From file to storefront.
Launch Roadmap · v1.0 · May 2026
Build the entire site this week on staging. Hosting, theme, products, vial photography, and compliance pages need zero LLC paperwork. The moment your formation docs land, you spend day 11 on the EIN, days 12–14 on the business bank account, and days 14–60 on the high-risk merchant account underwriting. Crypto checkout goes live on day 1 as a bridge. Soft-launch by week 6, public by week 10.
Everything in this phase can start today. None of it requires the LLC filing to clear. By the time your formation docs arrive, the storefront should already be sitting on staging waiting for the EIN.
You already own phormlabs.com on Cloudflare. Don't move it. Add an A record to a placeholder host now (or proxy to a "coming soon" page) so the domain looks alive. Also grab phormpeptides.com and phormscience.com for redirect catchment if they're still available.
Cloudflare WAF: enable "Bot Fight Mode" and a basic geo-block ruleset (blocked: NK, IR, RU, BY, CU, SY) before you ever go live.
Recommended: Kinsta on the High-Risk addon, WP Engine, or Liquid Web Managed WordPress. They don't blacklist the research-peptide category. Avoid GoDaddy and Bluehost — they'll boot you within a week of going live.
Provision a staging environment at something like staging.phormlabs.com behind Cloudflare Access (password-gated) so you can build in public without exposing it.
Core: WordPress, WooCommerce, Astra Pro or Kadence theme as the base. Plugins: WPCode (snippet manager), WP Rocket (caching), RankMath (SEO), WooCommerce Subscriptions (for repeat-research-orders), Cloudflare for WordPress, WPForms (for the wholesale-account application form).
Skip Yoast — RankMath handles compliance-sensitive meta better. Skip Elementor — Astra Pro's block builder is faster for what you need.
Use phorm-site-mockup.html as the visual reference. Build a child theme for Astra. Port the hero, trust strip, featured grid, category cards, spotlight, and footer. The vial SVGs go into /wp-content/uploads/vials/ and embed inline via a custom block.
Compliance bar, age-gate modal, and the "research only" footer stay exactly as-mocked — they're processor-required, not stylistic.
Convert peptide-product-catalog.xlsx into Woo's CSV import format. 42 SKUs in the launch catalog (or 94 once you add the rest of the Reta/Triz/Sema doses, blends, and HGH lineup).
Pricing pulls from phorm-pricing-recommendation.xlsx — single retail in column I, 10-pack via a Woo bundle plugin (WooCommerce Product Bundles or Min/Max Quantities).
Create an R2 bucket called phorm-coa. Upload PDFs as /coa/PH-RET10-001.pdf matching your lot-number convention. Generate signed URLs (1-year expiry) and link them per product variation in WooCommerce so only logged-in researchers can pull a COA.
R2 is roughly $0.015/GB/month with zero egress fees — way cheaper than S3 for a COA library. Cloudflare Workers can sign URLs on the fly.
Required before any processor will underwrite you: Privacy Policy, Terms of Use, Refund & Return Policy, Shipping Policy, Research-Use Affirmation (typed-name acknowledgment at checkout), Researcher Account Application, Compliance / FDA Statement.
Pull the boilerplate from a research-peptide compliance attorney (~$1.5k flat fee) or use Termly's high-risk template ($199/yr) and have it reviewed for $400.
File "PHORM" and "PHORM LABS" in International Class 5 (pharmaceuticals/research chemicals). TEAS Plus is $250 per class per mark. File now under your personal name as applicant; assign to the LLC the moment formation docs arrive (a single recordation form).
Your launch is the priority date, so filing this week vs. next month materially improves your defensive position. Other "Phorm" marks exist in unrelated classes (sports/talent), but Class 5 looked clear when we checked earlier.
You already have the print pack (phorm-print-pack.zip) ready. Send the Reta 10mg PRINT.pdf to OnlineLabels, Lightning Labels, or StickerYou. Order 250–500 of each launch SKU on BOPP white-face with permanent acrylic adhesive. Do NOT order matte gold-foil yet — wait until the brand is wireframe-tested.
