TallTayl

2 hours ago, StanfordP said:

Yup agreed!

 

Do you know anything about the process for how fragrance companies in the US develop/source their fragrances? From what I understand, CandleScience, for example, would develop a formula based on various aromachemicals, then source them from a fragrance company to make the ultimate product. So even though CandleScience is making the finished good, the ingredients come from the fragrance manufacturer. Is that on track?

 

And now that my wheels are turning; a similar scenario seems to have happened with wax...

I think that is in reverse. The fragrance house provides a fragrance that the retailer stocks for sale. IME the middleman doesn’t care about the formulation details beyond if it has/doesn’t contain components that are unpopular (such as phthalates). It needs to smell close enough to prior drums to keep customers returning for more and have faith it will work well enough. 
 

with my lab relationships I suggest a theme or line in my plan, they send a collection of fragrances that seem to fit that, and at a price point range we agreed upon. I can choose any/all, or reject, or ask for modifications. 
 

the labs source the raw materials from a rather small group of global chemical providers. WhenBASF burned, global citral markets were upended. This confirmed the hypothesis that very few companies control the beginning of the fragrance supply chain. 
 

Candle science, since you mentioned them, was purchased in the last year or so by a fragrance lab. The timing was about when all of the complaints about common fragrances changing began to pop up in reviews with regulatory. the lab just subbed in their version of a named fragrance and hoped for the best. 
 

Fragrance labs of all sizes are being merged and acquired at an alarming rate. When I was experiencing this in my aerospace days, it was a way of “buying back” the same customers from competition. How many of us left retailers when we were burned, only to be stuck with the same supplier when it was acquired by another? 
 

wax…. Oh boy this is a big one… 

Using a popular Golden Brands example of the 4 series of soy, 415, 464, 444, the manufacturing operation was relocated to Central America a few years ago. 2017-ish is memory serves.  We all noticed something was terribly wrong when one case of wax would burn ok, then the next would not stay lit at all. There was moisture being injected into the wax during hydrogenation. Simply opening a case never did fix the wax despite that being our only option to “safe” the costly crappy wax. I threw away and gave away tons of useless wax. 
 

I hold as truth to myself that Accublend’s darling coco83 was never fixed formula. (I believe that is true for many manufacturers).It varied in smell, texture and appearance early on.  When supply chain issues hit their operation we saw all kinds of major things change from lot to lot. 
 

The final piece of the equation: source ingredients for all wax manufacturers changed in quality. How many members here were bit by the IGI wax variations?  Hint: everyone who used 6006. 4630, 4627, 4786, etc. I firmly believe manufacturers had/have to be savvy with reformulating to stay afloat. Too bad they blame us, the end users, when their formulations do not perform as expected. 

it would take a team of investigators to get to the bottom of all these stories. Don’t get me started on wicks… 

I’m waiting for two sigma impact and their money backer, advance investment management, to realize the peak of the pandemic was an anomaly for the fragrance industry. It is already underperforming just 2 short years later.  At what point, and how, will they divest of the companies when the portfolio doesn’t perform as expected?

Most of the persistent issues began back in 2018.  A series of suspicious and very unfortunate events marked the start of all the reformulations and norm of particularly bad fragrances. 

first a fire at the BASF chemical plant halted the global distribution of citral for a long while.  Then a global Chinese aromachemical supplier shut down. Then another sus fire at a chemical supplier in India rounded out the problems in a very short time frame.  Most of us were feeling the squeeze hard for at least a year. you would think that those issues would have been long remedied and returned to price “normality” by now 😩

essential oil components have been struggling through many crop failures which only makes the fragrance industry more volatile.  Lemon crops failed.  Orange crops failed.  Lavender. Patchouli. The list goes on. We can’t catch a break. 
 

I’m not suggesting there is or isn’t  collusion afoot, because price fixing is a definite possibility.  I see a global capitalistic trend to maintain the artificial highs of the pandemic at its peak when everyone became a candle maker overnight. Now that the pandemic entrepreneurs abandoned their start ups to return  back to their old comfy reality, the fragrance world can’t seem to come back down to a reasonable expectation.  My labs keep ratcheting up the min order volumes, prices per lb,  and annual spend. It’s disheartening. 

Fragrances are made of endless combinations of aroma chemicals (even essential oils). They all have different temp ranges where they shine. Some need a stringer flame temp and more air current to boost them higher into the air. Some are light as a feather and disperse well. Some fall to lower levels like the floor or down stair wells and seem to not throw when standing near it above the lit candle. 
 

also the solvents used to make the bottled dilution behave differently in various waxes. old favorite phthalates worked wonders even with imperfect fragrances in harder to use waxes like soy. Now labs can choose between so many different diluents, like dioctyl adipate, isopropyl myristate and others. None seem to work as well as phthalates once did. 
 

Veg waxes tend toward the acidic. Newer Soy related blended waxes seem to have a narrower selection of “awesome” throwers than old fashioned waxes. You have to tweak to find the sweet spot, often swapping around wick series to hit the range of temp and rate of consumption balance. 
 

finally, the concentrations within each bottle vary. all retail bottles smell so weak compared to the bottles we used to get when I started so many moons ago. I have to buy more concentrated fragrance direct from a lab to get what I like. 

3 hours ago, NightLight said:

Well now the change is every company they bought you can shop on WSP. For example, Just scents on WSP site now as others.

