Is Contract Manufacturing Right for Your Business?

If you’re business trying to find ways to manufacture a product, you’ve likely discovered contract manufacturing. To put it simply, contract manufacturing is when a company hires a third-party to manufacture their product or component instead of doing it themselves.

But even though you may know what contract manufacturing is, you may still wonder whether it’s right for your business. Here are some reasons why contract manufacturing may be the solution for your company’s needs.

Lack of Resources

The most obvious reason to hire a contract manufacturer is if your company lacks a full-service, in-house manufacturing team. Building a team up from scratch can be a difficult and long process. And building up a manufacturing team is only half the battle. If your product requires special ingredients or components, you may find them difficult to acquire. Or you may not know the right suppliers or prices and end up paying more to produce your product than you expected.

A contract manufacturer helps avoid these problems. They will already have the full-service manufacturing team employed and ready to begin production as soon as an agreement is signed. And if you hire a manufacturer who has worked with similar products to yours in the past, they will likely already have the ingredients or components needed to make them, or at the very least have connections to suppliers who can give them better prices to acquire them.

Financial Constraints

There are obvious advantages to in-house manufacturing, such as being able to control your product from design to production to sale. But the cost to do so can be extravagant. All businesses, small or large, have budget concerns, and every dollar spent on building manufacturing capabilities is a dollar not spent on marketing, sales, or other efforts. And taking on the cost of manufacturing can begin eating into your profits as well.

Contract manufacturing can reduce the costs of production for a business and allow you to focus your budget on other concerns. A reliable and reputable manufacturer will also have the technical expertise to avoid costly mistakes during production as well.

Another factor to consider is time to market. Are you trying to get your product on shelves soon? Building your own manufacturing team and capabilities takes a lot more time than simply hiring a contract manufacturer who’s already ready to go. And the sooner you’re able to go to market, the sooner you can begin scaling your business as well. As the saying goes, Time is Money, and if a contract manufacturer can save you time, they must be saving you money as well.

Technical Expertise

Let’s say you have a great idea for a product, excellent branding, and customers you know will buy it. But maybe you don’t have technical experts who know the ins-and-outs of the product you’re trying to create. Maybe you don’t have someone who knows the best ingredients to make your shampoo the best quality possible or that two components you’ve included in your design don’t work well together.

A reliable contract manufacturer can help avoid these pitfalls. They will employ experts in their fields to know whether your design can be improved in small but meaningful ways to ensure you sell the best product possible. A reputable manufacturer will also have a quality control team employed to discover hidden side effects or problems that weren’t obvious at first glance.

And even if you are confident in the design of your product, you may not be confident in knowing how to make it. What equipment is best? How do you optimize the manufacturing process for both quality and quantity? A qualified contract manufacturer will have experience working on products like yours and will know the most efficient techniques.

In short, a contract manufacturer can help cover the gaps in knowledge or resources your business currently must ensure you provide the best product or service possible and allow your company to focus on other needs.