I have a beauty manufacturing business that started as a craft company, but the first product was makeup related and exploded so I caved to the email demand and rode it out in the cosmetics industry.

I don’t like makeup and dealing with the literal mess. Contract labor has gotten almost twice as expensive in the last 5 years since starting and quality has gone way down. I currently spend about 15-30 hours a month cleaning up sloppy jobs from $33/hr contact laborers who can’t seem to tightly screw a lid on a jar of makeup powder.

There are just some very tall challenges to solve if this is going to last, like manufacturing challenges-- how to cut labor costs for filling and downpacking ingredients. Also how to compete with competitors that have been reverse engineering key components of products we sell over the last 5 years. I don’t have the motivation to tackle it again.

Currently running at about $150-250k in annual revenue 2021: $30k salary w $32 net profit 2022: $39k salary w $8,000 net profit 2023: $34k base w $16k net projected

I work like 10 hours a week mainly putting out bullshit fires and moving inventory.

From reading around here I don’t really know if I’m at the scale that a broker would be appropriate as a first stop. Curious what viable options for these sizes of businesses can turn to for an asset sale-- if that’s even attractive to anyone.

Has anyone been through similar?