David Fields

We also used IGI 1343 for years and have switched to IGI 1274. If I remember correctly, 1343 was discontinued by IGI. Again, if memory serves, the 1274 wax is a mottling wax with a melt-point just a little lower than that of 1343. All other characteristics are about the same.

I completely agree with Old Glory. We pay no attention to the 2X, 3X "rule of thumb" We charge what we feel our customers will pay. We don't give discounts if someone asks for them. We give them our breakpoints for volume buying. And never on shipping. From our experience, once you start giving discounts or free shipping, you can't go back; the customer expects/demands it. You cheapen your products and reduce your profits. We have a store in a mall, and some stores have "sales" going on all the time. Shoppers do not look at non-sale items and only buy "sale" stuff, which forces merchants to raise regular prices and offer deeper discounts to attract business. Crazy. Just like auto mfgs. So, my advice is set a wholesale and retail price based on what you feel from previous sales and your experience that you can get, but with a good profit margin built it. Otherwise, what do you do when your costs rise? HTH

We have three 60 lb and three 50 lb direct heat melters that are never shut off.

How much we pour and what we pour depends. During the fall we average around 100 pounds/day with max of 300 lbs/day (just candles). But we also have to pour votives, pillars and melts. So, some days we don't pour but 30 or so pounds of candles but pour a 100 or so votives and a couple hundred melts in clamshells. It just depends on what wholesale/mailorders we get, what our inventory stock looks like and what we need for our store. There are five us who pour/create, and our warehouse is fairly large, so we can kick out a lot when needed. HTH

We carry around 100 FO's. Many are seasonal that we pour only during the season. But you have to bring in new scents to present to your customers; they get tired of the same scents. We "try" to remove one scent from our list for every one that we adopt to keep the list as small as possible. Scents that just don't move we pour into candles and clamshells and discount them to move them. We learned a long time ago after we trashed some FO's that had gone bad for sitting so long that it is not cost effective to carry too many scents. Our rule of thumb is (for 25 pound tubs) if we don't reorder within one year, we drop it. As far as profit, hard to say. IMO to make a decent profit you should always be trimming costs and finding ways to raise sales. Someone I respect once said that you never buy anything for your business if it is not going to make you money.

Totally agree. When someone orders a product online without smelling it first, then says they don't like it? Tough. No returns. That is our policy. Also, our policy is no returns on tarts. A couple of years ago someone brought back a couple of tarts and said they changed their mind on the scent. We exchanged them and later found that there was almost no scent left in the wax. She had melted them until the scent was gone, poured the wax back into the clamshell and brought it back.

To Justjasen: I have found that as we become more successful, the more guarded we are with information. Small businesses don't really have a lot to lose by sharing FO's and suppliers. We have a FO that we blend that is very popular; we produce over 1000 pounds a year of it. Businesses contact us often to get the FO's in it and the suppliers. If they knew the supplier, they could dupe the FO. (Gardenia is different with each supplier, for example, so you have to have the right mfg, then it is trial and error to dupe our best-selling scent). We have another product that we literally cannot produce fast enough. It is like hundreds of others that we see, but we developed a manufacturing technique that no one else has thought of that makes our product superior. Our process is a secret and will remain so. What I am trying to say at the risk of pissing you off, is do what works for you and mirrors your beliefs and values. Judging others for doing the same is hubris. Our business supports our family. "Loose lips sink ships". And btw, yes, if I had your supplier list and one of your products, I could easily dupe it. Done it before. When you have more experience in the craft and more years under your belt, I would love to talk to you. .

This thread is amusing. Got your attention? For those of us who make our living from our craft and have for years, some of you actually think we would be willing to share our suppliers list and/or formulas that we spent many years to perfect and many dollars spent to develop? Think again! People come into our store often and either straight up ask for information or try to sneak information from us; we laugh and tell them we don't give out that information. We have been doing this for eighteen years and make a damn good living from it. Remember the grasshopper and the ant fable from Aesop? We are ants. We never asked anyone for any list or recipe. We felt that we would learn our craft better by trial and error. You learn deeper techniques from doing, not asking.

