David Fields

Boy, do I agree about shipping charges. We just paid $600 for freight for two pallets of glassware. $600!!! Our wholesale and online customers scream about what we charge them, but we only charge what the shipper charges us; we eat the packaging materials cost. It has become such a PITA to find the best rate, then notify the customer, then box up the orders that we are going to a standard cart on our website, when it is redesigned. And that is a nightmare with multiple products of varying weights. We are trying to set the cart up so that it does not cost us much or anything, but so far,,I don't know. We have tried bumping our prices up to cover shipping and then offering "free shipping", but customers say we are too high, and it hurts sales. Go figure. A $12 item with $3 shipping sells great, but a $15 item with free shipping does not. Ah well......

The real reason is to keep the temperature below the flash point of the wax. Water boils at 210 degrees. You can melt the wax in a pot directly on the heat source, but fire is a very real danger. No matter how careful you are. Want to risk it?

I have been debating with myself about posting to this one. So, here goes and not sure if I should. Our clamshells cost us .50 to make. We sell them for $2 wholesale and $2.95 retail, and sell around 25-30K of them a year. The cost is based on someone else pouring them. And our melts are great. We have many, many Scentsy dealers and distributors who buy from us. Puma is right. Don't cheapen your product. We work hard at keeping our costs low and making a product that is as good as or better than everyone else's. Our cost per unit has come down as our volume sold went up due to being able to get better prices for volume buying. We buy 20K clamshells at a time. We don't offer free shipping. Don't have to....yet. So, the person selling at $2.91 with free shipping could be making good money. Just saying. Everyone starts small and grows as their time, money, interest, ingenuity, and motivation allows. Don't despair; just keep on, keeping on.

Uh.... Whoops. My wife has always said I have a mouth problem. By flighty I mean you(corporate you) act like the under 40 crowd. Clueless. Oh darn, there went my mouth again. lol Seriously, I have found that the over 50 crowd are much more dependable and no longer even own the "It's all about ME" t-shirt. When we hire, we do not hire anyone under 30 and try not to hire the 30-40 group. No work ethic.

Oh, and another thought. We also look carefully at you youngsters under 60. Afraid some of you might be flighty.

We have found over the years that you have to be light on your feet and not have a "if we pour it, they will come" mentality. Every year is different as to customers' needs/wants, and we have to change also. We have never had a year in the eighteen we have been in business that was below the previous years, or even close. But, we are blessed and live in Texas (another blessing). We also pick up ideas that are trending up or down at Dallas Market twice a year. That lets us know the direction we should be going. Never tried soaps. Candles still sell very good for us. Especially to our wholesale customers. My wife and I, BTW, are 66 and 68 respectively and have been doing this full-time since 2001. Also, we prefer older workers. I just hired a 70 year old who is great. Just thought that I would throw in another view and am very sorry so many are having troubles.

We have used Panic Plastics and found them to be worth the money. A few issues with clams stuck together and leakage, but overall their clams are OK. We have since switched to Maryland Thermoform. They are a manufacturer with great products and prices and a great assortment of clams. We use them almost exclusively.

We ship daily. Post Office and UPS, sometimes freight. We never use flat rate boxes, For local zones that the PO will deliver to in one day, we ship PO; we also use the PO for small pkgs under 13 oz. We use Priority Mail and First Class with tracking for all USPS pkgs. Everything else we ship UPS, which has tracking. We are not too concerned with cost of shipping because the customer pays for it. W have had a few people try to scam us, but the tracking stopped it. You would not believe how we wrap glass to ship; only had a couple pieces broken in-transit in years. Our policy, unless it is a wholesale customer, is to apologize, ship a replacement and never take another order from that person.

We sell wholesale and retail. We offer 12 ounce status and 22 ounce cube jars. Our wholesale customers start with both sizes but usually switch to the 22 ounce by the second or third order. Retail, it depends. Customers who have not tried us before buy the 12 ounce. Most of our regular customers, including mail-order buy the 22 ounce. So, I believe that if the products are an unknown, customers go with a smaller jar (less risk if it's a poor candle). Customers who are satisfied with the product buy larger versions. This especially seems to work if the candle is a gift. I haven't noticed that "classy" jars necessarily sell better just because they are "classy". To me, from my experience, a nice jar and label validates the candle. For me it is a good thing when someone comes into our store and asks if we are a franchise or where to find the franchise stores in their home city.

Oh, another thought. We avoid warmers with decoration in the middle of the bowl. Makes getting the wax out a pain. Bulbs are a big thing. We carry two different warmers. One has the Scentsy type bulbs; the other has the halogen bulbs. Replacement bulbs available to customers are a must and a good selling point for us. The halogen bulb warmer sells much better, and the customer can get the bulbs at lots of places, but they get the wrong wattage lots of times and blame the warmer or melts for poor performance. Our sales people go over tips, do's and don't's with the customers to make their experience as pleasant as possible.

