On this page 8 sections
Starting a skincare brand in Pakistan is easier than it was five years ago and harder than the Instagram version suggests. The manufacturing is available, the actives are available, and the regulatory route is navigable. What catches people out is sequence: doing things in the wrong order costs more than doing them slowly.
This is a practical walk through what a launch involves, what drives the cost, and how long each stage takes. We have deliberately not published a single "it costs X" figure, because any honest answer depends on your products, sizes, packaging and quantities — and a number that is wrong for you is worse than no number.
Step 1: Decide what kind of brand you are building
Three routes, three very different cost and time profiles.
Private label puts your brand on formulations a manufacturer has already developed and tested. You can usually adjust fragrance, colour, texture and pack size. It is the fastest and cheapest way to get a real product on a shelf, and it is how most first launches should start.
White label is the same stock product sold to many brands unchanged. It is cheaper still, and it is the reason you sometimes find an identical cream under four names at four prices. If your plan depends on being distinctive, this is a trap.
Custom formulation develops a new product to your brief — your actives, your concentrations, your texture. It carries a development fee and adds bench work, stability testing and trial rounds. It makes sense for a hero product, a clinical protocol, or an export range with specific requirements. It rarely makes sense for all six products in a first launch.
Step 2: Choose fewer products than you want to
The most expensive mistake first-time founders make is launching eight products because eight felt like a real brand. Every product multiplies your minimum order, your packaging tooling, your artwork, your testing and your stock risk.
A four-product routine — cleanse, treat, moisturise, protect — is a complete offer. It gives customers a reason to buy more than one item, it photographs as a range, and it costs half of what eight products cost. You can add the fifth once the first four are reordering.
For clinics, the same logic applies with a different shape: a system for the concern you treat most, plus a sunscreen. Almost every dermatology protocol in Pakistan ends in sun protection anyway.
Step 3: Understand where the money actually goes
A launch budget has seven lines, and they are not equal.
- Formulation. Nil for catalogue products. A development fee per formula for custom work, usually set against your first production order.
- Product manufacturing. Driven by quantity, formula complexity and active cost. Exosome and PDRN formulas cost more per unit than a glycerin-and-niacinamide cream, and no manufacturer can change that.
- Primary packaging. The bottle, jar, tube, dropper or airless pump. This surprises people: an airless pump can cost several times a simple jar, and it is often the single largest per-unit cost after the formula.
- Printing. Labels, cartons, inserts and shippers. Finishes — foil, spot UV, soft-touch lamination — are where premium packaging budgets go.
- Testing. Independent laboratory testing per product, plus stability work.
- Regulatory. Government fees, which are published and modest. More on these below.
- Brand. Naming, artwork, photography and launch assets.
Two of those are worth planning around. Packaging frequently costs more than the product inside it, so choose formats before you fall in love with a design. And minimum order quantities are per product and per pack size, which is why a five-product range in two sizes is really ten minimums.
Step 4: Budget the regulatory fees properly, then stop worrying about them
Government fees are published and, relative to stock, small. Under the DRAP fee schedule that took effect on 1 August 2025, enlistment of a locally manufactured health product is Rs 6,300, enlistment as a local manufacturer is Rs 19,900, and minor variations such as an added pack size are Rs 3,100. Renewals cost half the initial fee.
Not every product needs any of that. A moisturiser or cleanser with no drug substance and only cosmetic claims sits under PSQCA and the relevant Pakistan Standard rather than DRAP. Products that are medicated, derma-care or oral supplements are enlisted with DRAP's Health and OTC Products Division. We wrote a separate guide to that route.
The real regulatory cost is time, not money. DRAP publishes no statutory timeline and works its queue first come, first served, so plan for several months and start the paperwork on day one — while formulation, sampling and artwork run in parallel.
Step 5: Sequence the work so nothing waits
A launch that runs well looks like this:
- Consultation and product selection. Days, not weeks, if you arrive with a clear idea of who you are selling to.
- Design: the product list, sizes, actives and packaging formats, agreed in writing. This is the decision that everything downstream depends on.
- Sampling. Lab samples of each product, revised until you approve them.
- Trials. Patch tests and real-use trials, with your patients or a panel, before anything scales.
- Brand story and packaging, running in parallel with the above: naming, label design, cartons, mockups and print proofs.
- Production, under certified conditions with batch records.
- Testing and documentation, in parallel with production.
- Delivery, with certificates of analysis, and a reorder schedule.
The parallel steps are the point. A launch feels slow when stages are run one after another that did not need to be.
Step 6: Get the label right the first time
Reprinting a label because a required line was missing is a pure loss, and it delays a launch by however long a print run takes. Pakistan's marking rules mean every label carries the product name and type, the manufacturer's name or registered trademark, net contents, the batch number, manufacturing and expiry dates, key ingredients and any statutory statement — plus your Halal and PS marks once they are granted.
This is one argument for a manufacturer whose printing is in-house: the people laying out the label already know what has to be on it, and the artwork is proofed against the batch rather than against a template.
Step 7: Protect the name before you print it
Register your brand name and logo as a trademark with IPO Pakistan, in your own name, before you commit to packaging. It is inexpensive relative to everything else on this list, and it is the asset that stays yours regardless of who manufactures for you.
If you are a doctor launching a clinic line, this matters more than it sounds. In the structure most doctor brands use, the manufacturer holds the product enlistment while you hold the trademark and the private-label agreement. The trademark is what makes the brand yours.
What we would tell a friend
Start smaller than your ambition and reorder sooner than you planned. Choose packaging formats before artwork. Put your money into the formula and the primary pack rather than into a foiled carton for a product nobody has tried yet. Ask your manufacturer for the INCI list before you commit — if they will not show you what is in the jar, you cannot stand behind what is on the label.
And get a written quote with dated stages before you pay anything. A manufacturer who will commit to dates in writing is telling you something useful about how they work.
If you want that quote from us, send your product list and the quantities you have in mind. We will come back with an itemised breakdown so you can see exactly which of those seven lines your money is going into.
