For lip balm makers

Fifty tubes a pour. Pennies that add up.

Lip balm is the till-side hero of the bath table: one double-boiler pour fills fifty tubes, the tubes come by the hundred, and the $4 add-on sale quietly pays the booth fee by noon. It only works if the pennies are real. MadeKeeper costs the batch to the tube — beeswax, butters, labels, all of it — so the little product earns like it should.

The app is live. Free during the pilot. Founding rate $19/mo, locked for life.

No card to start. Use it free through the pilot, and lock the $19/mo founding rate for as long as you stay.

How MadeKeeper maps to your double boiler

The pour as a batchBeeswax, coconut oil, shea, and flavor log by weight; the fill run divides the pot across fifty tubes. Every tube knows its 41 cents.
Tubes and labels per-100Tubes by the hundred, labels by the sheet — packaging is half a lip balm's cost, and MadeKeeper counts it instead of rounding it away.
Flavors as variantsPeppermint, honey, unflavored — one product, per-flavor counts. You'll learn the mint outsells the rest two to one, and pour accordingly.
The add-on economicsBalm rides along with soap and lotion sales. Channel math shows what the $4 line adds to a market day — usually more than its size suggests.

One fill run, to the penny

Say you pour a batch of 50 tubes:

  • 4 oz beeswax$2.90
  • 8 oz coconut oil and shea$3.75
  • Flavor oil$2.40
  • 50 tubes (per-100 case @ $14)$7.00
  • 50 labels @ 9¢$4.50
Batch cost — 41¢ a tube$20.55

At $4 a tube you keep $3.59 each — so the market morning that moves eighteen tubes made $64.62 on the side, which is a booth fee, paid by the smallest thing on the table.

Lip balm sits on the cosmetics side of the paperwork — MadeKeeper keeps the batch, ingredient, and lot records that labeling and MoCRA-era record-keeping lean on; the label rules themselves stay yours to check.

Straight about what's live

Materials and true cost per piece, products (in bulk or one-of-a-kind), sales that drain stock, the was-this-fair-worth-it event math, mileage, expenses, and the year-end tax packet — all in the app today. Etsy and Square sync, your own storefront, a booth card reader, and shipping labels are building, shaped with founding makers. Nothing above describes a feature that doesn't exist without saying so. See the full live-vs-building list →

Questions lip balm makers ask

Is a 41-cent product worth real bookkeeping?

At fifty tubes a pour and a few hundred tubes a season, yes — the balm line often nets more per hour of making than the soap it rides beside. The batch recipe makes each new pour one entry, so the bookkeeping costs you nothing.

How do flavors track?

As variants of one product — each flavor keeps its own count and sales. Pour decisions come from the ledger, not from remembering which basket emptied first.

What about tins and jars alongside tubes?

Different packaging, different recipe line, same pot. A 2-oz tin costs and prices differently than a tube, and MadeKeeper keeps the two honest side by side.

Ready to see your real numbers?

The app is live and free during the pilot. Lock the $19/mo founding rate for as long as you stay.

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