David Fields

I have been pouring candles for a long, long time. I have gotten burned out more times than I can count or remember. As a matter of fact, I stay burned out. smile. The reason is this hobby became a business, became a job. Now, I just think of it as my 8-10 hours/day job, six days a week. I still get moments when the spark comes back, though. And those are nice. When it is really bad, I talk with my wife, and she goes to the computer and pulls up the total sales for the year. That pumps me back up.

From someone who has sold thousands of candles with wet spots.....don't sweat the wet spots. You are the only one who notices. Your customers will not see them.

It is my understanding that lead wicks were banned FOR SALE in the US; and I think this was only about 15 years ago. Lead wicks in candles imported into the US are/were not banned. I still remember a large candle supply company advertising lead wicks for sale a number of years ago. Caveat Emptor.

We now pay $675/yr for a general liability policy. Last year we paid $2500/yr for insurance and found the new company after we hit the roof over the latest increase. I don't remember who we are with now, but we were with Scottsdale Ins out of AZ before. We go through independent insurance agencies who can find the best rates. Years ago we had a store in a small town and went to an indep. ins agent who hooked us up with Scottsdale; we didn't realize we were getting screwed. Scottsdale sent us an invoice each year for the next year's insurance premium; then about three months later they sent us an audit form getting the latest sales figures. Then a couple of months later we received another bill for a premium increase of $ 40-600. So, SHOP AROUND!!!!!! And go to independent agents.

The supplier, to offer free shipping on wax, would pay $20-25 per case shipping, UPS;could be more depending on the distance. This would negate any profit they would make. To be competitive they buy (or should buy) trailer loads of wax for reduced wax cost and reduced shipping rates; they do not double their cost. So, the margin is not there to offer free wax shipment. Next, Funkmonkey...You can be right in using your own account, but from my experience it does not work out. Shippers offer reduced shipping rates if your volume hits their volume discount levels. So, assuming the company you are ordering from ships enough to qualify for a reduced rate, they can ship your order cheaper using their account. This assumes no handling fees and a company not trying to gouge the customer with extra fees. Like you, we do not order again from companies that try to tak on extras. Many companies either do not understand their shipping or do not care. We check shipping for USPS, UPS and freight, depending on the weight and use the cheapest one.

Horsescents, leather is a great seller for us. But it is better blended with other scents. We blend most of own fragrances. Tins sell OK for us; the glass containers sell much better. The largest size (24 oz) sells best, wholesale and retail. And of course leather and leather blends sell well. This is Texas. A large number of our customers are from farms, ranches and small towns. Leather makes them feel right at home.

Nope, not smart. Blessed.

Oh, forgot. The website is new because we want to expand our wholesale/mailorder business and faze out the retail. Can't do it right now because the lion's share of the revenue is from retail. Wholesale/mailorder has doubled since the website. So, we are hoping to close the store or pay someone to run it in a year or so.

www.thecandleboxshop.com It's six months old. I made it myself. We decided to go without a cart because of all the problems we have with the different carts we order from. So, we have a contact page and either call or email people. From our experience few customers know exactly what they want and almost always have questions. We had a website a while back that was a bear to maintain. No time to work on it for updates.

Where do I start? My wife and I have been doing this a long time. We retired from our regular jobs 12 years ago and went full-time in the business. We started as a hobby then as a part-time business (no time for anything else, we worked), then retirement and full-time. We didn't put together a business plan. We borrowed a little money and plowed all profits into the business for years; I don't think we put a dime in our pockets for years. We sold our products where ever we could. Craft shows and home parties were it for a long time. We opened a store when we retired and almost sunk; nothing was the way we thought it would be. (smile). We closed that store and opened the one we are in now and after a couple of years we took off. We grossed 400K last year. 300 at the store and 100 in wholesale and mail order. 175K to us. The bad part is that the more we grow the harder we work. I put in 50-60 hours/week, and my wife puts in 40-50. We have four employees and need to hire more. So, bottom line to you is...if this is a passion for you, keep plugging away. Don't give up. But, if it ain't working, change things up. You are going head to head with experienced chandlers. Find your niche and exploit it. Again, if it isn't working, why? What do you need to do to lower your costs or increase sales? Speaking of costs, only buy things that make you money. POS systems, fancy business cards, etc. are nice to haves, not necessary. Wait until you are making nice profits to buy things that don't directly make you money. It can be done. We did it, but with God's help. He guided out steps all of the way. No business plan, just hard work, dedication and prayers.

