What Formulating Skincare Taught Me About Building a Business

By SPARK CEO Hub Member, Samantha Hunter, Founder and Formulator of Bloom Organics.

The beauty industry loves a hero ingredient.

There is always one ingredient having its moment — the one appearing on labels, filling social feeds and suddenly being talked about everywhere.

Hyaluronic acid. Niacinamide. Bakuchiol. Peptides.

Some of them are genuinely wonderful ingredients. I use many of them myself.

But when I’m formulating skincare for Bloom Organics, I don’t start by asking which ingredient should be the hero.

I look at skincare ingredients a little like a dietitian looks at a balanced diet. I ask what each ingredient contributes, why it deserves its place, and how everything works together as a whole.

Somewhere along the way, I realised I’d started building my business exactly the same way.

A good formulation needs more than one great ingredient

When people look at the front of a skincare product, they often see the ingredients we hear the most about.

But behind that label is a formulation in which different ingredients have very different jobs.

One might help attract water to the skin. Another may soften and condition it. Another might soothe. Others can provide antioxidant support, improve the texture of the product or help keep a water-based formulation safely preserved.

They may never get equal attention on the label, but they all have a reason for being there.

For me, good formulation isn’t about cramming as many fashionable ingredients as possible into a bottle.

It’s about balance.

And I think small business is much the same.

Business has hero ingredients too

When you’re growing a business, it’s incredibly tempting to believe there is one thing out there that will change everything.

The product that takes off.

The Reel that goes viral.

The dream stockist.

The perfect advertising campaign.

The grant.

The new platform everyone says you absolutely must be on.

I’ve certainly had moments of looking for that one big breakthrough with Bloom.

But Bloom Organics today is very different from the little business I originally started, and there wasn’t one defining moment that transformed it.

It grew through hundreds of smaller ones.

A conversation with a customer. A formulation that needed another attempt. Packaging that could be better. A product that sold out. Another that didn’t. A customer who came back. A market day that exceeded expectations — and another where the weather had very different plans for me.

Each taught me something.

Every part of the business needs a job

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that not every part of a business needs to do the same thing.

Markets have been enormously important to Bloom because they give me something a website never can: direct conversations with customers.

I can see what people pick up. I hear the questions they ask before they buy. I discover what concerns them, which scents they love and what they come back for.

But a market stall can only sell while I’m standing behind it.

So my website has a different job. It needs to allow someone to discover and buy Bloom when I’m not there to explain it.

Educational content has another job. I created the Bloom Ingredient Library and The Bloom Journal because I want customers to understand what is in their products, why ingredients are chosen and how to use skincare and body care well.

Search engines help people who have never heard of Bloom find us.

Stockists put the products in places where people already shop.

Customer reviews provide reassurance from someone other than me.

Social media helps people get to know the person and story behind the brand.

None of them is the answer.

They’re ingredients in the formulation.

Customers often tell you more than trends do

Being face-to-face with customers has probably taught me more about my business than any trend report ever could.

People ask wonderfully practical questions.

Will this feel greasy?

How much should I use?

What is the difference between a body oil and a moisturiser?

What would you recommend for my skin?

Sometimes those questions change the way I explain a product. Sometimes they make me reconsider the product itself.

And sometimes the most useful feedback is what customers don’t say.

You notice what they walk past. What they pick up and put down. What they smell twice. What disappears from the table first. And what the same person comes back to buy weeks later.

Trends can tell me what people are talking about.

Customers tell me what matters to them.

That distinction has become incredibly important to the way I build Bloom.

Not every new ingredient belongs in the formula

Like most small business owners, I’ve occasionally been guilty of adding the business equivalent of an ingredient simply because everyone else seemed to be using it.

Sometimes it worked.

Sometimes it just gave me another thing to maintain.

Now, whether I’m considering a skincare ingredient, a new product, another sales channel or the latest business opportunity, I try to come back to three questions.

What role does it play?

If I can’t explain why it belongs, perhaps it doesn’t.

What problem does it solve?

Being fashionable isn’t enough — in a skincare formulation or in a business.

Does it make the whole stronger?

A new addition should work with what is already there, not simply create more noise, expense or work.

They sound like simple questions, but they have become a surprisingly useful filter.

You don’t need to know the finished formula when you begin

This may be the part I wish more women starting businesses understood.

You don’t need to know exactly what the finished business will look like before you begin.

I certainly didn’t.

Bloom has changed because I have learned. I’ve listened to customers, developed new skills, made mistakes, followed opportunities, changed my mind and occasionally discovered that something I was convinced would work simply didn’t.

That isn’t necessarily failure.

It’s formulation.

When I develop a product, the first version isn’t automatically the final one. I observe it, test it and refine it. If something isn’t doing the job I intended, I change it.

Why should we expect ourselves to build a business differently?

There is a great deal of pressure on founders to appear as though everything was part of the master plan.

Sometimes it wasn’t.

Sometimes you learn something on Tuesday that changes what you do on Wednesday.

That is allowed.

The magic is in the formulation

When I stand at my formulation bench, every ingredient needs a reason to be there.

I’m learning to ask the same of my business.

What does this contribute?

What problem does it solve?

Does it work with everything else I’m building?

There may never be one hero ingredient in Bloom Organics.

And there may never be one hero strategy that builds the business either.

I’m becoming increasingly comfortable with that.

Because in skincare and in business, I’ve learned that the magic isn’t usually in one ingredient.

It’s in the formulation.

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About Samantha Hunter

Samantha Hunter is the founder and formulator behind Bloom Organics, a botanical skincare and body care brand handcrafted in Airlie Beach, Queensland. Bloom combines thoughtful formulation with ingredient education, creating products designed around what each ingredient contributes to the formulation as a whole.