I can build the remaining label PDFs (Triz 10mg, Sema 5mg, BPC 10mg, NAD+ 500mg, GHK 100mg, Tesa 5mg, Ipa 5mg) the same way I built Reta. Send the word.
BTCPay Server (self-hosted, 0% fee, BTC + LN + altcoins) or NowPayments (1% fee, easier setup). Both work without LLC underwriting. This is what carries the store from soft-launch through merchant-account approval.
Approximate conversion drag vs. card: 35–50%. Real cost of waiting on the merchant account, but you can ship orders day one.
Google Workspace at $7/user/mo for contact@phormlabs.com, support@phormlabs.com, compliance@phormlabs.com. You can sign up under your personal name today and transfer billing to the LLC on day 11.
Do NOT use Gmail aliases or Cloudflare Email Routing for outbound — processors check SPF/DKIM/DMARC and will downgrade your underwriting if those aren't on a real domain.
Same-day actions the moment the Pennsylvania Certificate of Organization arrives. Each one unlocks the next; do them in this order.
Go to irs.gov → "Apply for an Employer Identification Number Online." Free, takes 15 minutes, you get the EIN immediately at the end of the form. PHORM Labs LLC needs this before any bank or processor will talk to you.
Bring: PA Certificate of Organization, EIN letter, your driver's license, and an Operating Agreement (download a free template, sign, print). Mercury or Relay for online-first; Chase Business Complete if you want a brick-and-mortar branch.
Avoid Bank of America for this category — they've closed peptide-business accounts mid-year before. Mercury is the cleanest path for high-risk e-commerce.
Pennsylvania REV-1220. You need this to buy from your supplier (BPC, Reta, etc.) without paying sales tax on inventory you'll resell. Free, instant, you upload it to your supplier's portal and your COGS drops 6%.
Easy Pay Direct, PaymentCloud, Durango Merchant Services, or Soar Payments — apply to two in parallel. Underwriting takes 4–8 weeks. They'll want: EIN, formation docs, voided check, last 3 months of personal bank statements (since the business has none), website URL with all compliance pages live, and a written explanation of the research-only business model.
Expected terms: 4.5–6.5% effective rate, 5–10% rolling reserve held 180 days, $0.30/transaction, monthly fees $50–100. The reserve is the killer — model your cash flow assuming you don't see 5% of revenue for the first 6 months.
Switch the Google Workspace billing profile to the LLC EIN and bank account. Add orders@, compliance@, wholesale@ as aliases. Set up DKIM, SPF, and DMARC records in Cloudflare DNS — processors verify these.
USPTO TEAS form: Recordation of Assignment. $40 filing fee. This converts your personal-name trademark filing into a Phorm Labs LLC asset. Do this once, sleep better forever.
Site is built, products are loaded, crypto checkout works. You haven't told the world yet. This phase is about pressure-testing the funnel with a small audience before you flip the switch.
Cut the Cloudflare Access password gate. Move phormlabs.com apex from the placeholder to the WP origin. Verify SSL/TLS Strict mode, HSTS preload, and that the age gate fires on first visit.
Run a real BTC purchase through. Place a test 10-pack order. Verify COA download for a logged-in researcher account. Confirm the age gate persists across sessions. Validate that all 7 compliance pages are linked from the footer and from the checkout footer specifically. Validate prohibited-words filter catches "weight loss," "muscle," "anti-aging" in product copy and review submissions.
For every launch SKU, upload the actual third-party COA PDF to R2 with the correct lot-number filename. The COA is the most-asked-for document in this category — having a real one click-to-view is the single biggest trust signal you can ship.
Send 50–100 invite codes to research-friendly contacts: people who'd buy a $100 vial of Reta and tell you what felt off. Track conversion, abandonment points, and which products got asked about that you don't carry. Three weeks of beta data is worth more than the next year of guessing.
Hire a compliance reviewer (Termly's high-risk service or a research-peptide attorney) for a one-pass audit. They'll catch the prohibited-word your copywriter snuck back in, the missing arbitration clause in your Terms, and the Privacy Policy page that doesn't reference your CCPA/GDPR position. Cheap insurance.
