Shipping cosmetics and skincare abroad

What ships, and what never can

• Ships: hair oils, face and body oils, creams, lotions, serums, soaps, powders, face packs, lip balms, kajal and other cosmetics in sealed, labelled containers.
• Never ships: perfume, nail polish and remover, and anything sprayed from a pressurised can, such as deodorant sprays and aerosols. Airlines treat them as dangerous goods, so they cannot leave our warehouse for any destination.
• Check first: anything sold as a medicine rather than a cosmetic, which follows the destination's medicine rules instead.

Packing liquids so they arrive

Air freight goes through pressure and temperature changes, and a loose cap is the commonest reason an oil arrives as a stain. Tape or shrink-seal every cap, bag each bottle, and pack bottles upright with padding. Send them to us the way you would sell them, sealed and labelled with the ingredients; we repack the shipment and keep liquids away from anything they could ruin.

The two ways a parcel leaves here

Everything on this page turns on which of these you are, so it is worth settling first. There are two, and we run both.

If your business is registered as an exporter

You have a GSTIN, an IEC and an AD code. Your parcel ships as your export: it goes under your own IEC, and you authorise our carrier to file the shipping bill (CSB-V) on your behalf. You pay the freight, and the commercial invoice carries your business.

If your business is not registered as an exporter

We call this the simple route, and it is the one most Instagram sellers, boutiques and small shops start on. On this route you do not export at all. Your customer abroad receives the parcel as their own, under our personal forwarding terms — the same terms any individual uses to send their own belongings home. You book the shipment here, put your own bill for the order inside the parcel, and send it to our warehouse. We weigh it, photograph it, and send your customer a link to pay the shipping. As soon as they pay, it goes, and they get tracking in your name.

Labels and your customer's country

An ingredient list in English on every product helps at customs everywhere. If you start selling regularly into one country, that country's own cosmetics rules on labelling and ingredients apply to you as the seller, so read them before you scale up. For a few orders a month to individual customers, sealed, labelled and honestly declared is what matters.

As a guide, a 1 kg parcel, about one packed saree, is ₹2,500–4,000 to the UAE, ₹4,000–5,000 to the UK, ₹4,000–5,500 to the USA, ₹4,000–5,500 to Canada and ₹4,000–5,000 to Australia by direct courier, with our handling, GST and payment charges included. These are published ranges, not quotes, and duty at your customer’s end is separate.

Where to start

Open a business account and tell us what you sell. We call every new business on WhatsApp within a working day, usually to settle exactly the question this page is about, and you are on the right route before your first parcel moves.