Home Based Manufacturing: Super Easy Practical Approach!

Well if you are thinking about home based manufacturing business, want to launch a business from home by making a specific product or products but you don’t know how to do it practically, don’t know what things you will need, to get started!

Well if that is the case!, then don’t worry, you are on the right page with the right guy ;), in this article I am going to (practically) help you exactly with that.

So bear with me ;) and kindly read the whole thing, without skimming a single line plus by reading I mean, carefully understanding each point, because it will be crucial to the success of your home based manufacturing business.

In this article I will not only highlight the tools, small machines you will need to start your own little business from home that will grow big over time but will also give you enough information, tips, how to’s that will enable you to get any kind of product launched from your own home with ease.

YES! I will give you few real life examples of small product manufacturing from home, explaining each and every step involve in it, from A2Z, leaving nothing out of the picture!

Yep! “no beating around the bush, no BS” but practical tips from how to get your product design, to mass production or manufacturing within budget, to hiring sales guys, to making sales with at least 25% ROI.

One more time! If you skim, if you just read it, without giving it a thought, I am afraid you won’t be able to get the benefits I am intending to give to you!

That is successfully launching a solid product from your home!

So get a cup of coffee and let’s start!

Lastly once you read this article carefully, you will know with absolute surety how to launch any product! YES ANY PRODUCT! That I guarantee!

Remember in majority cases you can’t really manufacture products at home from zero or scratch!

Why ?! Well simply because majority of products do involve not only technicality but also require quite good number of resources esp. in terms of machinery which at times makes it impossible to manufacture from home.

That doesn’t mean there isn't a way, there is, I will explain that in a bit!

Starting a business from home is the best way to launch your career with less risk, limited liability, low cost and huge opportunity to experiment, to see if you are an Entrepreneur material, to make that right product that will drive market crazy.

Once you learn that, you can then easily go for a2z manufacturing of that item and other related items, moving out of  home to have a proper setup in place, in some industrial zone, to make that business your full time career.

Now let’s move to things you will need to start a small manufacturing business from your little home.

Five things You will need to start a home based manufacturing business

1. Computer software
2. Packaging
3. Packaging Machine
4. Labor, Sales Staff
5. Manager

Computer Software

You will need a computer software that can

• Keep record of your raw material
• Keep record of your inventory
• Keep record of your production
• Keep record of your sales
• Keep record of your debit, credit, profit and loss, daily expenses etc
• Keep record of your dealers like retailers, wholesalers
• Keep record of your product prices, discounts, bonuses etc
• Keep record of your sales staff activities
• Provide you a report on monthly basis about profit, loss, growth etc
• Keep record of your target market route plan
• Keep all the above records for years safely.

Such software’s are easily available online, you can purchase them for around $10-$50, most of such software developers also provide training cd’s or how to use the application courses along with them.

You will learn to use such software in less than a week at minimum or in a month at maximum.

Such a software will help you analyze and keep record of your daily output or production capacity, your market growth, demand, supply, your sales team performance, your daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly profit and loss etc.

Therefore it is really important that you have one in your personal computer when launching a home based business.

Try Indian market online and you will get a good software for pennies, make sure it’s bug free, doesn’t contain any viruses, malwares etc.

Packaging

Like I said in the beginning that you won’t be able to launch a full a2z manufacturing business from home but still there is a way and that is you can launch something like using semi finish goods, converting them into final products with little to no effort.

For instance I have shared a practical example of how to launch an Ispaghula husk fiber brand from home.

Ispaghula husk or psyllium husk is a dietary fiber that is used to treat cholesterol, constipation and other bowel movement issues.

If you want to read that article where I shared how to launch branded husk product, check this article: How to develop new product (real world example)

As you can see in the above picture that husk is a semi finished good, it is semi finished good in the sense that it is not packaged or branded.

That is what you will likely do while running a home based business, buying semi finished goods in bulk and modifying them with little effort into finished goods and then packaging them under your brand name etc.

For instance I can use a coating pan (machine, costs around $700-$1500) to add a specific fruit flavor to the above ispaghol husk and then pack them in a branded, cool looking packaging.

If you are curious how flavor is added check the following coating pan video.

Now for instance if you want to launch a husk fiber brand or a spice brand or some coffee brand, second thing you will need after having the semi finished good, is packaging.

A cool, lovely, carefully designed packaging is what makes your brand stand out in the immense market clutter and not only that, a super cool packaging can also help your brand to match up with target market quality expectations, helping you to achieve that vital trust.

Now obviously I can’t tell you where, how you can find a nice, cool packaging for a specific product because there are millions of products and I can’t possibly list all of them in terms of how to get quality packaging design, label design, sachet design, bottle design etc.

But I will give you few practical, real life examples (example A, B, C) down below from which you will learn where to look for when it comes to packaging of your specific product, that you want to launch from your home!

Example A

For instance I want to launch a spice brand and I want to launch it in 25 gram, 50 gram sachets, first thing I will need is a super cool sachet design.

I can get a super cool sachet packaging for my spice brand by visiting a quality package designer, it will cost me (educated guess) around $100-$500 dollars to get around 20-50 kg of sachets (packaging for 25 gram, 50 gram).

Remember sachets packaging come in rolls, weighting in kilos!

Like shown in pictures below

Along with sachet rolls I will also need a carton packaging for boxing up the manufactured spice sachets.

Something like the following

Example B

If instead of going for sachet packaging I want to use simple small 25, 50 gram paper boxes with my brand name. logo, ingredients etc on it.

All I will need is simple transparent plastic wrapping to wrap 25, 50 gram of spice and then packing them in those boxes.