Draw the line now. If you troll the board, you will find that very, very few people have much success with consignment. Except for the consignees. For them it's a no-brainer. No up-front costs, no inverntory costs. If there is breakage, theft, aged products, they don't eat the cost. You do. So, on a $ 10 candle, you get $ 6, they get $ 4. You cost is say $ 3. So, you clear $ 3. All the risk is yours, and they get as much or more than you do. As you can tell, we never had much luck with consignment; it usually worked well early on, but never for long. We still have people ask us if we take consignment. My advice to you is to tell them wholesale only; that was the original agreement. If your products sold well for them, they should go with wholesale, unless they are operating on a shoestring budget, which is probably the case since they wanted consignment in the first place. Warning bells go off for us when someone asks fro consignment; it means to us that they will be a small customer for a short time before they fold. HTH

My take... We ship a lot with both USPS, UPS and freight. USPS - small pkgs weighing no more than 13 ounces. If the pkg weighs more than 13 ounces, it goes priority mail, and the price jumps a lot. We contact the customer for their shipping preference, USPS or UPS, if the destination is past the one-day delivery time for the Post Office, and ask if we can ship UPS. For Texas they deliver overnight to most destinations. We, BTW, only ship USPS Delivery Confirmation and UPS Ground. We don't insure with the Post Office but double pack. Never had any problems. If a pkg weighs more than five pounds and is past the PO one-day delivery area, we ask the customer to send UPS. It is automatic to send UPS for our wholesale customers. UPS is higher, and they are going up. Having a business account with UPS does not gain anything until your weekly shipping goes over some limit (don't know what that is); then, you get a discounted rate that drops the more you ship with them. I wouldn't worry much about the rate. We ship UPS because it is faster and safer for longer destinations. We use freight for areas outside the UPS one-day area when the weight is over 100 pounds. We have found that freight is only slightly below UPS rates, but we save by not having to box everything so well. Hope this helps. It is not as confusing as it seems and becomes automatic after a while.

We love Walmart and Target and all of the other Big Box stores that sell scented products! Truly. I cannot tell you how many customers have come into our store over the years and said they were very disappointed with Walmart scented products; then, when they try ours, voila !!!, we have a customer for life. They rave about how much better our products are, and, although they are slightly higher ($2.95) for clam shells, ours are more than worth the cost. As small guys, we cannot compete with the Big Guys pricing, but we make up for it in quality. So, don't worry about them. Encourage your customers to try your products. Word of mouth advertising is our best advt tool.

It depends. When we can, we prefer freight loaded onto a pallet (not as much preparation). Smaller shipments we use UPS. The rates are similar, however. Don't like having to double pack jars for extra handling. UPS is also a little quicker.

Ironrose, we have an in-line store in a shopping mall. Yes, the rent is high. But it works for us. We started out with a store in a strip mall for 3 or 4 years, then added the mall store. Ambitious and greedy. But we found out very quickly we had no life. At the same time we continued doing craft shows because the income wasn't there yet with the stores. It was tough. Thankfully we had money saved to fill in the low months. I am sure everyone is like us when they open a store. Big dreams. We tried not to think of how much we were committing to pay each month; instead we dreamed about how much we could make if sales were x. Ha Ha. ADVICE. Have deep pockets to weather the first year or two. Anticipate terrible sales while you build your customer base. Keep your costs as low as possible. Work out on paper how much you have to sell each month at your unit cost plus profit. Then figure out how many units that is a week/day. Make sure your production is ramped up. A friend of mine had beautiful candles and could sell them wholesale, but could not produce them fast enough to keep his wholesale customers happy. He went out of business. Another friend tried to expand too fast. He and his wife opened seven stores in two years and lost all of them a year later because his sales couldn't support them. We closed our original store and concentrated on the mall store. It is doing very well after eight years. We are truly blessed.

