You make the product. Someone else owns the customer.
Formula to Exit turns one of your ingredients-led product lines into a separate online brand. You keep making it. You own the brand. We build and run it for a monthly fee and a share of the sale, and we build it to be sold in two to three years.
Twenty minutes on the phone. You never share a recipe.
| Product line | Demand | Competition | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| L-01Leather cleaner, 250ml | Build | ||
| L-02Oven cleaner, 400ml | Pass | ||
| L-03Boiler additive, 250ml | Build |
Illustrative example only. Your study uses live sales data on your own lines.
You did the hard part. Someone else keeps the value.
Your products are tested, costed and compliant. If you only sell through another business, they own the customer, the reviews and the sales history. When they sell up, the buyer pays for the brand. You were paid per fill, or per case.
Contract fillers
A customer moves supply elsewhere and leaves you with a shelf of formulations you own and nobody is selling. Or you have a library of stock formulas that has never had a brand on it.
Family brands that sell to trade
You sell through vets, saddlers, salons, garden centres or wholesalers. Customers ask for you by name. Online, a reseller owns your listing, prices it badly and keeps the margin.
Tried it, and the selling stalled
Plenty of manufacturers have had a go at selling direct. It rarely stalls in the making. It stalls in listings, advertising, reviews, stock planning and returns. You are a maker, not a marketer.
One pallet sold direct can earn what ten, twenty or fifty pallets earn at trade. And a brand with two years of sales history has a sale value. A formula in a folder does not.
Buyers of online brands pay for proven sales, not recipes. Formula to Exit turns one into the other, using products you already know how to make.
Four steps from the factory to a sale
You bring the product and the production line. We bring the selling, the running and the exit. Nothing is built until the numbers say it should be.
Qualification call
Twenty minutes on the phone. What you make, how it sells today, whether you own the formulation, and whether there is a line worth putting through the study. If there is not, we say so.
Brand Exit Feasibility Study
One week. We run your shortlisted lines through live Amazon sales data, check compliance and trademarks, forecast sales and profit, and put an exit value on the brand. A written business case, yours to keep.
We build and run the brand
A separate brand that you own. We run it for a monthly fee and take 20% of the proceeds when it is sold, under a written agreement. Name, trademark, packaging, listings, photography, advertising, reviews, stock planning and customer service. You fill to spec.
Built to sell from day one
Clean books, a clear sales history, the US once the UK has proved it, and a valuation you can track as it grows. The aim is a sale in two to three years. A sale is the goal, not a guarantee.
You make it.
- Fill to spec, in the runs we agree, from stock where you can
- Supply specs, safety data sheets and barcodes
- Approve every formula, design and claim
- Fund the advertising, which is the brand's own cost
- A short review each month and a proper one each quarter
We sell it.
- The study, the shortlist and the opening quantities
- Brand name, trademark, Brand Registry, packaging and listings
- Amazon compliance and account health
- Advertising, early reviews, email and repeat purchase
- Stock planning, shipments and monthly reporting
- The move into the US when the UK has proved it
- Getting the brand ready to sell, and the introduction to buyers
Test the numbers before either of us commits to a build
Amazon's sales data is public if you know where to look. We can see what a category already pays before a single label is printed. The study puts that in writing, with an exit value on the end of it, for £500 plus VAT.
What you get in one week
- The proposed product line, and why that one
- Three forecasts: the floor the category pays today, a managed Amazon brand, and the full build with off-Amazon traffic and the US
- Profit per unit after Amazon fees, advertising and our fee, at your cost of goods
- An exit estimate for years two to three, using the multiples buyers of online brands are paying now
- Trademark clearance on the proposed name, and a compliance scan: labelling, safety data and claims
- Opening production quantities per line, so there is no guesswork on the first run
- Ownership and selling account options, and our proposal to build and run the brand
There is no commitment to go further. If the case does not hold up, you have a clear no for £500 instead of a brand built on hope.
Floors and ceilings are sanity-checked with former Amazon business development managers, and the exit estimate comes from a brand valuation specialist we introduce you to.
The study is not a guarantee of sales or of an exit value. It is a way to test the numbers before either of us spends real money.
A filler with a shelf of formulas somebody else had walked away from
A UK contract filler had developed and made almost a whole household range for a customer. The customer moved supply elsewhere and left the filler holding twenty-five formulations it owned outright. We ran the range through live Amazon data.
Client names are under NDA. These are past results from one engagement, not a forecast for yours. Having stock ready to produce was the single biggest factor in the timeline.
How a brand becomes a payday
Buyers of online brands pay a multiple of annual profit. Because you are the factory, your cost of goods is a fraction of what a normal seller pays, so more of every sale is profit, and every pound of profit is worth three to four and a half pounds at the sale.
Worked examples, not forecasts. Assumes a shelf price of six to seven times your own cost of goods, the standard guidance for a consumer product, so cost of goods is 15% of sales. Amazon fees 35% at prices above £12. Advertising 12%. Our fee and other running costs 9% to 14% depending on scale. Multiples are the published 2025 to 2026 ranges for brands of this size. The £300k tier is two ranges and the US. Your study gives you your own number.
What buyers pay more for
- Margins above 20%. You start there, because you make it.
- Owned formula and supply. Most Amazon brands rent theirs from a factory in China. Yours is on your own shelf.
- Sales off Amazon too. A brand with a fifth of its sales through its own store and email list sells for roughly double. We build that in.
- More than one hero product. A range, not a listing. Fillers have ranges.
- Clean books and a clean account. Two years of tidy history is what the study is built to produce.
