TallTayl

Sampling is a very big part of the online business, absolutely. I send product samples with purchases for people who like samples. Believe it or not, some people complained about getting free samples. One issue to consider is postage. A soap sample can be several dollars to ship first class as it is too thick for the post office to consider a letter. A thin piece, like the old Avon samples, that can go out first class mail for a regular stamp have a big place in a marketing campaign! In the past for fragrance co-ops I had used foil around absorbent paper, which did the job, but was not really memorable. I found little heat seal packets that might work, though they can be kind of $... Offering samples in product is an avenue I've been trying to make worthwhile. As you figured out, the scent in soap, room spray, lotion or candles can differ from out of the bottle. Spending hours a day shipping sample orders for little to no profit is not attractive to me. I learned that hard lesson a while back. If I make the same profit a the end of the day sending sample packets as petting my dog watching old Hulu shows, I'd rather pet my dog The sample sets need to be easy to put together, attractive enough for people to spend money to buy and profitable enough to keep everyone happy.

Your needs in a warm, dry climate will be different from more norther areas. you “could” use beeswax and coconut, but will find that without other stabilizers they will sweat and slump in storage and transit. I purchase voluspa, notorious for that blend, and was surprised at how they arrived even during less than”hot” weather. Likewise, not all beeswaxes and coconut oils burn the same, so your local supply will vary. Some I made would not stay lit. Some burned like a Bunsen burner. Are you not considering manufacturers like Accublend or Cal wax? Engineering a wax for candle production is a very complex process. While anything can be a fuel, you will need to tweak for many other variables along the way. Not every combo will work well with your containers, fragrances, etc. it is a long process. I have done this service for other companies in the past with a manufacturing partner based on very specific criteria of their exact fragrance and their exact containers. Nothing is a one size fits all.

Coconut wax can vary so much, but I do use your blend, so here goes… coco83 varies a LOT from batch to batch. Some are super thin when melted. One batch was cloudy and gooey when melted. That changes the wick need by a size, sometimes more. Coconut oil, the supposed base of coconut “wax” is a low viscosity fuel that travels up wicks through capillary action with ease. Compare that to soy wax, for instance, that is a higher viscosity “sludge” that takes more energy to travel through the same wick through capillary action. Coconut will end with higher flames than the thicker soy. palm wax, the basis of sp487, burns incredibly easily with wood wicks. It is a “hard” wax, but thin viscosity. low viscosity fuel easily travels through wood wick fibers. The low viscosity combo of palm and coconut with wood wicks is why you see the ramping up of flames as the candle burns. Your accelerator is to the floor during burning, if you will. I don’t buy into the whole add more fragrance to fix your problem argument. Fragrances are all comprised of different combos of aromachemicals and diluents that do not act the same in any wax, let alone all waxes. Some fragrance components will likely cause your problem to worsen. my solution to slowing wicks has been in changing the fuel to alter the capillary action. I have a collection of different botanical waxes from castor wax to sunflower wax to various beeswaxes, along with all of the different palm waxes available. IGI5801-A palm wax, for instance, will change my wick need by a size or more at low %. My particular batch of cosmetic sunflower wax dials down my wick consumption at 1/4%-1/2%. Every sunflower wax batch is different. Some do not burn at all and may make your problem worse. Sometimes a little extra soy will do the trick. I suggest it only to give you an idea of where to venture next. note please that wooden wicks also vary from batch to batch. Many of us learned valuable lessons that each wick in a pack may behave entirely different by burning several candles from the exact same pour. I gave up on them a while ago because I could not be assured that a customer would not experience a faulty one.

Where are you located?

That is the holy grail, isn’t it? by no palm wax, does that also mean no stearic acid, derived from palm? Beeswax?

Most of us start out with in person events, like fairs, craft shows, office swaps, etc to introduce our scented wares to potential customers. The scents will often sell the product easily. What happens when you stop meeting in person? for over a decade my shop shelves were bursting at the seams with smelly goodness, but then the world changed. Online only shopping is a much different venue to offer scented items. I found that people would gravitate toward things that were already familiar, bypassing unique scents that were more “risky”. This was especially true for more spendy items like candles. In the last I sent simple sniffies to customers. They were simple foil wrapped absorbent paper with a little scent inside. That helped a little. But it missed the mark on branding and wasn’t the pro look I had aimed for. It was also not generating any income for the time involved. winter is long, but can be a perfect time to do something that is out of the ordinary. Have you ever smelled sachets in boutiques and seasonal stores and thought about making them? The hard part was finding the right envelopes. After many tests, I figured those out and offered them over the holiday season. They are pretty easy, but cost $ to ship. I knew there had to be an easier option to get sniffie scents to people affordably. While on the phone chatting with a forum member in Texas about gardening, seed packets came up. I found some plain white envelopes and went to work designing something totally new. These are nifty because I can print them with whatever I want for the purpose. For my co-op dupes I print pertinent info like IFRA limits on the back. For retail I add a story. I can fit several in an invitation envelope for the cost of a first class stamp. I am in love! I use both these and traditional sachets in my car to waft my scent of the day during my travels. They’re surely prettier an better smelling than a little tree! How do you market your scented products in an online dominated world?