You can get cool packaging  boxes by finding a quality package designer, it will cost you around $500-$1000 to get around 10,000 boxes (5000 20 gram & 5000 50 gram).

Example C

Now imagine I want to launch the same spices in jars like in 50 gram jar, 90 gram jar, 150 gram jar.

In that case I will need quality jars, for instance if I want 3000 jars in each weight category, it will cost me around $600-$800 (again an educated guess), the costs I am giving you guys are best estimates, you will need to check market to get exact prices.

You can do that easily by googling aka searching through internet!

Along with jars I will need labels, for instance I can go for shrink wrap to wrap around each jar that will have my company logo, product name, design etc on it.

Shrink Wrap: Shrink wrap, also shrink film, is a material made up of polymer plastic film. When heat is applied, it shrinks tightly over whatever it is covering. Heat can be applied with a handheld heat gun (electric or gas) (source: wikipedia).

To see how shrink wrapping is done with jars, watch the following videos.

Getting shrink wraps for each jar type like for 50 gram jar, 90 gram jar, 150 gram jar will cost me around $800-$1500.

Those labels/shrinks would be sufficient for around 10 thousand jars in each jar category.

Once I have a sachet roll (packaging), 25, 50 gram paper box packaging or jars along with labels, shrinks etc the next thing is to get the Packaging Machine, to do packaging.

Packaging Machines

I am going to highlight packaging machines, tools required by each example (example A, B, C) mentioned above so that you know how to do packaging of sachets, of paper boxes and of jars.

Once you know that, you will have enough information to look for other different packaging options like bottles, liquid droppers etc

Example A Packaging Machines, Tools Required

There are different kinds of packaging machines available in the market, like for instance, taking our example A, we can use a low end sachet filling & packaging machine that will cost around $700-$1200.

To see how sachet machine do sachet packaging, how the sachet rolls are utilized inside it, watch the following sachet packing machine video.

And here is a picture of sachet packaging machine with sachet packaging roll attached to it.

If you want to start with a low end machine check amazon, alibaba etc.

Example B Packaging Machine, Tools Required

Simple Sachet Sealing

For Example B I will require a simple heat sealing machine, that will cost me around $50-$150.

Here is a picture of simple heat sealing machine, in which you can use transparent plastic wrapping.

And here is a video showing how to use it.

As you can see in the video, making transparent sachet wrappings are easy, all you will need is a quality scale, to weight 25 gram, 50 gram sachets before sealing them and after sealing them putting them into packaging boxes you have made!

This machine although cost less will require you to buy at least 2-4 of them and to use them you will need 2-4 guys, so in the start if you want to see how your product will go, you don’t want to invest too much, you can start with these machines and once you see that market is responding well, demand for your product is rising then you can go for high end sachet making, box filling machines.

There are different machines available with different prices and varying specifications, try google for that, like google “sachet machines” “box filling machine” and you will see tons of them.

Also watch youtube videos to see how they work and then select the one that you can afford considering your budget and that will also meet your business needs.

Example C Packaging Machine, Tools Required

Coming to our third Example C, you can fill those jars manually, by hands, by using a quality digital scale and then using a heat gun (as you have seen in the above video) to wrap labels around each bottle and using a simple iron or a simple sealing machine to seal the jars.

Above is the picture of a heat gun that you can use to wrap labels around the jars, bottles etc, watch the previously mentioned video, if you want to know how that works.

And the following is picture of sealing machine that you can use to seal the jars (with aluminum foils) or you can use a simple iron for that matter ;p

To see how seals (aluminum foils) are added to jars, watch the following video

So if you are low on budget you can start with these machines initially and once you get a healthy return on investment (ROI) you can then move to high end sealing machines.

Again my suggestion would be to google that and see which one can serve your brand needs the best way!

Now let’s talk about labor, Sales Staff, Manager

Labor, Sales Staff & Manager

Well if you are starting with low cost, low end machines, the plus point is you will save money but negative point is you will need more labor.

Now in countries like US where labor isn’t cheap, the best strategy would be either to manage it on your own, like you and your kids doing it or friends or those who are interested in your idea or simply buy a high end machine.

Typically in the early days of your startup, you will need at least two guys to help with packaging, packing and a couple of guys to make supply, sales to target dealers (retailer, wholesalers etc).

And one guy to manage or look after the whole thing.

That means you will need at least 5 guys to launch a small manufacturing business from your home.

Now you can cut down the human resource further like by self managing and also covering market, meeting target, potential dealers.

That would mean you are doing two guys job, one of the manager and other of the sales person, so along with you, in this case you will then need three more guys to do the other stuff.

In a nutshell

In a nutshell that’s how you can manufacture small products from home with ease, the whole thing will cost around $2500-$5000, which isn’t that much.

And in such manufacturing the least ROI you will get is around 25% (coming from my experience in the manufacturing sector) while maximum can be up to 40-100% depending on product idea, nature, demand, market competition, quality, price etc.

That means if you invest one dollar you will get return of 25% at least in profit, that is getting not only one dollar back but also a profit of 25 cents with it, in other words $1.25 on investing $1.

So let’s suppose if you make sales of $10,000 in the first month of manufacturing, you will earn a minimum $2500 in profit.

For more on how to run business effectively, read this detailed, practical article I want to start a business but I have fear of failure!

And if you want to make your brand stand out in the crowd, want to have a special mind share in your target market minds but you can’t afford that badass marketing then check this VERY simple marketing strategy for any business.

You can also learn practical branding, to help your brand stand out by carefully reading Learn: When & How to Brand!

If you want more practical, actionable tips, suggestions, help on small business, marketing etc then subscribe!

That’s it, over to you guys!