Please bring back powders

You are correct. It's because we spend so much money on science, testing, and R&D that margins are low. If I didn't run an entire lab full of scientists, our costs would be much lower, thus margins higher. However, then we would be like every other piece of shit brand in this scam of an industry. Everyone here is free to go buy from a brand that doesn't do proper lab testing or quality control. There's plenty of those brands to choose from. People come to us because they value the precision, consistency, transparency, and standardization of stuff they put into their bodies. This isn't shoes or stickers. These are functional ingredients meant to improve people's health.

Also, even if we didn't run our lab, our margins would still be lower. This is because we use expensive ingredients. So a big part of our expenses are running our lab and facility, but a big part is the cost per kg of the shit we use. You would be DUMBFOUNDED by the costs that other brands try to keep things limited to. Most brands want to keep per-unit costs to around $5. I shit you not. We work with a lot of people around this industry now, and we have actually moved to supplying ingredients and testing services to other brands. The amount of money most brands are putting into the actual products is insane to me. We work with someone that is helping with formulation for one of Kylie Jenner's new supplement products, and he is extremely frustrated at them constantly refusing ingredients to limit the cost of the product. I am sure this is going to be an expensive ass supplement when it releases, but will only cost around $5 per unit. There are cases where just our TESTING costs are more than $5 per unit. I also never budge on my formulations because of cost. I make the formulas that I want to see, and they cost what they cost. We also price things consistently, and don't constantly change prices to try to trick people. I've even kept things unchanged through this whole tariff shit, just eating into our margins, hoping they get invalidated by the supreme court soon. Last month we barely broke even. My operations manager came to me and said we need to either reign in costs or raise prices. We are spending a lot on science and R&D right now, so I am hoping we can just weather things, and then the supreme court gets rid of the tariffs. If not, we will have to make some changes to the equation.

The other thing is that I employ 90 people here in Arizona, and labor costs for highly skilled scientists are up significantly. The same goes for insurance, electricity, rent, etc. Cost have risen DRAMATICALLY since 2020. Our rent has literally doubled. Insurance is getting close. Labor costs are up at least 50%. We are getting hit especially hard because of where we are. Costs have gone up everywhere, but Tempe Arizona has been hit especially hard. We've turned into a tech boom town, with the cost increases to match. Even just residential housing here has gone bonkers. If I had put our facility is a lower cost of living area, we'd have a much easier time ensuring margins. However, everyone decided that they wanted to move to Arizona in the past 5 years, so we are fighting for limited resources in a city that is booming. Everything adds up in the end. I think we do a very good job of keeping things fair and consistent for customers.