For us: 1. Parasoy pillar blend 2. Depends on the FO. From 14% to 25%. (I know it's high, but that's what we and our customers like) 3. We don't have personal preferences on this one. We go with what our customers like which is the bulb warmers. 4. We have a very detailed testing procedure. Two cubes from a six cavity clamshell burned two hours in the morning and three hours in the evening will have a great throw for two-three days, a good throw for another 1-2 days, and an OK throw for 2 days. Depends on the scent and the mfg. Especially the mfg. We have found many mfg's and distributors who vary their formula to cut costs or dilute the oil, again to cut costs. Some have admitted it to us; most just say "Hmmmm. We'll look into it and get back to you".So, two cakes will reasonably last a week.

We have over 200 wholesale accounts. Our opening minimum is $400 with $100 reorders. Started out with $100 opening then $200. $400 is just right. Totally agree with Barncat about costs for small orders. Plus, small accounts are a pain to deal with. Some items we sell only in case lots, most are individual.

Our business plan when we started 16 years ago was to sell as many candles as we could and not go too deeply in debt or at all. Actually never heard of the term back then. We started with $400 in supplies, went back for another $500 worth three months later, started selling after six months (we were not ready and neither were our products), made $260 profit our first craft show and saw stars. lol. All revenue from our fledgling business was plowed back into it. We looked for every opportunity to sell wherever we could. Revenue went up and so did expenses. After 4 years we opened a strip-center store and had to get insurance (required). What really helped us was my wife and I retiring in 2001; we devoted all of our time then to our business (still do). It is darn near impossible to make much selling scented products when you have full-time jobs and no capital to draw on.HTH

I guess it depends on the state you are in. In Texas (a business friendly state) I only remember one craft show we did that required a general liability policy. It is smart to have at least minimal insurance, but necessary? No. Think about it. In our sue-happy, liberal country people sue to get money from real or imagined injuries. My attorney told me that insurance actually encourages lawsuits. Who are you going to sue? A normal person with few to no assets and no insurance or...a normal person with an insurance policy? Lawyers go on fishing expeditions to find out if you have assets their client can go after or an insurance policy that they can threaten with a big lawsuit and then get an out-of-court settlement. If they find you don't have deep pockets or insurance, they go back to their client and ask for a large retainer up-front. In my opinion, the odds of you getting sued are very slim and losing a court case almost non-existent. Assuming you have done your due-diligence and make good products. And as far as one of the above posts said about losing everything you have? Again it depends on the state; in Texas you can't lose much at all. In the liberal states...good luck. I wonder how many who subscribe to this bulletin board have ever gotten sued and the result. We know, after many years in the business, a large number of chandlers and know of no one who has had a suit brought against them. So, my advice to you would be not to worry about it until your sales reach a large enough level to justify insurance. HTH and don't listen to the doom-sayers who try to get you to imagine the worst possible scenario.

My two cents. First, product liability insurance is very, very expensive and very hard to get. A general liability policy is what we recommend. Much cheaper and covers everything except the actual product ingredients and how it burns. With or without insurance, product liability or general, you can always get sued by anyone over anything. This is America (tongue in cheek). Whether they can win is another matter. Can they prove your product was at fault or defective? Placing a lit candle under a roll of paper towels is not your fault. I would not worry much about it. A lawyer will not take a case unless you are heavily insured and there is a reasonable doubt that you are at fault; then they go for an out of court settlement with your insurance company; or, they take the case on a retainer (meaning they are getting their money up front and have little to no chance of winning the suit). We have been in business for sixteen years and sell lots of products and have never been sued. We have had customers who misused the product causing them damage and then they called us. I handle those calls. Basically, I tell them where they are at fault, that it is not our liability. Period.

We started with festivals then after a couple of years opened a brick and mortar store, had that one for five years. Still did festivals for cash flow. Never tried online until a year and a half back. Wish we had started earlier. It's going very well. We didn't start selling online because of the high web site cost. Found an alternative, inexpensive way to build a website. Anyway, ten years ago we closed the store and opened another one (learned a lot of expensive lessons with the first one). We still have the second one.

Vicky, we sell wholesale and retail and have for years. Wholesale makes up a third of our sales. We prefer wholesale, but it is too erratic. Feast or famine. Cash flow is erratic too. In retail sales are predictable, and cash flow is steady and regular. Wholesale is a little bit predictable; most of our mid to large customers order every two months and have for years. Small accounts are all over the board in their ordering. Interestingly, the after-costs profit margins work out to be about the same. Our costs are much lower with wholesale than they are with retail, but the margins are much slimmer too. In retail costs are very high, but so are our margins. The main reason we would prefer wholesale over retail is employees...they suck! We have a pretty good staff now but only after going through a bunch of losers. At our warehouses our employees are much better. So, for us, right now until the wholesale volume grows to match retail we will stick with both. Also, we have noticed that out of town customers buy our retail products, take them home, love them and we get wholesale accounts and mail orders because of it. Every single wholesale account we have is a result of this process. We make good stuff.