We don't adverise. But the mall (where our store is located) does. The advertising that they do that seems to work best for us is 'Text to Get". Not computer savvy, so I don't know how this works. But for one month when it's our turn, customers text a site that tells them to go to our store for a free auto air freshener. When they come in, we ask them to delete the text and sign a form. Each month we do this we get around 80-100 new people in the store and 20-30 regulars. The mall settles up with us after the month and pays us the cost of the products we give away.

When we first opened our store, I worked it everyday for over a year. We lived a little over an hour away and the store (in a mall) was open 10-9 mon thru sat and noon-6 on Sunday. Boy was it a drag. In the beginning I hit a cow coming home at night, so my wife and I decided that she would make products, and I would work the store. She doesn't see well at night. We worked it without help because we were trying to keep costs down; just couldn't afford help the first year. Could have I suppose, but we would have gone under. Later we hired someone to work Sundays and then Wednesdays a few months later. Now, eight years later, we moved to College Station, have four employees for the store and one for the whse/factory. Bottom line that we found...DON'T hire employees unless the business can truly afford them. HTH

1. do whatever it takes to get people into your store. 2. while they are in your store, do everything you can to keep them there as long as possible. 3. Have your pricing, quality and customer service such that they want to come back. The first year or two in a store is TOUGH. You have to establish a repeat customer base that grows over time.

Retail $2.95. Wholesale $2.00

No choice here. I get in slumps all of the time (my wife calls it 'gettin squirrly'), however I have no choice. Candles are a business for us and how we pay the bills. I have to pour every day and right now it's seven days a week. Usually we take Sundays off, but this time of year we start working a half day on Sunday; in a couple of weeks it'll be all day (8-10 hrs). So, even though we still thoroughly enjoy candle-making, we get slumps just like in normal jobs, and, just like in normal jobs, we trudge on.

We have used IGI 2281 for years and love the look it gives and other characteristics as well. To get mottling you simply have to pour cooler. The cooler you pour, the more mottling you get. Try pouring around 140. HTH

One of the hardest lessons we learned is that you cannot be all things to all people. Tell them, thank you very much, but at this time you cannot help them with their needs. I question why they are giving you so little time for so little money (translate to little to no profit). We have companies/individuals contact us often with similar requests. If we can do it without bending over too much, we give them our price; they can except or go somewhere else. We don't want every bit of business we can get... only the profitable ones that do not cause much distress. BTW, that's also why we got out of doing weddings. Don't sell yourself short. Don't rationalize that this "gets your name out there". They will only come back to you next year for more and cheaper. When someone says to us that this is an opportunity for US to get our name "out there", red flags go up. You are a business.

Six days a week 8-10 hours/day.

For us it depends on the product. Generally we like to charge 4 to 5 times cost. If we can't get twice cost at a minimum, we discount the product and drop it. There are many, many costs involved in a business other than cost of goods sold. To cover those costs you have to get more than twice cost. Although, it does depend on the size of the business. When you first start out, you normally don't have many addtional costs; so, CoG is sufficient. But as your business grows, the other costs rear their heads. Oh, we charge our retail price less 40% for wholesale pricing. And we give volume discounts. HTH

Great question. We have been using HTP wicks for I guess 6 or 8 years, maybe longer. Love them. We don't give customers instructions in advance of burning. It has not been a problem for us. Ever so often a customer will ask about trimming; then we explain the do's and don't's. We also get questions about put candles in the freezer. smile. And finally, we have had a very few customers who said they trimmed the wick, and now the candle won't burn well. In those few (2 or 3 out of thousands and thousands of candles) we either explained how to fix the candle so that it would burn, or we just replaced it. We have found that customers don't read instructions provided.