Dynamic Blending, out of Vineyard, Utah, is a “turnkey” contract manufacturer which offers full R&D and manufacturing, as well as in-house brand design, marketing and fulfillment services.
Cofounder Jordan Erskine said he saw small indie brands being alienated from contract manufacturing by large minimum-order sizes and lack of access to other business resources. While larger companies can and do work with Dynamic Blending, indies can often utilize specific services.
Indie brands’ special manufacturing needs
Erskine said Dynamic Blending has project innovation and R&D services because many indies looking for contract manufacturing services didn’t design their products for larger-scale production.
“A lot of indie brands come to us with formulas they made in the kitchen,” Erskine said. “What we do is help them scale their product while maintaining its quality.”
Companies are able to either bring in their own existing formulas or put down a deposit for Dynamic Blending to fully develop the formula. Brands are able to keep their formulation or retain a Dynamic Blending-made formula after a certain number of units are ordered.
Vairea Skincare is a new client of Dynamic Blending and founder and CEO Stacy Pao said finding a manufacturer was a challenge. Many companies weren’t interested in doing an order as small as she needed, didn’t respond to requests or weren’t upfront about what services they would provide.
“I didn't have a guidebook of any of this, so when I started off this process, I had to do a lot of my own research,” Paoa said. “I reached out to many different places, and there's almost like a sleaziness.”
Among attractive qualities of Dynamic Blending for Paoa were its modern website, customer service and, most importantly, small minimum order requirements.
They previously allowed for orders as small as 1,000 units, which was recently increased to 2,500 after an expansion of their facilities, Erskine said. As a brand new company only looking to get 1,000 units of four products, manufacturers requiring at least 10,000 units were inaccessible.
Erskine said it’s important to Dynamic Blending’s model to allow for those smaller orders because they represent an untapped and underserved market of cosmetics brands.
In-house marketing
Outside the lab and off the manufacturing floor, Dynamic Blending offers design and marketing services. Erskine said his company is trying to bring innovation to contract manufacturing by bringing more of the pre-sale process under one roof.
“We’re phasing into two areas,” he said. “We’ve brought out capacity up to two million units, and we can do small runs as well. Companies of all sizes can also use marketing, regulatory and quality services with lots of experience.”
Paoa said access to a marketing team with expertise in cosmetics was better than “playing roulette” by trying to select marketers off of freelancing websites.
“You know, it's great to have kind of a one-stop-shop,” Paoa said. “It’s not knowing what you might get out there on the open market compared to already having a relationship with this company. It was super easy and streamlined.”
As the company continues to expand, Erskine said they will work to keep small runs accessible for indie companies while also providing services for much larger companies.
