What Small-Batch Production Looks Like Day to Day

The Physical Work Behind Handcrafted Skincare

Production at Osmia is real, physical work. Our team spends much of each day on their feet—lifting, pouring, stirring, blending, cleaning, and doing dishes—sooooo many dishes. We sanitize often, and our production space is positively sparkly—I’d eat directly off any surface in the studio. There’s a constant rhythm of collaboration and mutual support, which keeps the Osmia production schedule flowing smoothly. And, while it’s not always the most glamorous feeling to be running yet another sanitizing cycle on our commercial dishwasher, it keeps us close to the formulas and teaches us things we might miss if everything were automated.

How Our Team Learned the Work

A lot of our methods came from simple problem-solving. We’re a smart, gritty, determined group of people who love to figure things out together. When we didn’t know how to do something, we researched and experimented until we found a way that worked. For scaling up, we actually looked to the restaurant world more than the cosmetics industry, and our studio looks much like a commercial kitchen. Food-grade stainless steel and glass containers are clean, durable, and easy to sanitize. While we have worked with piston fillers, high-volume and high-shear mixers, and heavy-duty industrial processing equipment over the years, our core operations revolve around clear, streamlined processes.

We’ve also improved and refined our tools over time. For example, our team recently partnered with a talented maker who built custom soap cutters that will allow us to streamline the slicing and trimming of our cold-process soap slabs. When the cutters arrived, and worked exactly the way we needed them to, there was an actual happy dance in the studio.

Occasionally, having clear processes, knowing our formulas, and controlling our own production allows us to deviate from the rules. We have a very important customer who has been with us from day one at Osmia, and she has a unique sensitivity to one of the oils in a soap she otherwise loves. As an exception, we have periodically produced special soap batches just for her. Our team understands how difficult allergies and sensitivities can make someone’s life. Our formulas have been developed to address this broadly for most people. And every now and then, when we are able to accommodate a super special request, we feel good about it.

This mix of grit and craft is how much of our production process developed: testing, adjusting, learning, and being flexible enough to change something when needed.

The Tools and Techniques We Rely On

Some of our production choices are simply a matter of what works best for each formula.

• Body oils are made in small batches and filled by hand with stainless iced-tea containers. We’ve explored filling-line equipment, but nothing is as efficient or as easy to clean as these simple containers, and our team is wicked fast at filling manually by now.

• Body mousse must be made eight jars at a time with KitchenAid mixers to preserve its signature texture. Can you imagine selling something that has to be made eight jars at a time? But it would be a different product if we made it differently, so we stay the course.

• Himalayan Body Buff has to be mixed constantly and filled by hand so the oil doesn’t separate from the salt until it’s in the jar. If we stop mixing during the filling process, some jars end up with the wrong ratio of oil to salt. So we mix. And mix. And mix.

• Manuka Lip Repair requires extremely gentle heat to protect the medicinal properties of manuka honey and tamanu oil, and must be poured at a specific viscosity to keep the actives evenly distributed.

• Facial oils are made with minimal heat to preserve the potency of every organic or wild-harvested oil, and each bottle of our Spotless Blemish Oil gets topped off with a pipette and capped by hand.

• Each ingredient in our Detox Exfoliating Mask gets sifted before we combine the powders and sift it all again—when using natural ingredients like clays and olive powder, we need to make sure any irregular shapes and sizes don’t land in the final product.

• Our cold-process soaps are made entirely by hand, then cured on racks for four weeks. The timeline is wildly inefficient, and it’s why large soap companies don’t use this old-school method. But it’s the only way to achieve the texture, longevity, and skin-softening lather we expect from our bars. And I promise no machine could get the gorgeous, swirly patterns in our Oh So Detox and Evermint bars!

How We Handle Ingredients to Protect Their Integrity

Ingredient sourcing and quality has always been one of our top priorities. From the beginning, my intention was to use certified organic ingredients whenever possible, and we’ve stuck to that. Some ingredients weren’t available as organic in 2012—mango butter and fractionated coconut oil, for example—but when they became available later, we paid more to source them organically.

Making products in-house lets us evaluate every raw material as it comes through the door, and care for each ingredient properly (often storing it in our large walk-in cooler) until we use it in a formula. We know exactly what each ingredient should look, smell, and feel like. Just the other day, Isaias opened a fresh batch of avocado oil labeled as certified organic, unbleached, unrefined, and immediately realized that the product must have come mislabeled from the supplier, as it did not have the characteristic, rich, green hue. This is rare, as we work with the best suppliers in the country, but when it happens, we’re grateful to have a team that recognizes the issue and brings it up quickly.

On the fun side, I frequently get to share things with the production team that inspire us to create new scents or products together. Whenever I receive an essential oil or a carrier oil that feels super special, I walk over to the production studio and start brainstorming with the team about where we could put it to great use, often in our seasonal Craft Series products.

We also get to keep eyes on each product’s process from start to finish when we make them in our studio, ensuring that Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) are always upheld, and that the final product is up to Osmia standards. If, at any point during the process, something is not up to snuff, we can pause and take necessary steps to correct it. And if we find a problem with an ingredient, we can remedy it quickly since we track lot codes and best-by dates for every component of every product.

When We Partner With Manufacturers (and Why)

There are a handful of high-volume products that we now produce with trusted manufacturing partners, but we didn’t arrive at these partnerships quickly or easily.

We’ve worked with manufacturers who couldn’t uphold our quality standards, manufacturers who increased their minimums to levels that made no sense for a smaller business, and manufacturers who made expensive mistakes that didn’t seem to bother them at all. A few upsetting times, we had to take the financial (and emotional) hit when partner-produced products did not meet our strict standards and we determined that we simply could not pass the products along to our customers, even if many might not have noticed any difference.

But we’ve also found partners who understand exactly what it takes to make an Osmia product. They’re not surprised when I ask to adjust a formula by 0.01% or request that raw materials be shipped to me so I can smell each one before they begin a batch. That level of attention is simply part of who I am as a founder, and part of what the brand requires. Working with amazing partners when we reach certain levels of demand for some products helps reduce repetitive work, leaving more time to for us explore special ingredients and focus on limited-release, seasonal production.

What We’ve Learned After Fourteen Years of Making Skincare

We make products in-house because, for now, it’s how we maintain quality, integrity, and connection to the work. Some brands thrive using only outside manufacturers, and that’s a perfectly valid choice. This is just the path that fits us best.

Osmia has evolved a lot over almost fourteen years, but here’s what hasn’t changed at all: we care deeply about the products we make, the people who make them, and the people who use them. We have truly extraordinary team members in every department at Osmia, but Production feels like the beating heart that keeps us all connected, inspired, and deeply in love with the work we do every day.

The information contained in this post is for educational interest only. This information is not intended to be used for diagnosis or treatment of any physical or mental illness, disease, or skin conditions.