Merchant account approved, beta closed clean, COA library populated. The site is ready to take real volume.
Run them in parallel for a month. Crypto stays as a 10–15% bypass for privacy-minded buyers. Card becomes the default at checkout. Watch the chargeback rate like a hawk for the first 90 days — high-risk processors will close the account at 1.5%.
You can't run Google Ads or Meta ads in this category. Search has to come from organic. Plan one long-form research piece per week: "What is Retatrutide?", "GLP-1 receptor agonist research overview," etc. Compliance-safe wording, citation-heavy, never make a health claim.
Hire one strong research-peptide writer (Upwork has them at $100–250 per article) and target 12 articles in 90 days.
WooCommerce Subscriptions handles auto-recurring 10-packs at the bundle price minus another 10%. Subscribers churn at maybe 30% MoM in this category but the LTV is 6–8x compared to one-time buyers. Worth the build cost.
Apply form on the site (already mocked). Verified researchers get tier pricing — typically 30% off retail with a $1,500 minimum order. This is where the real volume comes from once you're past month 6. Ship under the LLC's bulk shipping account (UPS or FedEx commercial).
| Line item | Setup | Monthly | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hosting (Kinsta High-Risk or similar) | $0 | $70–$100 | Annual plan saves ~10% |
| WooCommerce + plugin stack | $300 | $0 | Annual licenses |
| Theme (Astra Pro / Kadence) | $60 | $0 | Annual |
| Cloudflare R2 (COA storage) | $0 | $5 | Free egress is the magic |
| Google Workspace (3 mailboxes) | $0 | $21 | Per-user $7 |
| Compliance pages (Termly + review) | $600 | $0 | Or $1.5k attorney flat |
| USPTO trademark filing | $500 | $0 | Two marks, Class 5 |
| First label print run | $400 | $0 | ~250–500 of each SKU |
| Initial inventory (10-pack of 8 SKUs) | $1,200 | — | Lower tier supplier pricing |
| Cold-chain shipping supplies | $300 | $50 | Insulated mailers + ice packs |
| BTCPay Server / NowPayments | $0 | $0 | ~1% per transaction only |
| Site build (DIY) or freelance | $0–$3,000 | $0 | DIY achievable in 5 days |
| To go live (DIY) | ~$3,400 | ~$150 | Pre-merchant account |
| To go live (with freelance build) | ~$6,400 | ~$150 | Same monthly |
Once the merchant account is approved, add ~5.5% of revenue + 5% rolling reserve. With your 88% blended gross margin, that still leaves a healthy net even after processor, shipping, and chargeback overhead.
The dependency chain matters. Don't burn time on items downstream of a blocker.
Cannot start any of these until the PA Certificate of Organization is in hand. Day 11 starts the clock.
Processors will not even take the application until they can fetch your Privacy/Terms/Refund/Research pages from a working domain. Build first, apply second.
Zero LLC dependency. Every day spent on this before the EIN arrives is a day shaved off the launch timeline.
File trademark under your name and assign later. Build COA infrastructure now and seed once labs deliver. Print labels and stack inventory while you wait on the bank.
Hosting provisioned. WordPress + Woo installed. Google Workspace signed up. USPTO trademark filed under personal name. Domain email live. Crypto checkout sandboxed.
Theme migrated, products imported, vials embedded, compliance pages drafted. Staging site password-gated. Label print run sent to printer.
Compliance audit complete. COA pipeline live (R2 bucket + signed URLs). Site is functionally complete on staging.
EIN, bank account, resale cert, merchant account application — all four submitted before lunch. Trademark assignment recorded.
Production cutover. 50 invite codes go out. First real BTC orders ship. COA downloads working. Smoke tests complete.
Merchant account likely approved. Card checkout enabled. First SEO content published. Subscription program live.
Wholesale researcher tier active. 12 SEO articles indexed. Reserve burn-down underway. Catalog expanded from 8 hero SKUs to the full 42-SKU launch list.