EccoLights

Hi, thanks for everyone's help.

I will be pouring into metal tart moulds. Does more fragrance oil make the tart have less ht?

I really do appreciate everyone's answers. You are far more advanced in candle making than the UK. I just wish I could buy my melts from the US but every website I find only ships within the US. X

There are many great companies here in the states that ship worldwide and many right from these boards too +) Best of luck in your new adventure!

Never have here but geezs, I would go nuts trying to order from their site!

Sooo, it took them 2,100 months or 175 years to test each and every scent using an average of 3 months to test each one.

Let's give them credit here. Maybe they tested 2 a month so it's only 87.5 years =) Or the more logical reason.... THEIR VAMPIRES!!

Are you sure you want to change a designer fragrance name? Customers who know the fragrance will call you out on it. Ask me how I know. Also, the name is a selling point. JMO but I would leave it the same.

We had ours called Night Fantasy and it went over super but we are about to change some names as well and this is one we are just going back to the original name. As Candybee said, those who know the scent will call you out on it but it doesn't stop them from buying =)

You could have warmed it, ya know... LOL I don't dare wander off or do anything else when I am pouring candles (or baking cookies). It takes very little time to stir it down from 185°F to 165°... FB will just have to wait when you're pouring candles LOL Stirring the wax gently as it cools to pour temp is important IMHO.

Agreed, this is a temp / cooling issue and most have said everything perfectly already, but really just wanted to say Stella1952, utterly LOVE your siggy now!

We Are The 99%!

Ok, back to the topic at hand =)

At our market we do we push the tart warmers so our tart sales are amazing with jars coming in a close second... It is very interesting to see how our customers grow with us as we introduce new product lines too. But in the long run, that customer that got jars the first time and switched over to tarts... well they come back getting jars months later but many will get both =)

I have to agree with Envy tho, I'd love to see how some of us do with JUST tarts at a show... I bet we won't see much of a difference in profit.

It never surprises me at what some say is "quality" as the shows... and the whole Scenty and PL thing going on here just reminds me of why we do jurierd (sp) shows only.

Would reply a bit more but still having the first cup of coffee...

Depends on the situation for us on returns. We have exchanged, refunded and even swapped in the past. This did get me thinking of one customer we had that bought from our market then emailed us saying something bad about the candle, we told her to return it and we will work it out for her. She then came to the market WITHOUT the candle she "said" she bought and wanted a freebie.... Told her sorry but without a receipt or product, you get NADA =)

Sadly there are some that will try anything to get ANYTHING free!

While I do like Yankee candles personally, both of these videos show all of us our here... Marketing is EVERYTHING!

After researching what seems to be a thousand and 2 CC processors, we just signed up with SU today =) Can't wait to get this up and going for our weekly markets we do! YAY!

Thanks to everyone who posted about this, your feedback really helped our decision =)

Honestly, I believe that they are still in business for a couple of reasons: They are near the top of the search engine. They are close to the east which is heavily populated. Their "free shipping crap looks good to a person who has not shopped around. (We all KNOW that it a "shipping included" rate, not "free shipping".) WSP is also a one-stop shopping store. To a newbie, their enormously stocked store looks so inviting. " I have found great replacements from Peaks, NG, and The Chemistry Store.

I don't think I could had said it better then this...

WSP or should I say Debbie Mae(correct my spelling if I am wrong), has positioned herself in the market as an authority with her blogs, so call mentoring and so on and so on... The part that really kills me about her entire business model is she has blatantly took ideas, themes and even names of OTHER good suppliers "things" and called them her own and claims to be the FIRST to come up with said ideas..... It's just sickening but to the newbies out there, she looks pretty dang good.... UGH!

We live about 45 minutes from WSP as well and once they started this "Free Shipping" crap, that's when they lost our business.... Since then we did have to get a couple things and each time there was a different "policy" and it just got crazy.... Then they stopped the shipping discount when you picked up... That was the final straw..... That greedy woman will never see another dime from us either..... Not when NG is not much further away for us =)

Those are so pretty. I really like the lavender one the most.

Have fun doing the classes.

Same as IwantItgreen here. No questions asked when dropping them off.

Very cute! Funny we have been thinking of redesigning ours and today I get on here and see all these label posts =)

They look great! Good job and keep posting your creations, we all love seeing them!

Blue might look like some kind of smurf massacre, but that appeals to me a lot!

LMBO!

Congrats!!! It's such an accomplishment when you get it right isn't it! Have fun testing.... MORE! LOL

Just was looking around on Natures Garden and saw they have an Ocean and a Ocean Mist but it doesn't say if its a dup or not. Also saw they have a Home Sweet Home but it says its a Yankee dup so not really sure if its what your looking for =)

OMG! $40 for 16 ounces! For a second I thought it was a knock off of WSP but this place is even worse! On a side note I think our neighbors heard us gasp when we opened that page =)

Just a heads up and seeming that we did start this thread thought an update would be in order =)

We do understand the difference in hosting and designing and after a very long process of debating and researching all the different shopping carts available we opted to use an open source cart called NopCommerce.

While it is open source and compared to Zen Cart and others it is newish, we liked the feel of the design (already in place) and the back end has a ton of features that some others charge much more for. Now not saying it was easy at all but set up was fairly simple on GoDaddy hosting and everything is so easy to use after installing =)

As for design work, well...its in the works but for now we like the look, feel and style of the site compared to many of the others out there.

Again, just an update and sorry if there was any confusion about the "design" aspect of things =)

Laura we feel your pain! Shipping is so hard to get right. You don't want to over charge your customer and don't want to eat your profits either.

USPS does offer quite a few boxes and if your looking at the flat rate shipping, you might also want to look at the regional shipping boxes as well. They work well with our 8 ounce bottles of sprays (not sure how big yours is) or another thing that we did was to work out a deal with a local paper crafter to make our shipping boxes. They not only are hand crafted (a plus to us in that were supporting another small business), they also look so cute! We even put a bow on them and our customers just love that! Also doing these boxes we are able to still ship some items first class and avoid priority rates.

Hope this helps some and sure some others will have some good ideas as well, but for sure, check out the link that Silver pointed out. After all free is better then anything above =)

Nowhere is it written that x3 is law. Actually, x4 is a much better ratio. =) =) =) =) =) Someone's keyboard keys appear to be stuck.

"Repurposed". What a dumb word.

No one said law, just standard =P and repurposed sounds much better then "I bought this stuff and put it together with super glue" LOL

I have a FAN page. I never did understand why a lot of Vendors use their personal account as their fan page.

I think it may be laziness? It does take a bit more time to setup a fan page/add tabs, but it's so worth it.

I noticed Just Scent and Natures Garden don't have a "Fan page", They just have a regular account, so you HAVE to send a friends request, in order to post on their pages.

Can't say about Just Scents but I do know NG has a fan page or business page. Deb was using her personal for quite some time till she maxed out her friends allowed LOL She has since changed it over to here: https://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/naturesgardencompany

Did they say why they only lit 1 wick ? ? ?

To make it last longer?? LOL

Gotta take advantage of FB, Twitter, etc....It's where a lot of people are at. We have had our fan page for over a year now and love it! Bottom line about it is, it's free advertising and gets you involved with your customers =)