Enchanted

I didn't sell mine but did shut it down. I basically walked out of my shop one day and didn't go back in it for a year. I went in it over the weekend and just sat in the floor and cried. I don't miss the business but I do miss my love of the craft.

Defiantly take time off and see how it goes. I closed mine this summer while I moved...2.5 months it was closed. I had been dealing the love/hate relationship for at least a year. I figured I could use the break and didn't need the added stress of having to keep the biz rolling while so much other stuff was going on. During the time it was closed I took my biz in another direction and I went back to work full time (from home). I opened the candle portion back up thinking it would rekindle that desire I once had and it didn't for me. Now I miss life as it was when it was closed and know exactly what I'm going to do. I'm happy that I don't have to struggle with the decision anymore.

to take to a show what would they be?

Are you referring to the paid to click advertising they are contacting businesses about? They contacted me about it a week or so ago. My understanding is they list your products on their site with a link to your website. You pay them for each CLICK out to your website whether it results in a sale or not. If selling on Amazon is something you are interested in, then check out just being a seller as thecandlespastore stated. It might be more fitting for you.

I've been with DIY for 3+ years and have been happy with the service. Of coarse, I have a completely custom site.

If you find anything let me know I've been looking also. If we could find a company to custom make these we could go in together to offset the expense.

I used Propay for years and never had to pay that kind of a fee. I had the premium account. https://epay.propay.com/account/ I had my shopping cart to collect the data then I processed the cards manually through Propay. I have since switched over to Authorize.Net so the cards could be processed directly from the site. I've been with them for right at a year now and really like it. I signed up through E-Online Data http://www.e-onlinedata.com/

I checked Fillmore and couldn't find anything besides the barrel jar with a design at the top and bottom. I wished I could see a better picture of them though, I may have to go with them. This jar is a 9 oz jar but I'm not overly concerned with the size.

Does anybody know where I can locate jars similar to this? TIA!

Your picture is very nice. I have a professional light box and lights, I paid a whole lot more than $50 for mine though. That's a steal! I was able to find it online if anybody needs the link http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=5030889

Those all look amazing lit up, I love the LED addition. My dh and I got into cut and carves a couple years ago, we loved doing them but just didn't have the space at the time. Your pics inspire me to get back into it. Thanks for sharing.

IMO it's the same for every supplier; some oils are going to be awesome while some are not so great. I'm sure it has some to do with the different manuafacturers, candle suppliers don't generally manufacturer their fragrances. NG is one of our favorite suppliers as far as price, speed, customer service, and packaging (I'm not a fan of glass bottles). Two of our best selling scents are NG oils.

I'm looking for opinions on who has the best the peach and true sweet strawberry scents.

I just wanted to post an update for you all. The weekend started out well we didn't pour any candles Friday or Saturday, the stress level was down, I did a little cleaning at home and took ds to the park for a couple hours. On Sunday I decided dh and I would go clean up the shop (it was a wreck) I thought it might help us feel better this week working in a clean and organized shop. Late last night I started feeling a little sick, I was a bit nausous and noticed an itchy rash appearing on my knee. I didn't think too much of it I just thought I got into something while we were cleaning. I went and took a shower and went on to bed. At around four am I woke up with shortness of breathe and itching all over. It appeared I was having a very severe allergic reaction. I woke up my dh screaming in panic to get me to the hospital. I must of been going in and out because I only remember getting in the car nothing after that until I woke up in the ER. Having had an allergy test done before I'm only allergic to certain medications so the doctor seems to think it was stress induced and not something I got into like I thought. They ordered lots of tests this week to see if they can't find any further reasoning for the attack. I wasn't able to work today because I didn't get home until after 3, I still have alot of pain mainly in my feet from the swelling. I've decided I'm going to have to scale back some whether I want to or not, it's not worth it to put my health at risk. I'm 27 years old, god willing I have many years left to build our business. I've decided I'm not going to continue to beat the pavement and stop doing wholesale and fundraisers for the time being. This is something I can always pick back up later on if I feel like we can handle it. Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice and stories with me, it hasn't gone unappreciated.

Thank you all for the advice, I really appreciate it. You have helped me realize that I really don't want to give it up. Giving up would be giving up on my dream and what I stand for. I guess I just lost sight of the happiness it brings to people, including myself. We went ahead and took today off and are not going to work this weekend. I called my mom to come by after work, her, dh, and I are going to have a good talk this evening and try to come up with a better plan. She's been wanting to buy out the bath portion of the business for months, I'm going to ahead and let her do that. We will still be able to offer the same products we always have with the same quality and our name still on everything, we just wouldn't be making the product in house and not making as much profit. I think that's a good compromise and quiet a bit of stress off me not having to deal with inventory, ordering, and production of those items. I believe we can avoid hiring so much help if we do a bit more outsourcing and put our pouring equipment to use faithfully. It has the capability to take the place of two to three employees it's just so time consuming to switch scents. We can't pour as many scents a day as we can by hand but we can get alot more candles. I know your thinking it's nuts to have this and not really use it but time has been the problem lately. It's been go go go as fast as you can to get the batch done by such and such day. I do have Quickbooks but I don't put each order in, I used too but it was so time consuming to type all that in. Now I just input my days worth of sales for accounting purposes. I automated our payment system the first of the year that helped alot with the time required for processing. Usually on Sunday night, dh and I sit down with the week's batch of orders from Sunday to Sunday and compose a production list based on the orders. I have an excel file that seperates everything by scents, so we know how many of each candle we need in that particular scent and we pour it all at once. It generally takes us three days to pour all fifty scents by hand whereas it would probably take five days to use the machine but we would have extra stock. KWIM? I've made a list of the things that seems to be taking alot of time and labels is one of those. If I outsourced labels we could probably cut off at least a day production time. Wrapping melts and votives is killing us also I need to come up with a more time efficient way to do those. Any ideas there? In response to the suggestion about raising prices, we did that in Jan when the freight cost went up again. We also switched over to UPS only shipping because we had so much lost and damaged by USPS it was costing us a fortune. We have probably lost a couple of the small orders but for the most part it hasn't really dampered business. Again, I thank each of you from the bottom of my heart for your advice and suggestions. Hopefully, my melt down will help those that think they want to be the next Yank** to think long and hard about it. That used to be me, but now I'm not so sure about it. A part of me just wants to stabilize at the level we are now and not push to go bigger but another part keeps saying I should adjust to the growth and keep going.