Answering a Retailer's Cosmetic Compliance Questionnaire

You land your first wholesale account, the buyer's excited, and then their vendor portal sends over a compliance questionnaire that reads like it was written for a company ten times your size. Let's go through it the way it actually gets filled out by people who've done this before.

"Is this product notified/registered with [regulator]?"

This question is usually looking for a yes/no plus a reference number, not a paragraph. If you're selling in Canada, this is your Cosmetic Notification Form status and your CN number. If you're US-only under MoCRA, this is your facility registration and product listing status. Retailers ask this because they don't want to be the ones discovering, after the fact, that a product on their shelf was never filed anywhere.

Have the actual number ready, not "we're working on it." If you're mid-filing, say so honestly and give a realistic date, since retailers would rather hear a real timeline than a vague reassurance.

"Provide your full ingredient list with INCI names"

This is not the same as your marketing ingredient list on the jar. INCI names are the standardized system, so "Aqua" not "Water," and the actual chemical or botanical name for everything else, not the pretty description from your product copy. If your formula includes a supplier blend, like a preservative system sold under a trade name, the retailer's compliance team generally wants the blend broken into its actual INCI components, not just the trade name, because trade names never appear on a regulatory filing and the retailer knows that.

If you've filed a CNF, you already have this list in the right format. Reuse it here instead of building a separate version for the retailer, since two different ingredient lists for the same product is exactly the kind of inconsistency that gets flagged.

"List any restricted or prohibited substances in the formula"

Most small brands answer "none" without actually checking against the current list, which is a risk if a fragrance oil or a natural extract happens to carry trace restricted material. The honest way to answer this is to actually screen your ingredient list against the applicable restricted list for the market you're selling into, Canada's Cosmetic Ingredient Hotlist being the relevant one there, rather than assuming a "natural" formula is automatically clear.

"Safety Data Sheet (SDS) on file?"

An SDS is a 16-section document, and section 3 is composition, which is often what a retailer's team actually pulls when they're double-checking your ingredient declarations against what you told them elsewhere on the form. If you don't have an SDS for a finished cosmetic product, that's common for smaller makers, but be ready to explain what documentation you do have, since some retailers accept alternative safety documentation for finished cosmetics rather than requiring a full SDS.

"Manufacturing facility GMP compliance"

This usually refers to good manufacturing practice, and ISO 22716 is the recognized GMP guidance specific to cosmetics. You don't need a formal ISO certification to answer honestly here. Many retailers accept a description of your actual practices, batch records, cleaning logs, ingredient sourcing documentation, as evidence of GMP-aligned operations, especially for smaller vendors. Overstating a formal certification you don't hold is worse than describing real practices accurately.

Quick reference for common questionnaire fields

Questionnaire asks for	What they actually want
Regulatory filing status	Notification/registration number and date filed
Full ingredient disclosure	INCI names, blends expanded into components
Restricted substance check	Confirmation you screened against the relevant list
Safety documentation	SDS if you have one, or equivalent safety file
GMP compliance	Description of actual manufacturing practices
Label compliance	Confirmation your label meets the destination market's rules

What actually sinks an application

It's rarely a single wrong answer. It's inconsistency between answers, an ingredient list on the questionnaire that doesn't match what's on the label, or a filing number that doesn't check out when the retailer's team verifies it. Keep one master version of your ingredient data and pull from it everywhere, your CNF filing, your label, and every questionnaire, rather than retyping it fresh each time.

If your ingredient list has never actually been screened against a restricted substance list in the format a retailer expects, that's the gap worth closing before the questionnaire lands in your inbox again. Cosmetic Comply builds that INCI-mapped, CAS-numbered, screened ingredient record as part of filing your Canadian CNF, so the same data you'd hand a retailer is already sitting there ready to reuse.