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SF Chronicle, 10/08/06. In 2000, two men in their then-twenties decided to transform the stodgy old household soaps and detergent business. Today, their business (Method Home) has been recognized as the seventh fastest growing private company in America by Inc. Magazine. Their current revenue is about $45 million a year. What they did: they took a look at the detergent aisles in the grocery store and thought "yawn!". The bottles looked outdated, stodgy and just no fun. They then packaged a natural dish soap in a neat bottles and they spiced it up with new, cool scents. When they started out, they went door-to-door, getting in the face of grocery store buyers as they came in to work in the wee hours of the morning. Once the product was on the shelves, they personally restocked and did in-store demos. Their big break came in 2002 when they were signed on with Target. They partnered with one of the high end industrial designers to come up with new packaging and pitched th...

SF Chronicle, 06/04/06. Taylor Pham, a local Vietnamese-American woman worked as a makeup artist specializing in wedding makeup. Then she got the idea to create her own line. Her line is called Thi (pronounced "tea") and may be viewed at www.thicosmetics.com . It includes shadows, blush, lipstick, gloss and brushes. While the color palette is limited, the packaging and formulation are designed to be luxurious. In particular, the line is geared to suit the Asian woman. Pham's efforts reflect the trend toward boutique "prestige" makup brands. According to industry experts, growth in these brands is very strong. One thing that makes her stand out is an invention for which she has "patent pending" status. The invention is a unique type of false eyelashes specifically for the Asian eye. More than 5000 were sold in the first three weeks they came out, at $15 a pop. Pham also worked to develop her own line of brushes which work particularly well to a...

Read an article this weekend by Christina Valhouli of The New York Times. Here are the hilights that grabbed me: Urban Decay now has a line (called Surreal Skin Mineral Makeup) Neutrogena and Physician's Formula also now have mineral makeup lines MAC is reissuing its Mineralize line Prestige mineral makeup brands now account for 4% of the cosmetics market in the US, which is double from when it first came out QVC (cable shopping network) more than 12.5 million units of Bare Escentuals have been ordered since 1998. Since late 2002, QVC sales have increased 217% Price Points: Urban Decay and ColoreScience from $28 - $55 for foundation. Jane Iredale is $48. i.d. bareMinerals is $25. Neutrogena and Physicans Formula are around $12. The term Mineral Makeup was coined in 1977 by Diane Ranger, the founder of Bare Escentuals who is now the founder and president of ColoreScience. Jane Iredale claims the following as her customers: Madonna, Condoleezza Rice and the cast of "The ...

I started TKB Trading, LLC the same year as EBAY. Ahhh, those were the days! Back then, Paypal didn't exist and many websites didn't take credit cards (you had to mail a check in with your order). Customer expectations were low. It didn't matter so much if your photographs were hard to see, your content was in pink-colored script or if your shopping experience lacked such functionalities as wish lists or order tracking. Heck, none of us even new what wish lists were! Things are sure different today. And it strikes me that someone just starting out might find it all very overwhelming. That's why I wanted to pass along to you a program which I found recently. I think it will appeal to a certain segment of my customers who are just getting started. I have absolutely no affiliation with the program, and we don't use it here at TKB Trading, but it is one option to consider. The program is Salonbuilder.com. As of this writing, you can try it free for 30 days and a...

The recent issue of the trade magazine Art Materials Retailer (easily found online at www.artmaterialsretailer.com) has an article about the benefit of having pets in your shop to make your customers more relaxed and eager to visit your shop. Additionally, they believe that having pets in the shop can relax and entertain the staff as well! We couldn't agree more! While TKB Trading doesn't really have a shop for browsing in, we do have some folks who come by for "will call" pickup. We also have one staff member with strong mood swings (also known as Kaila) who needs regular stress intervention. But rather than commiting to the responsiblity of a company pet, we enjoy fostering animals in neeed for short bursts of time. This allows us to a) do good, and b) not do good 24/7, just as time and space allows. Our first bundles of love were three kittens with us for less than 48 hours before they were adopted. Next came three siamese mixes named Cricket, Bucket and Sw...