KIND OF A MONOPOLY

I knew that was going to happen sooner or later. And all of them are based out of Ohio now.

I wanted to stay away from polymorphic waxes, like soy, in my custom blend.  For container candles, you have so many options.  I even tested out hydrogenation powders like what are used in the food and beauty industry.  I would come close to something I liked, that would ultimately fail some crucial step.  It is fun though.

I discovered additives and proportion starting points  while reading patents.  One patent for sunflower margarine was a big jumping off point for ingredients to form a gel when burning versus a swampy pool.  
 

Most common candle waxes seem to be hydrogenated vegetable oils. I don’t have access to a hydrogenation, so I took a different path. 

You’re amazing! 

This is a humongous technical topic. You can technically make a candle fuel out of anything that will burn.  It won’t necessarily burn well or safely, but it can be done.

the biggest variable of wax formulations is the raw materials themselves.  We’ve seen such wild ranges of “acceptable” in individual components that the combined waxes made by the big guys are entirely different despite being the same “recipe”. Of course they need to work with market availability and reformulate readily when ingredients become scarce or too costly. 

I encourage everyone with the patience and means to experiment. Decide the type of candle (container, pillar, taper, etc) and how you need them to perform, then work from there.  What type of environment do you need them to withstand (outdoor craft shows in the summer, shipping in various climates, etc). Take excellent notes.

i study patents for technical leads. Once you learn to read the patents you have a good starting point to see if the formulation is as good as they claim, or also a bit of crap with a pretty paper.

Could be caused by any of several things.  

Too hot for the fragrance at that point in the candle.

too much early melt pool burned off the fragrance in the melt pool. It takes a while to get to fresh wax which releases fragrance into the already diluted melt pool wax.
 Not enough air current to boost the throw outside of the candle.  

Candle nose.

Change of room air current…

7 minutes ago, KrisS said:

 

 

FYI - Innovative has become Phoenix Aromas.

Yes. They were both bought out late last year by a Dutch company. Lots has changed!

Didn’t I read a thread here a couple of months ago that they closed and liquidated on eBay?  
 

Looks great! That has to feel good. 

I usually wet render with water more than once. I let the wax cool into a disk on top of the extra water.

 The more you render, the more the scent dissipates since the honey washes away.

One of the most tedious parts of web shops are the pictures. Taking photographs of every product in the various variations is endless.  I let my website suffer as I mentally checked out of taking and editing the hundreds of pictures needed.

we talked about apps like Canva (canva.com) before.  Canva is a huge time saver creating labels and for polishing up product photos.  the app lends a much more polished look to online stores.  Canva somewhat recently partnered with SmartMockups.com and took staged product photos to the next level. They have thousands of stock photos where you literally just pop in your basic label and like magic it creates the custom looking photo of your product.

Blank stock photo of an amber dropper bottle.

presto chango here it is with a quick label designed in canva.

if your products and/or packaging are not yet in their stock photo collection, you can create your own using your own photos on the SmartMockups.com site with a subscription. The process isn’t too tedious to learn. 
 

For custom photos, I don’t want to pay their separate subscription, though. The monthly/annual fee is high enough to be kind of close to the photoshop product. I have access to photoshop already, and figured out how to do the same using smart objects.  It’s life changing having these tools! 

The new Sun Ripened BlackBerry concentrate arrived.  I received  the IFRA today. Once tested I will either order this one (if it is significantly better than the original), or the original version. 
 

I put the new Clementine in veg wax today, will put into soap tomorrow and hopefully the same with pinion.  Once I’m comfy that both are swell, I’ll list the rest on my site for those who liked it.  
 

turn times with the labs is up to about 3 weeks as shops ramp up for the holidays.  If we need more, we can get it, we just need to plan ahead. 

7 hours ago, Lizzy said:

I just got the sign up email but not sure if I want to do it.

They have a free basic version and a premium version for 9.98. On top of that they want a "low" recommendation fee and percentage +0.20 cent per sale. Hmmm

I’m not sure who their target market is. If it’s other crafters it would be too expensive if totally free. We would be selling to ourselves. 

1 hour ago, dustinryan2010 said:

I see so many small businesses and large alike, that offer wood wick candles and I just do not understand how they’re doing it.

Easy. You would be horrified to know how many people/companies NEVER test. Too many candles burn like absolute crap and people don’t care. 

What bugged me was how I would fall in love with a wooden wick product, like the engineered sawdust like ones or the tube, and then suddenly without warning they would be either discontinued or change so dramatically that they were entirely different wicks.  Their track record for inconsistency to protect patents (or switch manufacturers) on a whim was exhausting.

competition to the marketplace was eliminated through lumetique’s carefully worded patents. This was a huge disservice to everyone. 

Best of luck and happiness in their well earned retirement. 

Once the account was set up and business license accepted the bottles arrived in a couple of days. 
 

I’m either case - 3 wick or 5 - change the spacing of the wicks closer or further from the sides to figure out the optimal heat exchange to consume the wax how you prefer. Close to the edges leaves less shell. Closer to the center to create more shell. 

So I’m confused. If the 5 wicks caused a blowout in the picture, how did it consume all of the wax?

The 5 small wicks throw too much heat and don’t consume the wax fast enough. Can you go back to the 3 that used to work?

I just leave my home made sodium citrate liquid so it’s ready in a bottle as needed. Super convenient. I keep one batch in the fridge and one in the studio.