Whoever buys the brand still needs someone to make the product. That is you. You sell the brand, bank the proceeds, and keep the filling contract. The exit is the payday. The volume carries on afterwards.
Why risk selling direct yourself?
You could hire a marketer, learn Amazon and find out the hard way. Or you could partner with an experienced team of operators who have built brands to seven figures and exited more than once. You keep making. We do the part that stalls.
More volume on your own lines
Every unit the brand sells is a unit you make, at a margin trade will never pay.
An asset, not just an invoice
You own a brand with a sale value, and 80% of what it sells for is yours. That matters when you are thinking about succession, or your own exit.
Your recipe stays yours
We work from product type, claims, pack size and cost. The formulation never leaves your site.
Your trade customers stay untouched
A separate brand with its own name, and if you prefer, a selling account that is not in yours. You have the final say on every line.
A route into the US
Amazon's US store is many times the size of the UK's. We handle the move once the brand has proved itself at home.
No new department
You do not hire marketers or learn Amazon. If the first line works, we repeat the process on the next one.
Plain terms, set out before you decide
Everything below is confirmed in writing at the end of the study, so you know the fee, the exit share and who owns what before you commit to a build.
You own the brand. We share the exit.
The trademark, the listings and the selling account are yours, and so is every penny of margin along the way. When the brand is sold, Formula to Exit takes 20% of the sale proceeds under a written agreement. We negotiate the valuation and the exit with you, because we are paid on it. No new company, no shares to issue.
Management fee from month one
Month one is not idle. While you are making and palletising stock we are registering the trademark, building listings, adapting safety data sheets and warming up an audience before launch. Advertising spend is the brand's own cost, funded by the brand.
We earn more when it works
Once the brand passes £40,000 gross in a month, 5% of gross revenue is added to the fee. Below that, the fee stays flat. Bolt-on services, such as a US launch or a Shopify store, are agreed separately if and when both sides want them.
Two ways to hold the account
By default the brand and its Amazon account are registered by you. If you would rather your trade customers never see you selling direct, we register the brand and the account and the same terms apply. Either way, who owns what if we part is written down before anything launches.
Roger Percy
“I have sold on Amazon since 2010, run an Amazon agency, and built and sold businesses of my own. I took a personal safety product to market leader in the UK and Europe, and I have worked hands-on with liquids, creams and regulated categories. Your product is the hard bit. The selling is the bit I know.”
Based in Northern Ireland. Working with manufacturers across the UK and Ireland.
Built for owner-managed manufacturers
A good fit if
- You are a UK or Irish manufacturer, filler or trade-only brand, and the owners run the business
- You own the formulation outright, or you can make one
- You make liquids, gels, creams, sprays, supplements or feeds, for people, pets or animals
- You can fill a few hundred units per line from stock inside four weeks, or as many as the launch needs
- You can make the decision yourself, and you are there to make it
Not a fit if
- You only fill to your customers' own recipes and have nothing of your own
- You want an agency to advertise a brand you already sell online
- A first conversation needs sign-off from a group board
What manufacturers ask first
Do you need our formulations?
No. We work from the product type, claims, pack size and your cost price. The recipe stays with you. We do need to know that you own it, or can make your own.
Will this compete with our trade customers?
Not if we choose well. The brand is separate from your trade business, with its own name and its own company. You tell us which categories and accounts to steer clear of, and nothing goes ahead without your say-so. We will not promise a separate brand is invisible to your trade customers, but we can make sure it is never sold under your name.
Who owns the brand and the Amazon account?
You do. The trademark, the listings and the selling account are yours by default, and Formula to Exit is paid a monthly fee and 20% of the eventual sale under a written agreement. If you would rather not be seen to sell direct, we can register the brand and the account instead, on the same terms. Who takes what if the partnership ends is written down before launch, not argued about afterwards.
We already have an Amazon seller account. Does that help?
It can. We review it in the study. Sometimes it is the right home for the new brand, and sometimes a clean, separate account is safer. We tell you which and why.
What does it cost?
The qualification call costs nothing. The Brand Exit Feasibility Study is £500 plus VAT. If we build, the management fee is £3,000 a month from month one, plus 5% of gross revenue in any month above £40,000, and we take 20% of the proceeds when the brand is sold. Your margin on every unit is yours. Advertising is the brand's own cost. We set all of this out in writing before you decide.
What happens if we stop?
The commitment runs quarter by quarter after the first quarter, with a review at the end of each one. If either side stops, there is a structured handover. The brand, the trademark and the account stay with whoever registered them, and what each side is owed is what the agreement said on day one.
How much of our time does it take?
Filling runs you already know how to fill, approving designs and claims, a short review each month and a proper one each quarter. We do the rest.
Why Amazon first?
It is where most online shoppers start when they look for household, car care, pet, equine and personal care products. The sales data is visible, so we can see demand before anything is built. Amazon pays out every fortnight. And a clean Amazon sales history is what buyers of online brands look for. Where a product needs Shopify, TikTok Shop or trade marketplaces as well, we use them.
What if nothing we make stacks up?
Then we tell you, in plain terms, on the call or in the study. A clear no now is better than a brand built on hope.
Book your qualification call
Twenty minutes on the phone with Roger. Bring what you make and how it sells today. Names and categories are enough. You will leave knowing whether there is a line worth putting through the study.
- Free, with no obligation
- No recipes, no confidential data
- A straight answer on whether the study is worth doing
Prefer to talk first? Email hello@formulatoexit.com
Thank you
We will be in touch within one working day to agree a time. A copy of what you sent is on its way to your inbox.