Start an Herbal Products Business or an Herb Shop

You can build a business making tinctures, tea blends, herbal body care products, herbal treats – anything you can imagine!

You could start your own line of products and sell them online, at your local farmer’s markets, or in your own shop. Here are a few examples of herbal products businesses that our graduates have started:

At Bear Wallow Herbs, Cara makes amazing herbal medicines in northern California with herbs she grows and ethically wild-harvests herself. Her products are excellent, and her business has allowed her to be home with her son, as well!

Heather started Plant Soak, a company that creates formulations for herbal baths – the ultimate in relaxation and self-care!

Marisol started Esperanza Herbals, to sell her herbal body care products online and around Boston, and now she’s expanding to offer client services as well!

Another way to start an herbal products business is to create a monthly “surprise box” style business, where each month you send out a new gift box to all of your subscribers. It might have 3 or 5 herbal goodies inside, maybe with a little card explaining each one. It might have a seasonal theme, or it might be based on whatever inspires you in the moment. 

Our friend Anja makes beautiful wellness boxes that she sends out seasonally to her subscribers. Surprise boxes have become so popular, and when you make herbal surprise boxes, you’re not just providing delight but also better health!

Start with the Family Herbalist program.

The Family Herbalist Program covers 90 of the most important and safest herbs, and how and when to work with them. You’ll also learn more than 50 ways to make them into medicines, products, treats, and more.

Once you’ve completed the Family Herbalist program, you’ll have the tools that will form the backbone of your business!

Add Formulation Skills

There are some tricks to making a really great herbal formula, and the Foundations of Formulation course will show you all of them! Once you’ve finished this course, you’ll create effective formulas that really work.

Get Personalized…

If you want to create some specificity in your products, you can take the Energetics and Holistic Practice course, which will allow you to create formulas that are more personalized.
For example, you’ll learn what you need to know to create variations in your product for folks who run dry or oily – in a skin care product, for example. Or you might have a stress-busting elixir that you create a “hot-tempered” version of, as well as a “stuff your emotions” version! The Energetics course teaches you all about how to make those kinds of differentiations.

Business Skills & GMP

If you don’t have experience in running your own business, don’t worry! The Herbal Business Program will walk you through it! We’ll go through everything you need to start your practice – getting registered, building your website, getting all the technical stuff in place, setting up all the GMP stuff you need to be legal, building your newsletter, finding or setting up a commercial kitchen, even getting your marketing started!

This course is not about theory – we are going to actually build your business together, every step of the way!

As you move through the program, you will actually be completing every step of launching your business: learn how to do it, ask questions, get feedback, and then cross it off your list – done!

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Here are some of the goals our students are working on:

I am a beekeeper and already have a storefront where I sell honey and my handmade soap and body care items.  I want to incorporate herbs into the products I make now, and also I want to offer herbs in bulk and be able to help people choose the right herbs for them.

– Dail

Dail already has the business know-how, she just needs the herbal knowledge to expand her offerings. She’s enrolled in the Family Herbalist program and the Foundations of Formulation course, and is already experimenting with new formulas for her body care products!

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I want to have my own skincare line that’s completely natural – body butters, oils, and herbal blends. Eventually I want to be able to make products that can support health for the folks in my community, too. I want to make the things people need to take care of themselves.

– Shaquala

Shaquala is currently enrolled in the Family Herbalist program, which teaches her all of the herbs she’ll be working with as well as how to make all the different types of products. She decided to enroll in the Community Herbalist program too, so that she could create more targeted products that support health in a wide range of areas

She’ll be starting the Herbal Business Program in January to go through all the steps of setting up her business. 

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Whether you sell your own products or retail products that other people make, a local herb shop is a valuable community center that grows as the herbal community grows.

As you help your community grow, they in turn nourish you!

Whether you’re making your own products or not, you should start with the Family Herbalist program – that way you’ll know what herbs you want to stock, what to recommend when customers have questions, and you’ll know what you can safely sell. Plus, you’ll be able to assess whose products are the highest quality, if you’re retailing products that other herbalists have made.

Once you’ve finished Family Herbalist, you’re ready for the Herbal Business Program to get everything up and going: from dreaming up a great name all the way to your grand opening (and beyond!)

When you are an herb shop owner, folks will ask you questions. The more you can answer, the more your shop becomes a community hub. And – you can offer regular workshops to provide education for your community: as they learn, you grow!

So once you get things up and going, we definitely recommend that you take the Community Herbalist program – this is where you’ll gain the skills to teach workshops on anything from stress and herbal emotional support, to holistic heart health, to family cold & flu care – for example. The more your knowledge grows, the more your shop grows!

Here’s Ashley’s plan for her herb shop:

I am working on learning as much as I can because I want to have my own herbal store someday, where I can sell herbs, teach others and help them in a more natural way of healing, and make a place in the community where people can hang out and learn.

– Ashley

Ashley is enrolled in the Family Herbalist program and the Community Herbalist program so that she has all the knowledge she needs to stock her shop, create herbal formulas and products, as well as teach monthly workshops in her shop which will help her to build community and also be a great marketing opportunity. Once she’s got her foundations down, she’ll be ready for the Herbal Business Program, where we’ll go through all of the nitty gritty steps of turning her dream shop into a reality – and we’ll do it together so that she’s supported every step of the way!

You can do this too!

If you want to start an herbal products business or open your own herb shop, we want to help you make it happen!

You can jump right into the course work and if you have any questions, just let us know at info@commonwealthherbs.com 🌿❤️️