March 21, 2020 private label skincare

Getting your skincare online business going!

As I sit here looking over the articles I have been reading I think “This is really not the time to just sit and wait.”  This is a very unsure time and I am hoping for it to be very temporary.  After the first couple of days after the Coronavirus breakout, I found myself getting anxious and slowly began to stress. Quickly after I snapped out of it and realized that now is not the time to fill ourselves with anxiety and fear! What we should be doing is refraining from is sitting and watching news all day!  I do believe we need to be informed about what is going on, but once we get the update let’s get going and get stuff done!  There is plenty to do! 

Do you have a plan?

So the reality is we don’t know when things will turn around and how fast.  Most of our businesses are service based so that is a huge hit if we can see our clients as frequently or if less come in.  We need to build our product sales now.  This is the positive part of our type of business. We do have products and skincare we can sell.  We have to get a plan going so your product sales can help your business pay the bills.

I have seen many businesses completely close down and some have kept going just on a lighter scale.  I do believe this depends on where you are located, but I wanted to keep the conversation going about what we can do going forward. I understand there are limitations and only so much that we can do in some cases, but as business owners and entrepreneurs this is what sets us apart from many people. We are used to falling and getting back up!  We are used to getting wrenches thrown in and having to figure out what to do next. Being an entrepreneur is really difficult, but most of us wouldn’t do anything different. Here are a couple of tips and resources you can use to get another channel or an online business going with your products.

Selling Other Brands

Many of you have private label or other brands that you sell in your office.  This is the perfect time to get creative and get the skincare inside the homes of your clients! As I have said before, everyone has skin so your market is pretty big. If you sell a specific brand it will be more difficult to sell online because of the fact that many brands have internet policies that only allow certain websites to sell and promote. So find out what that internet policy is for the brand you sell and go forward from there. You can also personally contact your clients by text, phone, email and on social media.  Implement these platforms by educating clients about these products, ingredients and more. If you have a merchant account where you can invoice people you can also do that. Square.com is one that is easy to setup and you can invoice by email instead of playing phone tag.  You can also have them save their credit card information on there if needed.  I have seen spas offer a week long sale to their clients so they can stock up. So think of any offers or discounts that you can offer to your clients.

Your Private Label Skin Care

With private label you are in control of what channels you sell your products on. You can sell on Amazon, Shopify, your own website and much much more.  You can even do facebook, google, Instagram ads or even sell in other stores.  There are no internet policies that can hold you back from being creative!

Tools and Resources for Online Selling

Amazon is a great one to try.  They are one of the biggest search engines and the largest mall out there.  I do have a couple of resources that I like for Amazon.  If this is a platform you want to try I really like the Helium10 company.  They have some great free education and resources that can get you started if you are not familiar with selling on Amazon.  These are some videos that they have on youtube.  Helium10 projectx videos 

Helium10 is used to sell anything even skincare. They can show you how to use their tools to get your listings to rank and they also offer a free and paid version. Junglescout.com is another Amazon resource that I have found so feel free to check out what tools and education they offer.

If you have a website but no store yet, this is the perfect time to get that going.  If you don’t know where to start that is perfectly fine. What I recommend is for you to take small steps and utilize the help offered on fiverr.com.  Fiverr.com has great contacts that know how to do so many things.  From video editing, seo (search engine optimization) for your site, graphic design and even web design.  Just search the type of website you have and find the person that works with that platform.  They are so reasonable that you will not have to spend thousands to get it going.  You can take your website in chunks and get it going without breaking the bank.

I personally like using wordpress for our sites.  There are many people that know how to work with it and there are many free tools and plugins that go with it.  If you want an easy and template based site you can use companies like wix.com, shopify.com or even Godaddy.com.  Square.com is a great option also, they are a merchant company but you can have your website, store, invoicing, and even scheduling there.  I see you can also do recurring billing so if you have a skincare or service membership you can bill every month automatically. There are so many options just look at what will work for your budget and time. This is the time to build or rebuild your online store and get it going.

Advertising & Social Media

During this time I think we can all up our social media game. Nowadays we need to meet people where they are at. At the moment they are surfing their social media since many people now have more time do so. This means that you need to be there!  Even if you are not doing services right now, remind them about the services and products.  Setup a social media posting schedule using excel or google spreadsheet and get on track.  Schedule product highlights, service informative posts and funny posts.  During this time take pictures of your product on the shelfs and try to sell what you can. I notice people love funny post and memes!  So don’t make all your posts about selling.  Create a place where people want to be updated and see what you are doing.

On social media you can do advertising or linking to your products.  You see many people asking to swipe up to purchase their product. Why don’t you do that?  You can also announce that you are selling gift certificates on your social media as well.  Many people are being so kind and buying gift certificates to use later to help small businesses.  How about doing short videos of your skincare routine and linking the products you use so they can buy it.  You can never assume people know how to take care of their skin! 

You can also do a facebook or Instagram campaigns to get more likes and follows during this time.  Try working on getting a larger community that way when you can go full force you will have a larger community to advertise to!

I would love to hear about what you all are doing to get your business going or how you are pivoting.  I have you guys in my prayers and know we are going to come out stronger from this!