The air cleaner that we use here at TKB Trading, LLC is the Friedrich C-90B Electrostatic Air Cleaner, which runs about $450 - $500. This is an expensive air cleaner for "consumer level" (as opposed to even more spendy "industrial level") products. It is also somewhat bulky and not particularly attractive. But we really like it because it seems to be quite effective at keeping the air in our studio fresh, it doesn't have a huge energy demand, and it is easy to clean. The fact that there are no filters to purchase and constantly replace was a big seller for us because we generate a lot of dust. You simply remove two pull-out filters and rinse them down with water before replacing them. We wash ours about once a week and always "ooh and ahh" over the amount of particulants that we send down the drain instead of breathe into our lungs. Also, the unit received a #1 ranking by Consumer Reports (when compared to other consumer level machines). The mac...

The colored micas that we sell can be used "as-is" as eyeshadow. However, you can save money and actually improve the adhesion and feel of the colored mica by extending it with a filler. The cheapest filler that we sell is Kaolin Clay. At $6 per pound (as of this post), that makes it a super-inexpensive filler. It also adds adhesion to the colored mica. Other fillers which we recommend include: magnesium stearate, boron nitride, talc, silica microspheres, ronasphere, authentic silk powder and bismuth oxychloide. Any time you mix a colored mica with a filler, you will change the look of the powder. Typically, the additives will make the colored mica less intense in hue and sometimes less shimmery. This can be a good thing, if it is what you want. You have to experiment. For example, in the photo above, the color to the far right which is deepest in hue is our Deep Blue mica "as is". Below and to the left is the color mixed with equal amounts of our Authentic Silk Pow...

Lip products are essentially a blend of oil and wax. To that, we add color. The 3 kinds of color products used in lipstick includes: dyes, pigments and mica. When you think "dyes", think "food dye", because it is essentially the same thing. The good thing about dyes is that they are very intense and they actually stain the lips, making the color last longer. The down side is that most dyes are chemically manufactured (aniline dyes). Folk who want to sell only a natural lip product tend to avoid dyes. There are a handful of natural dyes, however, which are popular in lip products. Foremost among these is Carmine, a lovely red which, while natural, is unfortunately not vegan as it is derived from insects. An example of a natural lip product company which uses Carmine would be Burt's Bees. Pigments (typically the Oxides) are another color additive used in lip products. When you think pigments, think "like paint". They are opaque, and while they may also s...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Making Salt Crystal Potpourri is a simple process. The trickiest part is the coloring of the crystals. You have 3 choices for colorings: Liquid Based, Glycerin Based or Mica Powders. The liquid based colorings will dry the best, glycerin will be a nice translucent coloring and Mica gives you opalescent options. You can also simply rinse the crystals for a "glass like" look. Add Fragrance and Color. Lay the Crystals out on Parchment to dry. If you’re using liquid or glycerin colorants, an easy way to color the crystals is by wearing rubber gloves and rubbing the color on the crystals. Mica’s you will have to sprinkle then mist with your fragrance. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The colorants we sell here at TKB are going to be either the “glycerin based” colors they mention or the “mica powders...

06/22/06 UPDATE. After posting this, I received an email from a woman who had followed our link to Ada Cosmetics in order to make a purchase. Her experience was frustrating and she asked me to advise potential customers of that fact. While her money was refunded on a lost or never sent shipment, the process of communicating with the company was not to her satisfaction and she felt it was completely unprofessional. So . . . . now that you have read my warning, here is the original post: A new line of mineral makeup catering to the ethnic market has been announced. Please visit www.adacosmetics.com to view their 18 unique foundation shades and other products. I don't know the owner of this company, but I wish her well. It is a market that is definitely underserved with regard to the mineral makeup products. Be sure to visit our site at http://www.wholesalecolors.com/ (or http://www.tkbtrading.com/ ).

