Verified sourcing intelligence

US contract manufacturers for skincare and personal care, checked against federal records.

A working directory for small consumer brands moving production onshore. Every entry traces to a primary source, carries the date it was checked, and marks anything we could not confirm as UNKNOWN instead of estimating it.

Who makes it? — 33 brands and the company that filed the FDA label A free, complete worked example of the method below. Every row links to the federal record it came from. Nothing behind an email.

The question people are actually asking

“Can you tell me where to find American vendors for my apparel brand to avoid the tariffs from imports?”
— A seller, Shopify community forum

That question gets asked in every consumer category right now, and the honest answer today is a bad one: a general industrial directory built for procurement engineers, a handful of free listing sites whose data quality varies wildly, or forty hours of your own time on the phone.

We started with skincare and personal care for one specific reason, and it is not that it is the biggest market. It is the category where a domestic manufacturer’s existence can be confirmed against a federal record instead of taken on the word of a listing page.

What this is

A directory of US contract manufacturers that make skincare and personal care products — formulators, fillers, and turnkey shops — assembled for brand owners who need a real shortlist, not search results.

It does not exist yet. It is being built now, and it is not published. We are opening the early-access list first, before the product, so that the people who need it shape what goes in it. You are not buying anything on this page.

We are also not going to tell you how many manufacturers will be in the first release, because we do not know yet and a number we invent today is exactly the kind of claim this directory exists to replace.

How an entry gets verified

This is the whole product. Anyone can scrape a list of company names. The work is in confirming that a facility is real, that it does what it says it does, and in being disciplined about the difference between a fact and a plausible guess.

Start from the FDA’s own label filings

Much of personal care is legally an over-the-counter drug — sunscreen, acne treatment, antiperspirant, anti-dandruff shampoo. Every one of those products has a label on file with the FDA, and the National Library of Medicine publishes those filings in full through DailyMed’s public API. That is the anchor: a primary federal record, free to read and free for you to re-check.
Record what the record actually says

The company that filed the label, the establishment identifier exactly as filed, and the business operation codes the filing carries — manufacture (C43360), pack (C84731), label (C84732). Read out of the filing itself, not paraphrased from a search result. Where the filing leaves the operations blank, so do we.
Date-stamp the check and keep the source

A filing describes the state of affairs on the day it was published, and labels get revised. Every entry carries the date we looked and a link straight to the FDA record, so you can re-verify any line yourself without taking our word for it.
Mark the gaps instead of filling them

Minimum order quantity, lead time, and whether a shop will take a small new account are not in any public record. If the manufacturer publishes it, we cite it. If not, the field reads UNKNOWN. It never reads “typically around…”

Field schema — every entry Illustrative · not a real listing

Field	Value	Source
Firm name	As filed with FDA	FDA label filing
Facility address	As filed, where the filing gives one	FDA label filing
Establishment ID	DUNS or FEI, as filed — we do not assert which	FDA label filing
Business operations	MANUFACTURE / PACK / LABEL, or `UNKNOWN` where the filing leaves it blank	FDA label filing
Filing revision date	As shown on the FDA record	FDA label filing
Date checked	Date of our most recent look	us
Product categories	Where the manufacturer states them	cited link
Minimum order qty	`UNKNOWN` unless published	not public
Takes small accounts	`UNKNOWN` unless published	not public
New-business contact	Where the manufacturer publishes one	cited link

A row reading UNKNOWN is doing its job. It tells you the question is still open and saves you from acting on a number nobody stands behind.

Every step above is on display, on real records, at Who makes it? — 33 brands, the company that filed each FDA label, the operation codes exactly as recorded, and a link to every federal record. Free, and not gated behind an email.

What this is not, stated plainly

A directory that only lists its strengths is a brochure. These are the real limits of the method, and you should know them before you rely on it.

A registration is not an endorsement

FDA establishment registration means a facility has told the FDA it exists and what it does. It is not an FDA approval, a quality rating, an inspection result, or any indication that a shop is good, solvent, or willing to work with you.

Cosmetics-only facilities are a genuine gap

Under MoCRA, cosmetic manufacturing facilities must register with the FDA, but the FDA publishes only summary figures from that programme — not the individual facility records. So a shop making purely cosmetic products, with no OTC drug products, has no public facility record to check against. Where that is the case, the entry will say so rather than implying a verification we did not perform.

We do not give regulatory advice

Whether you may label a finished product “Made in USA” is governed by the FTC’s Made in USA standard, and the answer depends on facts about your own supply chain. We will point you at the rule. We will not interpret it for you, and nothing here is legal, customs, or regulatory advice.

The data goes stale, so we date it

Registrations expire, facilities close, and operations change. A verified entry is a statement about what the record said on a particular day, which is why that day is printed on every row.

Questions

Does the directory exist yet?

No. It is in active development and nothing has been published. The early-access list is open now so there is a way to tell us this is worth building before it is finished.

How many manufacturers will be in it?

We are not going to quote a figure before it is true. The first release ships when the entries in it are verified, not when the count reaches a number that looks good on a page. When it ships, the count will be the real count.

When does it launch?

No date promised. Verification takes as long as it takes, and a deadline is the most common reason a directory starts guessing. Early-access subscribers hear first.

What will it cost?

Not set. It will be a paid product — the research is the work and we would rather charge you than sell your attention to advertisers. Early access subscribers get told the price before anyone else and get the launch price.

Do manufacturers pay to be listed?

No. There is no paid placement, no sponsored entry, and no upgrade a manufacturer can buy. A directory that sells its listings is an ad network, and its ranking stops meaning anything the day it takes the first cheque.

Why skincare and not apparel?

Apparel is already served by established sourcing platforms, and more importantly there is no equivalent public federal registry of apparel factories to verify against. Personal care has one. We would rather do one category where the verification is real than five where it is asserted.

Why should I trust any of this?

Ideally, don’t — not on faith. Every entry carries its source and the date it was checked precisely so you can spot-check any line against the public record yourself. A directory you can audit is the only kind worth paying for.

What happens to my email address?

It gets used to tell you when the directory is ready and to send occasional notes on what the research turns up. It is not sold, rented, or shared, and every message has a one-click unsubscribe.

Get it when it is ready

One notification at launch. If the research shows this category is already well served and the directory is not worth building, we will email you that instead.