BusyBee

I can see a big trend toward flameless candles, and it is growing bigger every year. So, what kind of flameless candles are you into and make?

Yes, parent company of Lab & Co. has team of perfumer, designer & private labeling candle company, and they order their own blends to fragrance oil manufacturer. Are you a perfumer? You might want to check out https://shop.perfumersapprentice.com/ They might have concentrates that you are looking for. I am not an expert on FOs, so I might be wrong about this company.

Hi there neighbor! Lab & Co gets their oils from Premier Specialties, Inc. in NJ. website: https://www.premierfragrances.com/ They are strictly business to business operation. If AFI's minimum requirement is kind of out of your reach at current stage, then you should not be able to deal with these guys yet. There are several other companies like this at this level. *By the way, Lab & Co is related to Dayna Decker's Lumetique Candle. On top of these companies, there are chemical companies like "Spectrum Chemicals & Laboratory Products" in Gardena CA. website: https://www.spectrumchemical.com/OA_HTML/index.jsp?minisite=10020&respid=22372&language=US Hiring a perfumer and directly dealing with these chemical company should be our ultimate goal or above mentioned company. In my opinion, quality of oil is not the most important thing that we should be looking for. If you look at AFI's fos, try to look just rose fo that they offer. They offer 57 different kind of rose scents. And there are 100's or 1000's different rose fragrance oils in this world. It is our job to locate the right fo for each scent. The one that you love and the one that could be loved by your customers. There could be a chance that a great scent that works for you could be manufactured grade oil. You will never know.

You ended up getting the heavy duty work horse! So, are you ready to print $$$? I don't know why but every time I am doing my labels, I feel like I am printing money.😉 Good luck to you and have a wonderful upcoming holiday!

Wow! That sounds like a real bargain on excellent quality printer. I would go for that one without question for that price. I also use Canon black & white imageCLASS D420 for other printing, and it hasn't gave me any problem for long time. *In order to reduce label paper jam problem in laser jet printers, try to fill the paper tray to 50% to 80% of its capacity. With regular paper, you can fill the tray in any level.

Per ASTM standards container temperature should not exceed 170F. That seems little bit too high for my comfort range. So, let's talk about coffee in order to have an idea of "how hot is too hot?". Coffee is usually served in temperature between 150F and 175F, and many people would prefer near 175F coffee. When they do Coffee tasting, they would prefer at 130F, and this is where I find my comfort range 130F maybe up to 140F for the candle. The lower the better! Yes. There are many people who might burn their candle way beyond 6 hours at a time. If anyone can come up with warm burning container candle for this kind of long burning time, then it would be special. However, we all should be good as long as we can keep its temperature below 170F for more than 6 hours burn even up to 12 hours burn. As long as we keep that temperature below 170F after so many hours, no one should blame us.

Happy Thanksgiving! I use heavy duty business type printer, Samsung CLX-6260FD, due to amount of labels I need to print, but I find that print quality of $150 printer up to $4,000 printer is very similar. Print quality will be more depends on the quality of label paper than the printer that you are using. Best printer in most economical price range would be Brother printers. If you go up one more level, then look into Canon printers. You will need to pay more attention to cost of replacement cartridges, because it is very costly. The other thing not so good about color laser printer is that the thick label paper gets jammed so many times. I also use heavy duty inkjet by Epson WorkForce WF-7110, and I don't have paper jam problem with this one. If you laminate your label, than quality of both of laser & inkjet labels will be similar. So, you might want to consider inkjet also. But for inkjet printer, you will need to look for in range at least above $200 for the professional quality print. And, something like Epson ECO Tank series will save you a lot of money on ink cost, even though it is little bit more costly. The other way to save tons of money on inkjet cartridge is to connect after market ink tank kit, but it is not going to be easy to connect this system to printer. It can be done, just not so easy. Happy Black Friday shopping!

I order wooden wicks from them, and I usually get my shipment in 5 business days. And, their wick clips are a lot better in quality than what I got from Northwood. I know it is kind of weird not having a business phone for a company that size. But, so far they did fine with my orders.

I use wooden wick on my 100% soy wax with excellent result. After I saw your post I tried wooden wick on paraffin wax candle just out of my curiosity, and it did exactly what you have described. Huge dancing flame producing a lot of soot. I tried booster wooden wicks only(but both thick and thin). I even trimmed the wick down to half of soy candle, and the flame was still 3 times bigger than soy candle. Wooden wick is very important wick for me, and I am a huge fan. Because without wooden wick, I would not have my candle business. But, maybe it might not be for paraffin candle??? I am not an expert on paraffin wax, so I could be totally wrong. Because name brand candle with best burning characteristic that I know happens to be paraffin wax candle with wooden wick. It is WoodWick candle with PlusWick. Their first wooden wick candles were crap, but now they make the best one. Sorry, without being help to you, I might have gave you more confusion with my information.

