Walt, a profile tool is commonly made out of hss, leave the top flat and grind into it, with some front clearance, the profile. The grind in part is quicker said than done, but its not hard. rough grind on the bench grinder then finish off and fine tune with a Foredom tool or die grinder. The challenge with them is that the depth of cut (length of the edge of the form tool) quickly becomes too large for a small lathe unless the form is quite small.
putting on a business hat instead of an amateur engineer's for a moment here's an alternate suggestion....
once you're past a few prototypes, with that potential quantity, consider outsourcing the turning. You can't compete for throughput and efficiency against someone with a 100k bar fed cnc lathe. Well, you can, but you have value your time at next to nothing....and our time is finite. Since compared to the job shop you are the poor cousin in terms of efficiency, you can't claim turning is a core competency. What then is the core competency? the idea and product itself, design, sales, marketing etc. These then are the activities where you should concentrate the finite amount of time you have....where you will maximize your returns. btw, the job shop suffers through life with low margins - the service is a bit of commodity. Given their small margins, there's not a strong economic argument to bring the work in house.
the other argument might be "but I like working in the shop and want to make them myself" ....not after the first 1000