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.

Thanks for the kind words, it really helps to talk to someone that can relate. I can't seem to talk my dh and mom into actually hire anybody full time, dh seems to think we won't be able to find somebody worth training. He has this thing that we will hire them and train them then they quit and go start their own business. I guess that's a possibility with any business. Dh and I work our business full time. My sister comes and cleans for us two days a week (just of the mornings) and helps with whatever else I need her to do. My mom comes on the weekends and makes all our bath stuff for the week's worth of orders. My dh and I pour candles by ourself, it usually takes us three days as fast as we can go to pour a week's batch of fifty scents then another two to three days to label and box. Lately, we've been behind and have had to work right through the weekends. I spend my evenings processing orders and replying to emails, by the time I'm finished I usually only have time to bath my son and get him to bed to start over again. I guess if it didn't seem so repetitive it wouldn't be as bad. I don't really know what else we could do besides cut the product and scent list back more? I already feel like we don't have that much of a variety. I keep telling myself the big guys only sell one style of candle in three sizes in twenty scents for a reason. lol I've thought about shutting down the site for a week or so to let us pour up some stock but I'm still undecided on that. Thank you again for your support, it means alot.

I just need to vent with others that understand where I'm coming from. If you don't have the time please don't read on as I'm sure this is going to get long winded. :undecided I've been in business for five years this November, for the last six months or so I've really been thinking about giving it up. My business...candles...all of it. I'm tired and worn out both physically and mentally. I've tried taking a weekend off only to come back to piles of orders and even more stress. I'm working 60-70 hours a week anymore just trying to keep up. Our ship time keeps getting longer because I'm so worn out. We purchased pouring equipment the first of the year thinking it would help us out and I wouldn't be so tired but we can't seem to find the time to really use it often. It takes forever to switch scents and the waste...omg. I've tried cutting back on the number of products we have, I've cut back on the number of fragrances, it's just not enough. I'm tired of people talking to me like I'm dirt...if I hear Yankme ships faster than us one more time I'm going to puke! We hand pour every candle we make people... it's not factory made crap! Whew, that felt good I've wanted to say that to a few people. My husband and I are getting aweful, we walk by each other and say "have I told you lately how much I hate this business". We live like hermits, we never see anybody, never go out, never spend time together if we aren't working. We nit pic at each other all day then we snap at ds for stupid stuff. It makes me cry when I think that I might be taking my stress out on ds or think about how we didn't notice how intellegent he is because we work all the time. How can a parent miss that stuff? I feel like my wonderful family is falling apart because of our business. Thanks for reading this far I thought I would feel better if I let it out but that didn't really work. What do you do when you get to this point?

It may help if you change the settings on the printer just before you print. If I forget to do that mine tend to bleed and the quality isn't that great.

I always get a sample in my BCN orders(I order at least once a week from them), I've only been jipped once or twice over the last couple of years. I always request the scents, generally it's something I already use so I just dump the sample over into the big bottle and use it.

From what I understand she was using stamps.com to print out actual postage stamps. Postal mail is sorted by machines, it's not actually hand sorted until it gets to the destination office. Basicly, if the person on the end doesn't catch it most like it won't be caught. This stuff is why they keep raising the cost of postage.

It was Hoffman Candles that commited the major mail fraud. Here's the article from the Baltimore Sun. <http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local> maryland news Allegany Co. woman guilty of postage fraud She admits to running counterfeiting scheme from Lonaconing shop By a Sun Reporter Originally published January 12, 2007, 12:24 PM EST A Lonaconing woman pleaded guilty today to counterfeiting metered postage, according to the Maryland U.S. Attorney's office. According to the statement of facts presented to the court, Julie Hoffman, 32, owns and operates Hoffman Candles and Hoffman Mailing Solutions in Lonaconing and mailed about 1,000 envelopes and packages daily for individual customers and businesses. Hoffman advertised that she could mail any item from Hoffman Candles to anywhere in the country, regardless of the weight or size of the item, for 20 cents, according to the U.S. Attorney's office. In 2003, Hoffman began to counterfeit metered U.S. postage by printing a legitimate set of postage from Stamps.com and Endicia.com. She then made copies of the postage on her own labels. Hoffman gave the counterfeit postage to her employees to use in mailing packages and letters, but did not tell them that the postage was counterfeit. Within a couple years, she was counterfeiting almost all of the postage in her business. As a result of the scheme, the Postal Service lost at least $251,011.90, according to the U.S. Attorney's office. Hoffman faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison followed by three years of supervised release. Sentencing is scheduled for April 6.

$1.79 Each or 12/$18

Unfortately, alot of the "ideas" for products have come from a little guy. The big boys usually have staff that gets paid to do nothing but search what others are doing...big and small. What's even more unfortuate is when the little guy finds out their "idea" has been taken and can't afford to battle with corporate power. How many times have you seen a large company trademark a new design and you know you've seen or done something similar before? The big boys only see us taking a piece of their pie...a pie that's so rich they will do whatever it takes to keep it for themselves.

I used to be guilty as well but I've calmed down alot. I just recently did my last cleanout to get rid of any remaining "I have to have but have no idea what I'll do with" supplies. We had no room for the supplies we needed anymore it was that bad. The thought of the money we had in all those supplies seriously made me sick!

Thanks for the link Indy, I just placed an order. Their prices are great and shipping was only a buck for me as well.