MilosCandles

The selves worked out great. Still need to make a few tweaks to the overall setup. But for the most part I was pretty happy!

You can always do stuff under the table and off the books... But the liabilities between the law, lawsuits, insurance are usually not worth it. I am sure half the people at some of the craft shows I do are NOT registered as a business, do NOT pay sales tax , and have no insurance. As far as a fundraiser it is really no different that selling wholesale to a gift shop and them re-selling it.

I had the same attitude when I 1st started. You are willing to sacrifice your time to just make a sale. I tried to cater to 100% of the people. Pick Ups, drop offs, custom items. I look at my time MUCH differently now. I no longer can cater to 100% of the people. A $15 candle sale is not worth 2 hours of my time. It is not worth 1 hour of my time. Every now and then I make an exception and I find that it just bites me in the ass. Basically what I am saying is be sure to value your time and do not sell yourself short. Time IS money. Time spent working is time away from family and friends.

I hate that if a customer enters the wrong address in and they message you after the sale you have no way to update the order. ETSY suggests canceling the order and having them re-order or manually changing it when you go to ship it. 90% of the time I remember and do it. But what a pain when I forget. Done venting.

This is forever the question. Sounds like you need to make a few more of them to see how long it takes you. You may need to keep the 2 ideas separate rather than trying to combine them.

I just got a spam email from these people https://www.plusprinters.com/

Here is an old topic that discussed this

I looked into it some but ended up finding inexpensive boxes and using a larger rubber stamp on them.

Yes everything comes apart for easy setup and transport. I did a dry run this weekend, I need to make a few tweaks but overall was pretty happy. We will see what I think at 6am and I am really setting up. LOL I use https://www.soapguildinsurance.com/ for my insurance. It is not easy to find "candle" insurance, and it is not cheap compared to almost any other vendor at a craft show.

When I first started I made some shelves. They were good but did not hold enough product. Then I when with the wire grid. These were awesome held a ton a product and worked great BUT they are super heavy and took forever to setup. (Pic Below) Next weekend I have an outdoor show that is Sat and Sun BUT you need to tear down each night and setup the next day. I would never survive tearing down and setting up 2 days in a row with my current wire grid setup. It got me thinking how could I make my setup better.. Quicker to setup, lighter, and overall easier. This has been going through my head for months. Well I came up with a new design and built them the last few days. I made 3 of them that will fit on 6 ft Tables. One of those 3 can be made to fit on an 8ft table. So I have the ability to do a few different size setups. No tools required. This weekend they will be sanded and stained and a coat of poly. I am so excited to try. Ordered some new Vinyl signs to accommodate the new setup. I am still going to use some wire grids to face outward but far less than before.

I did a search on here already and I see that 3 packages were suggested https://www.soapmaker.ca/ https://craftybase.com/ https://quickbooks.intuit.com/ Having an Etsy Store, Amazon, Woo-commerce, Craft Shows and Wholesale accounts the spreadsheet keeps getting larger and more tabs added to it. I think it is time to upgrade. SIGH. I am NOT looking for inventory tracking, rather just number crunching and reporting When I opened CraftyBase I was excited to see all my avenues covered, but was disappointed with when I saw it was $25 a month. But then I ask myself. Will this save me 2 hours a month? Also when I clicked on "Intregrations" Amazon disappeared from the list. Hmmmmm Quickbooks is so well known, and through etsy you can get it for $5 a month for the 1st year and then $10 a month after that. I do not think soapmaker will work for me. Does anyone have any input on any of these. Anyone do integrations? Any other suggestions?

@PaintguruYes I have and I try to just use smaller labels on those. I still have a bunch of the 1" ones from CS and NG I am using for those and smaller containers.

The labels look so much better than the standard ones I was using. So happy with this.

