The kilogram pack: why it exists and what it changes for a buyer

On a professional manufacturer's price list, next to a hundred-gram cream you will find a one-kilo bag of alginate mask and a litre jar. To a buyer used to retail that looks like a large pack at a discount. It is not: this is a different product and it has to be costed differently.

Why a kilogram exists at all

An alginate mask is mixed with water immediately before the treatment and applied thickly across the whole face. One session uses thirty to fifty grams. A kilogram is twenty to thirty treatments — a fortnight's consumable for a working room.

A retail pack simply could not carry that product: powder in a small sachet would cost three times as much per gram, and the therapist would open a dozen sachets per shift.

The same goes for litre creams and massage oils. They are not sold to the client to take home; they are used up in the therapist's hands.

What it changes in freight and minimum order

Weight. A professional range is heavier than a retail one for the same order value, and in sea freight that is rather an advantage: you pay for volume, and a dense product uses volume well.

Minimum order quantity, meanwhile, is more often counted in units than in kilograms. Twenty one-kilo bags are twenty units, so a per-item minimum is reached sooner than it looks.

And the customs description. A kilogram bag of professional mask and a hundred-gram jar of cream may fall under different codes because their intended use differs. Worth confirming with your broker before the order, not after.

Life after opening

This is the main difference from retail. A retail jar states a period after opening calculated for one person. A professional pack states one calculated for a room with normal throughput.

If the salon works more slowly than the manufacturer assumed, the litre jar stands open for months. For a buyer that means a large pack pays off only where there is turnover, and turns into a write-off where there is not.

What to ask the manufacturer

Consumption per treatment for each item. Without it a kilogram does not convert into a number of sessions, and therefore not into money.

Shelf life from the production date, and separately the period after opening.

Whether the item also exists in a retail size. Sometimes the same formula comes in two sizes, and then you can take both: the large one for the room, the small one for the home routine that follows.

And the storage requirements: some professional formulas are more temperature-sensitive than retail ones.