In total agreement here! I spent many hours clearing out and reorganizing my space leading up to the holiday rush. I was ruthless. Dumped contents of shelves and cabinets directly in the middle of the floor so I could not ignore them any more. I cried as I sorted through files I had “meant to get to”. So happy I did. I emptied hundreds of tester candle containers from craptastic waxes and fragrances. Problem is, I have many more hours and hundreds of lbs more to go! My reward will be a new paint job in the soap and candle studio. The ceramics studio will need to wait a little longer until the weather warms a bit more. That studio is in a heated pole barn, but still feels chilly as I roam in and out of the space to clear out and reorganize. I’ll be buying more this year than last, but buying more strategically. Going to rely on my own custom fragrances and ceramic containers/holders more, versus playing roulette with the retailers. looking forward to ramping up with more, and different, products that feel more like me, and less like the “old me” who was in a different venue. Incense has always intrigued me, but my family prohibited me from burning it in the house 😂.

I’m with you! Those bits fall off and need to be cleaned up. They can feel weird when wet too. I can imagine the lavender buds in jam 😂. We’ve all been there!

Pumpkin! It’s super in soap.

Milks are lovely in soap. Oat milk is easy to make by soaking rolled oats in water until they release the gooey goodness, then squeeze out the water to use for the soap. Almond milk is made similarly. how fun!

Same thing has happened with wicks through the years. Sooooooo frustrating.

That is…. Interesting…. Why intentionally name them the same as popular branded waxes if they are not the actual branded waxes?

Scaling up creates lots more heat through chemical reactions than smaller batches. The orange flecks are cooked milk fats and proteins that can sometimes be filtered out before adding the lye solution to the oils. I push my milk lye solution through a fine mesh strainer to catch most of those. It gets thick so it takes some effort.

That white frosting? It happens with wax blends high in Soy. It is the normal wax bloom that happens as the wax cures and goes through temperature changes. It’s the same phenomenon as with chocolate that gets that hazy bloom. you can help delay bloom with waxes like some paraffin blends. It will take some time to figure out how much is needed and to make sure your melts still work as you like them. Every addition changes the magic melt points and throw.

That is some dedication to your craft. 😊 Are the secrets PG rated?

Bleached square braid.

I don’t know of any soy based pillar after the discontinued EcoSoya Pillar Blend. For pillars and novelties I lean to beeswax personally. when wicking novelties, and pillars, you’ll probably want to underwick to prevent wax blowouts during burns. They take a long time to test fully.

Did you happen to pick up the cd sizes in between what you tried? Cd14 and cd16 are nice incremental steps. wooden wicks come in dozens of thickness x width combos and from different wood types. The smallest of the sizes can do very well in that size jar. CDN are always nice to keep on hand also. Along with Premier700 series. sometimes the wicking issues stem from fragrances. I have not tried your wax, but you have loads of options with the many wick series and sizes available.

I have not done any updates lately. When did it start?

What type of device? have you shut down and rebooted?

If you cannot find an exact of your bottle, you may want to send it out to have your own made. Most labs will require 25 lbs, but at least, if their dupe process is good, you will have it and can sell off surplus to others who love it.

I use the one from AHRE. It has been the closest to the one I used from the scent works before they went OOB suddenly. Note: i have not purchased any fragrances from AHRE since they were acquired by the same investment firm that bought WSP and others. I cannot confirm if it is the exact same today as what I have from pre-acquisition.

Looks fine to me at this point. Keep taking temps with your IR thermometer to make sure it doesn’t overheat as it gets further down.

I would probably stock up on a&b boxes til they’re gone. They will be calculated as dimensional boxes after the switch. You can still schedule pickups through usps.com without purchasing labels there if I recall? just checked shippo and you can easily schedule a pickup in their system. Phew!

Freedom was 464 from what I recall