Adjusting a product's color as a last step in processing is not uncommon at all -- people in industry do it all the time. It's kind of the nature of the business. The first step is to first figure out in what way a the color of your product is off. The big guys use computers and sensors for this and have very precise ways of measuring hue. We have to depend on our eyeballs and a good sense of color. Here is what we do at TKB Trading, but it is not the only way to handle things. Let's say we make a foundation which has a very simple recipe of: 10 grams titanium dioxide white, 20 grams sericite mica, 4 grams yellow oxide, 1 gram red oxide (this is just for discussion, please don't run out and make this foundation as I have no idea what it will look like). The "Base" of this recipe is the titanium dioxide and the mica. The "Color" is the yellow and red. We start by mixing together the base ingredients. Typically, we will mix more than what we need (in t...

As suppliers of raw materials, we try to make sure that our products are consistent batch to batch. But that doesn't mean that we always succeed. Once we received 100 pounds of a brown oxide which was definitely more red than the "old brown". Another time, we received a titanium dioxide white which was heavier than the "old white". The result in both cases was frustration for our customers who found their finished products were "off-color" as a result. (In the industry, we call this being "Off-Spec", short for "Off Specification"). Receiving raw materials which are Off-Spec is not as uncommon as you think. So, I recommend that when you come up with a formula you like, you make a point of keeping samples of each of the raw materials used in the formula, as well as a sample of the finished product. Label these and set them aside in a safe place so that you can refer to them in the event that you run into problems. The day that you fin...

Recently, a customer asked me this question: I am creating a line of "multi purpose mineral cosmetics" with micas. Let's say one of the colored micas contains mica, titanium dioxide, iron oxides, and ferric ferrocyanide. Does the ferric ferrocyanide have to be listed on the ingredients list?? Is that considered something that would be a "trace" ingredient, and therefore I'm not required to list it?? I see a lot of little mineral companies list on their sites: multi purpose minerals - contains mica, titanium dioxide, iron oxides. May contain: chromium oxide green, ferric fero., etc.... , but it doesn't seem they list it on their products. Is this right? Labeling of cosmetics is regulated by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The laws require that your label do the following: State the name and place of business of the manufacturer, packer or distributor Give an accurate statement about the quantity of the contents (e.g., "3 grams") Inclu...

MSDS stands for "Material Safety Data Sheet". People often think that a MSDS sheet is an ingredients list. While it does disclose ingredients, this is not its purpose. Its purpose is to be an instruction sheet on how to safely handle the product. The MSDS gives information such as "What do I do if I accidentally eat it, or get it into my eyes, or inhale it?" Or, "What do I do if I accidentally spill it, or start a fire with it?" Or, "Do I need to wear rubber gloves to handle it, or a face mask?" An MSDS describes the hazards of working with the material in an occupational fashion. MSDS sheets are not meant for consumers ; no OSHA (U.S. Occupational Health and Safety Administration) nor FDA (Food and Drug Administration) regulation requires that you transmit them to consumers . MSDS sheets are meant for workers who handle your products, employers of those workers and emergency personnel (such as firefighters). Therefore, let's say you make ...

In October, 2005, Gov. Schwarzenegger signed a law that requires any company selling a personal care product in California that contains any ingredient that's a human carcinogen or reproductive toxin to disclose that to the Department of Health Services starting in 2007. Personal care formulators don't like the law, because they feel it misleads consumers into thinking safe products are unsafe. For example, a product that is a potential carcinogen in powder form (because you inhale it) would not be in a liquid form (as in a shampoo or toothpaste). Yet, the company would still be required to disclose the fact that a potential carcinogen is in the liquid product. The reporting information will not be on the product label, but it will be available online. For now, you can do some research at the Skin Deep website, which was created by an environmental NGO (non-governmental organization). Here is the URL: http://www.ewg.org/reports/skindeep/ Advocates of the law counter this by say...