Is anyone else doing Amazon Handmade. Has anyone tried using coupons or a promotion? I thought about creating a coupon for Amazon and then I saw this "Redemption fees ($0.60 for each redemption)" Really? So a $15 candle I am already getting charged 15% for each sale, and if I use coupons it is another $.60 charge, another 4%? UGH Does anyone do the FBA? Any good site that explains the charges with that? Like if I send Amazon a few of my most popular candles what the fees for warehousing and shipping them would be? I also saw this statement... While the Professional Selling plan costs $39.99 per month for an Amazon Seller, this monthly fee is waived for Handmade Artisans until 12/31/2019 I wonder if that will be extended. You can bet if I have to pay the $40 a month for the professional seller account I will take full advantage of it and not just sell handmade items on it.

Depending on how many you have and how much work it is. When I changed I did it slowly moving to the new label. At some point when it seemed like not too much work, I used a heat gun to help remove the old labels and then put on the new ones.

Photos of where it was delivered is the new thing. Just means it was there for that 1 second though. LOL

Can do something like this with a lid https://www.partycity.com/big-party-pack-clear-plastic-portion-cups-200ct-791089.html

The ribbon I do not think has changed at all. It is still the same stuff from years ago. Primera is working great. I haven't used it as much as I have wanted to yet, but hopefully start picking up some. I have been so busy doing other stuff I have finsihed designing a new label that I am happy with to put on my new glass jars.

So I wanted to make custom warning labels for my candles. Put my name and logo and website on them. I looked into custom labels but they were just so much more expensive and how many do I order. 100, 1000, 10,000? I did not want to use a inkjet or laser printer as those labels can smudge some or run. Many years ago I did some IT work for a guy that some coffee to gift shops. His ploy was single pot custom labeled packets. So the store could have their own "brand" and various flavors. To label the coffee packets he used a Zebra Thermal printer with these ribbons. These Zebra printers are NOT heat transfer ones that need special labels. I did a little searching on ebay and found an old Zebra Z6mplus for $180 shipped. Now this printer has not been made in 11 years. But it was worth the gamble. I got the printer and then came time to hook it up. Well none of my computers have a parallel port. So I found they sold a network adapter for it. $25 I spent on that. I download the FREE version or Seagull Bartender software they have now, drivers Seagull has for the printer. I had some old 2" round labels on a spool laying around and after few hours I was printing custom warning labels, and almost the same price I was buying preprinted ones. The $200 I invested will pay off in no time. And the fact that I have some old 2" labels that would of never been used is even better. The only thing is I wish I purchased the 300 dpi model rather than the 203dpi version. Printing on a small 2" label would of made a difference for sure. I think I can replace the print head in this with the 300 dpi version but I need to do more research.

This is one of my stupid secrets about etsy. Last year I raised my prices a little higher than I wanted to. BUT then etsy lets you run a sale anytime you want at no charge. So I was always running a 10% off sale. When your item shows up in the search results it crosses out the normal price and shows a sale price. SHHHH do not tell too many people.

I just take an average per ounce which is factored in to my spreadsheet. I try an wait as long as I can and order a large quantity at a time to keep shipping cost as low as possible.

Yes worked out for amazon, and the convenience to the customer, BUT I charge up to 20% more on Amazon than I do on my website and I know that is true for many others as well. The average consumer just doesn't realize.

When I first started I would do almost anything to make a sale. Pickup's or Drop Offs were things I would say SURE to. Last fall I did not do that anymore. Was too busy and I know people wanted to save $8 for shipping but I just got tired coordinating a meeting time. I would suggest going to one of the gift shops that carried my candles. Well I made the mistake of saying SURE Saturday night. Someone asked for 4 custom candles Saturday night and asked of they could grab them Sunday morning (Easter). Sure..... So I whipped them up Saturday night, messaged them Sunday and no response. No sorry I will not be able to make it, Sorry plans changed. Nothing. Just a gentle reminder to myself to stop catering to everyone. Order on my website, pay for shipping, and then they will show up to your door. Yes $8 does seem like a lot of money that YOU can save, but you get to custom order your candle and have it show up at your door and NO inconvenience to me.

Amazon Prime (Free 2 day Shipping) has ruined shipping for everyone.

I know what you mean. The pretty artistic stuff I totally struggle with. I struggle drawing stick figures. And for me I know this and it makes it worse. I firmly believe you can not "learn" artistic.