Interesting. We have used SKS for years and love them. However, we have been having the same problems as in all the above posts. No one answering the phone. Wrong items received. Slow shipments. After calling all of the numbers I got someone in accounting to answer the phone; he found a CSR to help me. The CSR said they were log`-jammed from the holiday (Memorial Day) and had lots of orders. So, hope whatever is wrong with them is fixed because we love them.

Wow. sorry this happened to you. We sell a lot on line and run into customers like this one and worse often. How we handle it...IF it is our fault we bend over backwards to make it right. It's our fault and not the customer's. IF it is the customer's fault or their perception, we say sorry you feel that way and hope you will try us again in the future. We do not get into a pissing contest with them. We explain our position and move on. We don't care if they bad-mouth us. Big deal. Our mail-order business is big and growing fast. You will always get overly picky customers and (the worst...someone trying to get something free). We try to be firm, fair and final. Not enough time in the day to spend pleasing customers. There are more waiting in the wings.

got it. Thanks, Vicky David

Our biggest challenge in our business right now is growth. We have been doing this a long time. We are both older and want to retire....again. Growth is great but needs to be greater in order for our daughter and her husband to take it over. They live in another town about an hours drive from us. We set them up in a whse/factory where they make candles and scented products and transport to our whse twice a week, but they need very reliable employees at the store and the whse who will take care of things here. Finding good employees is a challenge. We need more growth for the profit to hire someone at a really good salary here, so that our daughter won't have the problems she will have trying to manage a business from afar.

I would say that, no, it is not your fault, but yes, you do bear partial blame. We are in the process now of adopting two new jars. Our testing procedures are extensive. We have gone through something like thirty jars so far and more to come to get the candles to burn as we expect. Customers have different expectations; no candle can satisfy everyone. But, for us safety is a biggie. The candle in the picture was burned for a long time without wick trimming. The bottom inch or two or more was liquid too quickly. The large flames (due at least in part to not trimming the wicks) continued to heat the melted wax hotter and hotter. Probably fortunate that the customer stopped the process before the wax reached critical mass and caught on fire. I would say that you are fortunate that the picture is not of a scorched room or remains of a burnt-out house. Strongly suggest you expand your testing procedures. Please don't be angry with me. You asked, and it's just my opinion.

Boy!! Reading the posts brings my blood pressure up. Our experience: A while back we decided to get a website. We first checked into large website building firms. We wanted a very simple site with a cart. The cheapest quote we got was $4500; the highest was $12,000 and everything in between. Way too much for us. Then we looked at small firms with great looking web sites. Prices ranged from $3000 to $8000. We went with a $3000 quote and met with the lady. She was a stay-at-home mom. After an hour of answering her questions, we paid $1500 up front. She said the site would be complete in a month to six weeks depending on how many changes we made. We would get the preliminary design in two weeks. We were excited. SIX weeks later we had nothing. She would not return our calls or emails. Finally, I called from a different number pretending to be a new customer (she never answers, the phone, only calls back). She called back and I jumped on her. She said she was a stay-at-home mom and had had some family issues. I really went off on her. I told her I wanted the site up and running in two weeks or my money back, or I would turn her in to the BBB and would blog about our treatment to every site I could find. That day she refunded my money. Still didn't have a website. After research, I decided to build my own (we don't need an elaborate site and decided against a cart for many, many reasons). After a week and a half I had one built. It needs work but works. I get orders just about every day off of it. So, my advice to you is explore all options.

Just my 2 cents...I don't think it really matters. Long ago I hit the streets to drum up wholesale business. I offered options, pricing tiers and delivery incentives. Very few accounts. The fancy business cards, expensive labeling and packaging and an assortment of jars meant nothing. What I found was that we had no known presence. Retailers did not know us, our company or our products, and neither did their customers. The retailers did not know how long we had been pouring candles or how long we would continue to stay in business. We have now had a retail store for years and understand things a bit better from both points of view. It is very amusing to us to have retailers who turned us down cold years ago now contacting us to set up accounts. The difference now is that we have a good reputation. Our products sell themselves. Took years to get here though. HTH

I guess I must be dense this morning...Cold here in Texas. But, I don't understand the reason for the question. As a business, you are either making a profit, or not. We don't do craft shows...too much work for too little money. We mfg many different scented products that we sell mail order, wholesale and in our retail store. We have always kept up with unit costs and base our different pricing tiers on those costs. For completing the IRS schedule C form it is not necessary to breakdown things. Total sales + opening inventory - closing inventory - Cost of Goods sold - all other costs = gross profit before taxes. Please enlighten me, cause seems like a lot of extra work. ??