We were members once, a long time ago before we got too busy. They are a great organization. We went to a seminar in CT or MA and learned a lot and met some great folk (that's Southern for nice people). We still talk about it and will probably rejoin one day. Well worth joining if you want to perfect your craft.

My advice would be to toss the batch or use it as firestarters. You always test new scents. Many scent mfg's and distributors design or weaken the scents to produce maximum profit. The longer you are pouring, the more often you run across this. The cold throw will be there to sell you and your customers the first time but the hot throw and lingering throw will not; this maximizes profit for them at your expense. Then you will think exactly what you are thinking "what did I do wrong". Some scents are light no matter what. But others are diluted or formulated to be weaker from the start to max profit. Again, text....test....test. I actually had a rep from a distributor tell me they cut some of their scents to reach their price point.

We ship melts/tarts almost daily. Do not put them in envelopes. Put them in small boxes surrounded by bubblewrap or peanuts. A box has less chance of being damaged than do envelopes (I know because I retired from the PO). Priority flat rate boxes are a rip unless the items in the box are heavy. Up to 13 ounces use First Class with tracking. Over 13 ounces use priority but not the flat rate. Figure it out both ways sometime and you will see why flat rate boxes are a rip unless the items are heavy or you just want to make it easy on yourself.

18 years here. and you are right about the high turnover. from what we see, the ones who love the craft or have profitable businesses stay; the ones who get in primarily to make money get discouraged early and move on to another unprofitable venture.

The longer you are in the business, the more you will find that you cannot please everyone and shouldn't even try. We listen to criticism (sometimes it is helpful), thank the person and move on. No account is worth what you are going through to keep it.

I think you are not using enough FO. If my math serves, there are 28 grams per ounce; so, using a standard one ounce of FO per pound of wax, yields 1/8 ounce of FO for a 2 ounce container. Which yields 4 grams of FO. .3 grams that you used is less than a tenth of standard; .8 grams is a fifth. If my math is right. I rarely use grams.

We sell them for $2.00 wholesale. We have a $200 minimum with a $100 reorder minimum. That's for all products. Our customers can order whatever they want.

That local chandler may be making a great profit and may be producing a high quality product that is sought after by his/her customers. Our cost for a six cavity clamshell is .66. We sell them retail for $2.95 and wholesale for $2.00. So, we make a nice profit and sell lots. If you keep your costs low, you can sell at a lower price. Just my 2 cents.

We sell reed diffusers and have the same problem as you. We sell a lot of them, but not enough to justify the cost of nice packaging made for them. So, we use what we can find. The melts, tarts (we call them snaps) are a big seller for us; so, we buy from a plastics mfg at 12.1cents each, including shipping. The minimum is 10,000 per order. We order three or four times a year. For us, having a retail store created word-of-mouth advertising. We started out selling retail at about twice cost (at the time we did not sell wholesale or mail order). Some products we sold for a higher margin, some less. Just depended. Once we had an established base of repeat customers, we slowly raised our prices to provide a margin for wholesale. We started wholesale three years ago and mail order one year ago. Both are growing (a little too fast) and are about 20% of gross revenue. We have outgrown our warehouse/factory (1250 sq feet) but don't want to relocate because of the added expense. We have five employees. You are right about grow or die; that's what we have seen. We have been going to Dallas Market twice a year for I guess ten or twelve years. It is a goldmine for us for new products, packaging ideas and meeting people like us. We love to find candle makers whom we can share ideas and problems with. For us, opening a retail store was key. Trying to establish your business and products on-line does not work. We have never advertised but have over 200 wholesale accounts just from business owners contacting us. The other key we found was having the time to devote to the business. We both retired twelve years ago. Prior to our "retirement" we never had enough time to develop, make or sell our products. We pour pillars, but they are not a big seller. Votives are, though; people use them in place of melts/tarts. So, we have expanded our offering.

