I've been reading a lot of the forum topics in this sections and quit a few new in the field expressed the desire to sell handmade lotion from scratch. My intention is not to bash anyone, but simply a serious warning for those of you who want to get into this business. I apologize first if my posting ever unintentionally offended any member. I've been trying to develop my own lotion recipe for awhile now and still consider myself newbie, there is just so much to learn and research. My goal obviously is also hopping one day I can sell to the general public.
Ok, let me get into the main message I want to convey. Please think twice, triple, and even qua-triple times about selling before you are sure about your lotion and get it tested in a real lab. Making lotion is simple once you get a hang of it. But anything can go wrong in the process because most of us make these products out of our homes, not a controlled environment. Bacteria, germ, and virus are our biggest enemy. I want to show you my failure that just happened 3 days ago. This is not my first time making lotion from scratch, had done it numerous times before. No matter how careful I am, trying to clean and sterile all tools and container, this is what happened in just 3 days:
this is progress 3.5 days:
Hope these photo come out clear, the lotion is in very light color, a bit hard to take a good photo. The first day, everything looked great, lotion smelled great. Second day I started to notice the slightly dark shadow in the bottle, but lotion still smelled great and texture was fine, everything looked normal. By the end of second day I felt so uncomfortable looking at the shadow I emptied the container to see what contributed to that effect. At the same time I also opened up the sample container I reserved to send to the lab. The dark shadow is more obvious in the sample container, you can see from the photo that the whole lid rim is in this blackish color. So I waited another day. By emptied the lotion out from the container it's easier to observe the change. And sure enough, I woke up this morning and see even more blackish spots. I'm pretty sure at this point it is contaminated, I don't even need to send the sample to the lab anymore. I was very shocked! I followed every step meticulously (and yes I did put preservative) and still, I end up with this in just 3 days. I would've never known if I choose to bottle the lotion in my normal amber or cobalt container.
Thank God I've only use my home made lotion on myself and my husband. I cannot imagine if I give it to my friends and family members and something bad happens to any of them. This definitely makes me think twice and triple times about selling. This is not to say that I don't ever want to sell, it just makes me even more careful about this. Lotion is not like soap, it really is more liability related. I hope you all have very good liability insurance.
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