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That's what I was gathering from my reading on their site, and it seems as though a number of companies are in line for a nice fine because of organic claims. Perhaps I could just indicate on my website the ingredients I am using that are certified organic, so that instead of calling my end-product "organic" I'm at least letting people know which ingredients I use already carry this distinction.

does anyone on here label their products as "Organic"? I was reading up on it this morning because I have a balm I'm putting together and was utilizing primarily organic ingredients, but wanted to be sure I can call it Organic. It appears the USDA has different levels of Organic but their wording made it sound as if you have to be certified by their agency via some sort of inspection. Was curious if anyone on here had gone that route. TIA.

2 weeks into the testing and the two diffusers I have going are working like champs. They don't appear to be evaporating and the scent is still nice and strong. One of them is in the bathroom that my 3 and 5 yr old boys share, and is managing to make it bearable to walk in there. Will continue to test to see how long the IPM seems to last.

Does anyone on here use IPM (isopropyl myristate) as a reed diffuser base? I had been using a premade base from WSP, but rising costs/etc., moved me to look for a recipe to make my own. I came across IPM at a local supplier and it seemed as those it was a good dilutent for fragrance oils. I've been testing two different scents in it at 1:1 ratio and it seems to work amazingly. In fact, it wicked up to the top of my 12" reeds within a matter of a few hours, instead of days with my other base. I'm just curious if anyone else has tested this out and found any negative effects from it. Like, does the scents seem to die off faster because it so quickly/effectively wicks up the reeds?

I think that if you already have a website, then I would not do the Etsy thing. I tested it out with some of my body products, and have had 1 whole sale since November. It's just really overpopulated with candles and body products so in order for your items to be discovered you kind of have to list them in a daily showcase which carries the $7 fee. And yes, while you don't have the time put into building a website, or the monthly hosting fees, you do have the $0.20/item fee and I personally didn't like the fact that each item had that fee, so if I wanted to say I had 10 of one item available, it would cost $2, and who knows if even one of those items will sell. It certainly wouldn't take much for all those fees to add up to the same as a starter website would cost, and the websites may not carry with them hidden fees, or per piece fees like this. The upside of Etsy that I do like is that you don't have to tell people that your items are hand-crafted, because that's what the whole site is about. So with a stand-alone website, sometimes the products may get looked over because the consumer may assume that the items were mass produced in Taiwan, but your loyal customers will help spread the good word.

Let me tell you, it was pretty tough going when I first started making them because I operated a modified presto pot that might have held about 15 pounds of wax on a good day. But little by little I advanced and got to the point where I would order my wax at the pallet rate (instead of by the case, huge savings) and my tins in quantities of 5000+. And two years ago I had banked enough profit to buy my 80lb wax melter. I still make them all by hand, and sometimes I think I might go crazy when I'm staring down an order for 2400, but it allows me to be able to stay home with my little boys and move around when my husband's military job calls for it. I personally can't believe people would pay what The Knot charges for them, but the fact that the orders consistently keep coming in tells me that the bridal industry continues to survive the recession. However, my favorite favor candles are definitely the ones that people order directly from me, because I really feel like I'm helping to make their event special.

Sorry, I should add that wedding favor orders that I sell directly to the customer involve a lot more communication prior to the candles being poured and the customers never have a complaint - those supplied to The Knot are not personalized by my company, nor do I have any input regarding their pricing or pictures. Oh, and most are looking for a larger candle than the 2 ounce, though the 2 ounce ones are the cheapest to produce - more because of the cost of the tins and not just the fact that they have less wax. When I made them for my own wedding, I chose a 4 ounce tin.

I'm giggling right now... only because the wedding favors you saw on The Knot... the ones with the complaint about the size, ya those are mine. The 2 ounce tins. The funny thing is that people want a bigger picture to see the detail, but then you're right, they never read the description, and really how big did they think they would be since they are "2 ounces"!! Unfortunately I haven't found a dollar bill to be the greatest prop for wedding favor candles (hehehehe, loads of sarcasm in that comment) so I guess we have to assume that the buyers will read the description. I'm glad to see that only one person was bothered by the size enough to comment, considering the 1000's of candles I've sold to The Knot over the past 5 years.

Thanks for the info on Groupon. I was suspicious that it might be something that would exhaust my business without bringing a lot of repeat customers, but wanted to see if anyone had used it. I definitely have found that people who only visit the site because they get something for free are the same people that never return unless you are giving away something else for free. Hard to know the best way to attract new, viable traffic.

Has anyone on here used Groupon to promote their business? This has been a slower month for us, so I was working on some new marketing ideas and Groupon popped into my head. We don't have a brick&mortar location, but I was thinking they must have e-commerce stores that utilize their service. If anyone has looked into this I would be curious to hear your feedback.

perfect. Thank you so much. It appears that the ones showing the different labels were just showing them because they contained sunscreen - which made perfect sense after reading your link.

I am just curious. At this point I am only producing and selling lotions, scrubs, body butters and some body mud. I was working on some formulations for face care products. I am putting various products into these that are supposed to help improve skin elasticity and reduce the appearance of wrinkles. If I don't put any claims that the product does this, do I still have consider the product a medical thing, and use the active and inactive ingredients and that whole different label? I have tried looking at a number of different products currently on the store shelves, and it seems like some will say they are wrinkle defense creams or serums and still use the ingredient format that I am currently using. Thanks for any input.