A couple of questions, Kate. Is this going to be a hobby, hobby/business, part-time business, full-time business? Are you and your husband retired now? going to be retired soon? From my experience how much time and money you must invest depends on the answers. We have been doing this a long, long time. In my opinion the best, longest-lasting candle businesses grow only as sales dictate growth. You cannot force long lasting growth of your business. I agree with your husband. You need to get products into the hands of consumers; repeat customers will validate whether or not you are doing things right. Then start fine tuning your craft. As to packaging, get the best you can without sinking a lot into the product until you are satisfied with the quality. I can't even remember how many candle companies we have seen over the years come and go. They had beautiful business cards, websites, labels and packaging, but their products were not good enough to generate repeat customers - just one-time-only customers. Pretty can come as sales dictate. But, one rule of business...If it will not make you money, don't spend the $. Pretty can wait. Big companies get economy of scale purchasing. They buy large amounts of raw materials to keep costs low. You will one day be able to do that too. Oh, to answer your question, we have a mall retail store, we sell online and we sell wholesale.

Just my thoughts as I read your post. My heart goes out to you. Any business is tough to succeed in. But you have a leg up in having more knowledge about the candle business than do most chandlers. But I think that can also hurt you. You remember how nice it was to be big and have suppliers come to you and offer deals. Now you are unknown. So, in my opinion, you have to start small again, perfect your product, as you once did, find your niche and build your customer base , as you once did. Deals from suppliers and shippers only come when your revenue with them becomes a noticeable blip on their sales reports. Then they will start reaching out to you to get all of your business by giving you lower costs. Instead of ordering your FOs, wax and supplies from many sources, order from one or two. Then when you are a noticeable blip, ask for deals and special pricing. The bigger the blip you are to them, the more they will want to keep your business. Smaller profits from a customer is better than losing the customer completely. Tell supplier #1 what supplier #2 charges for a product and ask them to beat it. This works. See, the supplier gets the same deals for greater volume with their suppliers (or loses special pricing for less volume) as you are trying to get from them. It's a volume discount. As an example, we once ordered all of our paper and plastic supplies from one supplier and thought we were getting good deals because our price had been dropping. Then we contacted another supplier, told them what our yearly outlay was and asked what they would be willing to do to get our business. They sent a rep to visit with us. We now pay a lot less than before and get regular visits from our rep who brings samples. UPS is the same way, but you have to be doing enough business with them to warrant special pricing. I don't know if I have helped you or not. Oh, we produce paraffin candles, not soy, although we do have a small parasoy line to satisfy the tree huggers (no offense intended).

Do you like a more polished look for your customers or for you or both? The reason I am asking is that years and years ago when we did craft shows there was another chandler who seemed to be at the same shows where we were. They sold votives like we did. They spent all of their spare time polishing and cleaning their votives with panty hose. They did look good. A couple of years later they were out of business and dropped their hobby/business. We bought most of their stuff. Just saying this because you will find that your customers do not notice polished vs right-out-of-the-mold votives. How they burn and smell are all they are interested in.

Why? I am curious.

Pull it out completely. Prime a new wick to use. Heat a metal skewer slightly larger than the hole and ream out the hole. Insert the new wick. After the wick is in, seal the bottom with hot wax, then carefully pour wax in the oversized hole in the top. Clean and polish, and you almost cannot tell what you did. I have been doing this for years.

my two cents... The oils you mentioned have vanalan (sp?) in them;it is an integral part of all vanilla type scents. Vanalan will separate is the FO gets cold (doesn't have to get really cold). To fix the problem gently heat the oil before using until the vanalan disappears back into the FO and then pour hotter than normal to keep it bound. You can also just not worry too much about it and toss the ooze in the bottom of your pouring pot. It is not useable for anything and will eat you clamshells and will not bind with wax in your pillars or containers. HTH

Adding 3% FO to how much already in the pot? More or less FO does not call for an increase or decrease in wick size. Too much FO will cause incomplete burning, mushrooms and smoking. Dye only makes a difference when you add way too much, more than 5 drops per pound generally. Wick size determination is more a function of type of wax and width of container. Other things like FO and dye can have and effect but usually it's small. Pouring hot into tins is fine; we do it all the time.