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Some of the best work we’ve done started before the client ever found us, because someone they trusted had already made sure the creative side was covered.
Over the past four years, our collaboration with Miami Growth Machine has become a blueprint for how we work with manufacturing partners — and for what that partnership can do for the brands caught in the middle.
Andrea Cid is the CEO of Miami Growth Machine, a manufacturing incubator in Miami that specializes in formulation, supply chain management, and manufacturing for indie beauty startups. Her team handles everything from product development to fulfillment — hair care, skincare, fragrance, body care, pet care — and she works without minimums, which means founders can start small, test, iterate, and scale as demand grows.
We handle the other half. Brand strategy, packaging design, and Shopify development, built from the beginning to work in production, not just on a screen.
Together, we’ve partnered on several brands across beauty and personal care. The model is simple: Andrea develops the product, we develop the brand, and the founder gets a finished result instead of a pile of disconnected pieces.
Most founders come to their manufacturer ready to talk about the product. The formula. The ingredients. The texture. That makes sense; it’s the exciting part.
But Andrea will tell you the same thing we will: if you develop your product first and figure out the branding later, you are going to do it twice.
“It leads to so much money lost, to be honest, and time. And even if you manage to thread that needle, it’s basically luck.“
— Andrea Cid, CEO, Miami Growth Machine
This idea of developing a product first and then figuring out the labels, figuring out how it’s going to look, it’s putting the cart before the horse. And it is one of the most common patterns we see with beauty founders launching their first product.
The brand strategy needs to happen before the packaging. The packaging needs to be designed for the actual container, with the actual printer’s specifications, before files go to production. And the website needs to be built alongside all of it, not bolted on at the end by a developer who has never seen the packaging.
When a manufacturing partner and a creative partner are aligned on this from the start, the founder doesn’t have to play project manager between disconnected vendors. Everything moves in one direction.
“This was the first time I got to do it completely myself with Lilian and it was such a great process and something I recommend to all my clients now: that you have to start with the branding and understand that because that will just make your life so much easier down the road.”
— Andrea Cid
Andrea did exactly that with her own brand. We created the original Miami Growth Machine logo and brand identity, and five years later, she’s still using every asset: business cards, trade show banners, water bottles, website. All from the same brand guide.
“I love it more each day.”
— Andrea Cid, on the Miami Growth Machine branding
There is a big difference between a designer who creates something that looks beautiful on a website and a designer who creates something that is ready for production.
This is the gap that costs founders thousands of dollars, and it is the gap that every manufacturing partner we work with has seen over and over again.
“My biggest concern whenever I hear of anyone working with someone like Lilian is my first question — you have to ask your designers if they have packaging experience. Because it’s a very different thing when you’ve printed 10,000 boxes and now you’re thinking of relabeling. That’s not going to look good.”
— Andrea Cid
We have seen it from every angle. Labels that arrive at the printer with the wrong barcode format. A Spanish translation that says Biotín when it should say Biotina — caught before 10,000 boxes went to print. Three product labels that needed to be resized in three days because the container that arrived from the supplier was a different size than the one the founder originally spec’d. Ingredient lists with inconsistencies between SKUs: one bottle in all caps, the other not, the third missing the product name entirely.
These are not design problems. These are packaging problems. And they are invisible to anyone who hasn’t done this work before.
“I’ve had situations, small and big, where someone didn’t realize that the UPC code had to be in a certain way. We’ve had to sticker boxes. And you’re talking about spending money, cash on product, trying to — that is the way that people are perceiving you on a shelf.”
— Andrea Cid
When we deliver files to a manufacturing partner — whether in Miami, New York, or overseas — the fonts are embedded, the colors are specced to Pantone, the die lines match the printer’s template, and production can start without a dozen follow-up questions. That is not a favor we do for one partner. It is how we operate.
“I know that when Lilian gives me something, it’s done. Like, all of the stuff is there because you have packaging experience and you understand how to work with a printer. You know that they need to have the fonts embedded. You know that they have to have all of the graphics embedded already and in a way that they can print.”
— Andrea Cid
Good packaging is not just about looking beautiful. It is about strategy: making sure the brand matches the positioning, the price point, and the expectations of the customer picking it up.
