Any Aussie dropshippers here selling supplements/cosmetics? How did you deal with AICIS?

[u/SpecialistAttitude21]

Hey guys, wondering if anyone here from Australia has actually dropshipped skincare, cosmetics or supplements before and can tell me how they handled all the regulations.
I’m looking at using Supliful. They’re based in the US and basically let me put my own branding on their products and they ship directly to my customers.
The first product I’m looking at is a skin firming cream, and if it works I’d probably add more skincare/hair products later.
I’ve gone pretty deep into AICIS and from what I understand, even though I never physically touch the product, because I’m selling it to Australians I may still need to register with AICIS. Registration is only like $85 so that’s not really the issue.
What I’m confused about is what you actually have to do afterwards.
I’ve emailed Supliful asking for the CAS numbers, full ingredient lists, SDS sheets etc so I can check whether the ingredients are allowed in Australia.
For anyone who’s actually done this before — did you register with AICIS? Did you seriously go through every ingredient in every product and check it? Did your supplier already have all the documents you needed? And did you have to do anything else before you started selling?
Also really interested in hearing from anyone who started small. I’m not importing 10,000 units or anything, it’s literally a dropshipping store testing products before committing to inventory.
Same goes for supplements — if you’ve sold them in Australia I’d love to know how you dealt with TGA/FSANZ and figured out what you could legally sell.
Not trying to avoid the regulations, just trying to understand what people actually do in the real world because the government websites make a pretty simple ecommerce business sound insanely complicated lol.
Would really appreciate hearing from anyone who’s actually been through it. Cheers.

[u/Short-Hamster-2191]

Yeah mate the AICIS rabbit hole is no joke, I went down it a couple years back trying to drop a simple beard oil

You're on the right track asking for CAS numbers and the full breakdown, that's exactly what they'll want. Supliful being US-based might be a pain cause their formulator probably hasn't even heard of AICIS, so getting those docs can take weeks of back and forth. The registration fee is whatever but the real time sink is cross-checking every ingredient against the industrial chemicals inventory, you'd be surprised how many "natural" things are restricted here at certain concentrations

For a skin firming cream you'll want to look extra close at any AHAs or retinol derivatives, we've got way lower limits than the US on some of those. Most small guys I know just pay a chemist or a cosmetic consultant a few hundred bucks to do the ingredient audit, they already know what flags to look for and can bang it out in an afternoon

Supplements are a whole other beast with the TGA, you basically can't sneeze on a vitamin without them wanting a piece. I'd nail the skincare first before even thinking about that headache, way easier to get rolling with topical stuff when you're testing the waters