HI! If you want STRONG HT with ease of wicking, then stick with straight paraffin. Many likes this kind of HT, but I found that they are more value sensitive shoppers. If you want VERY PLEASANT HT with almost impossible to wick, then it is straight soy. There are many who prefer this kind of HT also, and these are people willing to open up their wallets. I suggest anyone to stay away from parasoy, and the reason is this. Paraffin & soy each wax has pro's and con's. By blending two waxes together, you are not only improving con's of each wax, but you are also reducing pro's of each wax. This translates into inferior result vs straight paraffin or soy. You still can make decent candle out of parasoy, but it is not going to be stand out candle from the crowd. Paraffin wax has been around for 190 years. It is highly developed wax that I don't think there are going to be any more room to improve on its quality. It is easy to wick, because everyone in the industry knows characteristics of paraffin, and most wicks are designed and work well for paraffin waxes. On the other hand, soy wax only has been on the market for 20 years or so, and it's still in development stage where it needs to go another 30 to 50 years to be fully developed. I believe the wick manufacturers haven't got up to par with soy waxes wicking yet. None of them work properly. All they know right now is that it requires bigger wick than paraffin, but still no good result. I see some for soy waxes, but it gets too hot. I was more of paraffin fan before I started candle making, and I have tried many different type of waxes available locally. I live in Los Angeles CA, so we have almost everything locally over here. But, I end up choosing GB 464 as my only product. The reason is "very pleasant HT". The scent is not strong and it does not hit your face, but everyone knows it's there. Warning! It is not going to be easy wicking this soy. You have to do it unconventional way and need to be creative. If you want to know how I wicked my GB 464, then I will be glad to share it with you. This is only my opinion, I am pretty sure there are more experienced chandlers here that will give you more and better information.

I don't know what to say about this one. It will make your day! https://www.illuminidol.com/

I thought this might interest someone. Check out their wax and special WICK. I guess there are many different ways to wick vegetable waxes, and we only have very limited kind that does not work so well.

Hi there! In order to be profitable candle business and keep grow, your total material cost should not exceed 25% of your retail price. Ideal range would be to keep material cost at about 20%, but this is very hard to do when you are just starting out and not buying in bulk. When I say material cost, that should not include any labor, rent, electricity, gas, business license fee, insurance, etc. You will need to set your retail price at minimum of 4 times (or 5 times is better) of your material cost as a small tiny operation. For people with physical store front, they will have to charge 6 to 8 times of their material cost. When you calculate the material costs, you will need to figure out at at least minimum of 1 box of containers, 1 lb of fragrance oil, 100 pack wick, 50 lb box of wax, shipping charge, etc. *Big guys operate at 12 to 18 times of their material costs. First thing you would need to do is marketing research and come up with your own marketing plan which will give you idea of your retail price. Then, you will have idea about how much you could spend on materials and start shopping for best price & quality suppliers.

Hi there from Canada! 1. I am the one who is using 464 for candle, and it is excellent wax that I don't bother to look for anything else. 2. In my opinion, wicking is about 90% of candle making. If you can get the right wick into a candle, then most of problems you hear gets solved. You have to use WAXED cotton wicks for any kind of candle. For soy wax, try to choose from the ones designed for soy waxes(ECO is my choice among cotton wicks, but there are others that other candle makers had success.). Wooden wicks with "booster" are the ones that will work well with soy wax. Combination of wooden tube wick with cotton wick work well also. Once again, wicking is almost everything in good candle making. Finding the right wick is time consuming process that it could take months & months to years. 3. If I am correct, I believe there are only 8 essential oils out of thousands that can be used in candle making. You will need to choose from fragrance oils made for candle making, and on top of that make sure they are made for use with soy wax. Even if we were able to use essential oils in candles, it would be too cost prohibited. It takes 60,000 roses to produce 1 oz of rose essential oil. Don't even waste your time looking at their pricing. 4. Wax coming away from glass(Wet Spot) is something even big candle companies haven't figure it out. It is just nature of wax. There is nothing that can be done at this moment. Frosting: This is another nature of soy wax, and frosting is caused by expose to lights. You can reduce frosting by using amber glass or ceramic container or tins. With 464 wax, you can have beautiful top appearance by pouring at temperature between 130 - 140. But, think about doing 2nd pour with 2mm thickness. This will give you mirror like finish 100% of time. 5. If you can get the right wicking, then all the problems will be solved. Soy wax need fire power, but make sure you keep the temperature down so you can keep the container at safe temperature. This is very critical part that you or any candle maker would need to figure out. Your plan to use 415 or 464 in little Mason jar! This is not a good idea. Soy need fire power to burn right and that container is going to be too small to keep it cool for that fire power. I only can wick 464 right among container that has minimum of 3.5" and up diameter. You are up there in cold weather, and I am down here in Southern California. You might have to experiment with your own pouring temperature depending on your room temperature condition. Yes! There are so many things that needs to be put into consideration. Good luck with your candle making journey!

I am on west coast, so I am not familiar with any of suppliers in Florida region except for wicks. We have many chandlers in this forum, who are in Florida, so they might be able to share good suppliers in your area. Or you can check out the "Suppliers by State" in this website like kandlekrazy had suggested. For Fragrance Oils, you might want to consider looking at AFI [Aromatic Fragrances International] in Cartersville, GA https://afi-usa.com/fragrances/ Bulk Apothecary in Streetsboro, OH https://www.bulkapothecary.com/ I haven't deal with them yet, but I find that they have a good pricing on bulk orders.