advice.

Part 5: the first year, month by month

Fixed costs are $925 a month: a studio share ($150), market fees ($150), marketing, ads and barbershop samples ($500), insurance ($50), the website and online shop ($40), and software and card fees ($35). Sales start at 15% of full speed and reach it by month 11:

The year's sales are $68,158 and the profit $41,953, on top of $20 an hour for the making. Margins like these are the easy part. The hard part is the 550 units a month: if sales stay at half that, the year's profit is about $15,400, so the marketing line is the one to watch.

Part 6: the startup budget

Get the template

Download the beard oil business plan workbook. Four sheets: your products with price, variable cost and monthly volume at full speed; the year, month by month, with sales, profit and cash; your fixed costs; and your startup budget with working cash. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.

Where this stops working

Four scents, two sizes, balms and gift sets, a dozen oils from four suppliers, and 20 barbershops reordering on their own schedules: a notebook can't say which lot of cedarwood oil is in the bottle a customer says made their face itch, or whether there are enough amber bottles for December's gift sets.

How TaroStack does it

TaroStack keeps the formula, the lots and the batches together.

Formulas with versions. Each scent is a recipe with versions, every oil by weight, and units convert: jojoba bought by the gallon, weighed by the gram. A change to the formula is a new version, and every batch records which one it was made to.

Batches with their lots. Recording a batch takes the oils, bottles and labels off stock from the lots used, at what you paid, and notes the lots automatically. One report goes from a bottle's code to its batch, its oil lots and every customer who got bottles from it.

And the barbershops' orders. Barbershop reorders are sales orders that show whether the bottles to fill them are on the shelf while you're still typing, the reorder list works in days of cover so the amber bottles arrive before December, and margins are reported by product and by customer.

Recipes, batches, lots, recalls and margins by product and customer are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.

Questions people also ask

Is a beard oil business profitable?

It can be, if it sells. In the example, a maker selling oil direct and to barbershops, balm and gift sets ends the first year about $42,000 ahead on $68,200 of sales. At half the volume, the profit is about $15,400.

How much does it cost to make a bottle of beard oil?

In the example, $3.68 for a 1-ounce bottle sold direct: 95 cents of carrier oils, 15 cents of essential oils, a 65-cent dropper bottle, 60 cents of label and box, 67 cents of filling time and the card fee.

How do I sell beard oil to barbershops?

Bring samples, price for wholesale at about half your retail price, and make reordering easy. In the example, a bottle sold to a barbershop at $11 still leaves $7.83.

Does beard oil need FDA approval?

No, a cosmetic doesn't need FDA approval before sale, color additives aside, but it must be safe, properly labeled, and meet MoCRA's record and reporting rules. A beard oil that claims to grow hair or treat a condition is a drug, which is different.