I have heard that with Lifelock, they shut down your credit. Meaning they "lock" it by acting as if it's been shut down. So if you want to go apply for anything that requires a credit check, or would require them to report the item to a credit agency, you have to go thru a process of "re-opening" your credit each time. Kind of a pain I suppose, but totally secure since it's locked up. I'm pretty sure I've heard that you can only do this a certain number of times, though - and I can't remember where I heard that. The problem is that it won't do you any good if your concern is about credit that your currently have open, it only will protect you as far as people trying to open new lines of credit in your name. Hope that helps a little bit.

Has anyone worked with this product at all? I'm thinking about using it perhaps as a carrier for something like allantoin and panthenol, but since I haven't worked with it before I thought I would see if anyone else had used it and see any success. The INCI for it is - Cyclopentasiloxane (and) C30-45 Alkyl Cetearyl Dimethicone Crosspolymer

Individuals with a latex allergy/sensitivity should not use products that contain shea butter. I am unsure whether they are supposed to avoid Allantoin as well, but do you really want a customer using your product and having a reaction simply because you wanted to protect your formulation? I think you would also find that most others are not going to be able to recreate the same product as yours simply by knowing what you put into it as you aren't listing grams of each ingredient.

Stability testing is just shelf-life testing. Some places will do this so you can get a better idea of what your product will do at 6 or 12 months out - this would be good if you feared the oils would go rancid. They typically set it in a controlled area where they can significantly elevate the temperature to simulate what would happen 12 months from now, but by only using 8 weeks to attain the information. For the microbial testing I used Sagescript. I had seen that you could do the testing yourself, but I figured I would pay to have someone else take care of that. I chose this route, not because I didn't have the ability, but because I wanted to devote more time to formulating/experimenting and I also wanted to be able to show that my product had been tested by a third party.

are you wanting to do microbial testing or stability testing? I'm not familiar with the kit at Snowdrift as I sent my items off to be tested at Sagescript, but I might be able to offer some suggestions if I knew what you were looking for.

Anybody have a good lip scrub recipe? I had someone ask me if I could make this for them... but I have never used one so I have no idea where to even begin.

I haven't used theirs but if you usually order from Brambleberry, you might try Lotioncrafter.com as I have used their refined shea, and it's very good and has really quick shipping.

Yeah!! I just got my first order from someone who got a free sample... and to be honest, that was my goal (to just have one order that originated from all that work). So mission accomplished!

Ya hind-sight definitely 20-20 on this. I can set up inventory for my products, so I should have set it up as an inventoried item (as opposed to a contact form) so I could control the number of requests. The 1300 came through within a span of 2 hours. Unreal. And I definitely collected all names, and addresses/emails, so I can send out messages once they forget they signed up. It's just super frustrating because now another freebie site heard about it, and sent a message out to their subscribers without even checking to see if it was still a valid offer. So people are showing up from that site, and are confused because there isn't a freebie offer. I am still offering the sample size packets, but charging $1 (including shipping) to cover the costs... unbelievable how many moochers out there won't even pay $1 to get something good. So now I find myself responding to tons of emails requesting their freebie (they act like they are automatically entitled to one because they read about it), and I'm stuck because I want to have superb customer service and let people know that a real person is responding to their requests - not just a robot at Proctor & Gamble. I always send a free sample of something in with my orders, but I wasn't getting huge numbers of orders, so I had thought this would help. Had no idea how insane people could get about free things.

Now that I can finally breathe again, I wanted to let you all know about the hugest mistake I have ever made. My business is operated using just my website and I have one big wholesale account. In an effort to grow my business I tried a craft fair this past holiday season (but it was awful) - and couldn't find any others because I swear the people running them were keeping them a huge secret until they advertised them. Anyway, I fully recognized that people loved my stuff if they tried it out or smelled it. So I decided I would make sample packets available on my website. Anyone could go to the site and request a sample of my body butter or they could request sample scents (on air freshner paper) of the candles. No one was requesting anything. I couldn't understand it. I figured it was because so many of my website visitors were repeat customers so they didn't need the samples. So, foolishly I decided to let others know about it... on slickdeals.net under freebies. OOOOOOOPS! Huge mistake. My site was instantly blown up with hoards of people rushing to it to request the samples. My poor little site which normally had a max of 3-4 visitors at any one time, suddenly had 50-70 on it. I finally managed to close down the request form once the number hit 1354 requests. So I finally got all of the samples put together and mailed out (huge expense at the post office). And now I'm just waiting. I was wondering whether anyone else out there has ever sent out samples to people that were not routine customers, and if so, what sort of return rate did you get? I'm not expecting much since most of the people requesting the samples seemed to just want something for free and didn't care much about it aside from the price of $0, but thought I would see if anyone else out there had ever been as dumb as me. :embarasse

People seem to like variety, but I think that would be a good start. Hard to know what will please everyone, and thus far I have found that everyone has very different taste when choosing a lotion scent. I have 5-6 available on my site, but am looking to make some into seasonal availability... for example, in the fall I offered Pumpkin Creme Brulee (huge hit) and for the spring I am offering Apple Blossom. I hope to expand what I am offering simply because I see that people like to have lots of options, but I certainly didn't start off with shelves stocked like Bath & Body Works.

"For cosmetic use, it is best stabilized in an anhydrous lipid or silicone base." from the Lotioncrafter website under "Ascorbic Acid"

I would like to incorporate DL-panthenol into a serum recipe I have, but cannot figure out how to go about this since it is an anhydrous formulation, and panthenol is soluble in water. Ugh. The formulation uses... Cyclomethicone Dimethicone Crosspolymer Tocopherols Ascorbic Acid Silica The ascorbic acid also said it was water soluble, but that it does best in anhydrous formulations, so somehow that is working in this situation.