Any business who produces products has to go through R&D of each product or else their products would be all over the place consistency wise.
The difference between corporate companies and owner/operator companies is that the corporate companies can absorb the cost of R&D and us little guys have to pass a product that we're not really happy with down to our customers and hope they understand we can't just throw the product out. Heck, we can't even discount it because it cost us the same.
Take our new custom scented liquid hand soap for example. I had never made hand soap before so I just bought what I thought would work and the final product looks great, smells great and does exactly what a soap should do but, when I put the fragrance in the soap base, it thinned the mix and then when I added the color, it thinned the mix even more and then (if that wasn't bad enough) the next day when I looked at the items I had made the previous day, they had all separated, so now the product has to be shaken every day, which means I have no chance of putting these (as they are) on the shelves of any store. Also since I had no warning that this could happen, I had the labels made without them saying shake well so yes the lessons were many on this product but I can't just throw the product away so now I have to have new labels made and hope my customers understand that this is a prime example of growing pains.
Small businesses will never be able to compete with corporate stores, even if we kept track of lost product as a result of R&D and wrote them off on our taxes. Who wants to get that involved? I am a crafter and I want to spend all my time on my crafting but R&D is a necessary evil.
With that said, wanna buy some no so perfect hand soap? They are all like their creator, need to be shaken every now and again!
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