“You know when something’s off. You notice it. Maybe you can’t say exactly what’s wrong — you just feel like it doesn’t look as polished as it should. Your brain is expecting something for a certain type of product, a certain price point. If it’s a luxury product, you’re expecting certain things, and when they’re not there, you know. You might not be able to articulate it, but you know.”
— Andrea Cid
This is the conversation we have with every manufacturing partner’s clients. The branding has to match the positioning, or the shelf does the rejecting for you.
One thing we see constantly is founders wanting to develop their branding based on their personal preferences instead of what the market asks for. You cannot go on a tangent and develop a design that is completely out of the standards of the market you are trying to reach. You need to look at your competitors. You need to know what the standards are for your product to hold its own on the shelf.
And it is not only about the individual product — it is about the system. When you launch one SKU and it does well, you are going to launch a second and a third. Those bottles need to talk to each other. The typography, the hierarchy, the amount of text, the style — it all needs to be consistent. We have saved founders thousands of dollars simply by making sure those details were locked in before anything went to print, so that by the time they were scaling to a full line, the system was already built.
“When I see a beautiful design, it also has to include a little bit of that cost understanding. Is this a luxury product or is it a mass market? How tight are those margins? And is that going to make a difference when they go to a printer and the printer’s telling them the pricing? And then they get sticker shock after spending a really long time to create the artwork.”
— Andrea Cid
One of the most underused tools in beauty brand development is the 3D render. Most founders wait until their product is physically manufactured, filled, and photographed before they launch their website or start marketing. That means months of dead time where the brand exists but has nothing to show for it.
We build renders into every project. High-quality 3D renders of the packaging — the bottle, the box, the full product line — that allow a founder to launch their website, run social media teasers, build pre-launch momentum, and even take pre-orders before a single product has been photographed.
“I think sometimes people don’t realize that a lot of the pictures that you see on a website are usually renders.“
— Andrea Cid
This is especially powerful for founders working with a manufacturing partner on small batches. You do not need to wait for your first 1,000 units to arrive before your brand is visible. The renders carry you through — and when the physical product does land, the brand is already in motion.
The reason this model works is not because of any single relationship. It works because of the structure.
When a manufacturer has a creative partner they trust, everything moves faster. The files are right. The brand is cohesive across every SKU. The founder isn’t playing telephone between a designer who doesn’t understand printing and a printer who doesn’t understand design.
We built this model with Miami Growth Machine over four years and several brands. It is the same model we bring to every manufacturing partner we work with. The specifics change — different formulations, different printers, different markets. But the structure is the same: one creative team that understands packaging, one manufacturing partner that understands production, and a founder who gets to focus on building the business instead of managing the chaos in between.
“I always like when I know that I can recommend someone and I just know it’s going to get done quickly and in a way that will minimize that sort of back and forth or any confusion with additional vendors. It builds better rapport with your vendors, because it just shows that you’re taking the advice of professionals.”
— Andrea Cid
“Lilian is a brilliant and super talented branding expert. She did the Miami Growth Machine logo and brand which I love more each day.”
— Andrea Cid
“The Copper Portico should be doing your branding. If you’re serious about doing branding, trust me, five years down the line you’re still rocking with your original branding in part because it was done properly from the beginning.“
— Andrea Cid
For founders:
If you are developing a beauty product and you haven’t started your branding yet — or you started it with someone who doesn’t understand packaging — this is the gap that costs you thousands. Whether you are working with Miami Growth Machine or any other manufacturer, the creative side needs to be built for production from day one.
For manufacturers:
If your clients keep showing up with files that aren’t print-ready, labels that don’t match, and designs that weren’t built for production — this is what a reliable creative partner looks like. We work with manufacturing partners across the beauty and CPG space, and the model is always the same: we make your clients look better and your production process smoother.
The Copper Portico is a fractional creative studio for beauty, wellness, and skincare brands. Brand strategy, packaging design, and Shopify development — one team, one direction, no vendor chaos.
thecopperportico.com
calendly.com/chat-liliansantini/discovery
Miami Growth Machine handles formulation, product development, manufacturing, and fulfillment for indie beauty brands — from small batches to scale.