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Some people get that it take a step to start a journey and some people don't.... Regardless I emailed them to ask about their new wax and they said it was "a paraffin wax made with a slightly different method that what we traditionally use" They also said there are no plans to move exclusively to the new wax. It makes me wonder what the different "method" is, I was thinking the slush form where they mix, cool, and then "pipe" the wax in at the slush stage, straighten the wick and then done. Doesn't really matter.

This is so true! Or... it will be the jar ounces.

What makes me wonder is that that 'myth' would have had to be started somewhere. It could be that employee but I doubt it. I was testing the wax though and it seems to be a single pour and the white wax is gold when it is melted which suggests to me they may be moving into a lower labor parasoy blend...

Yeah there is no soy in it at all, they use all mottling paraffin though they are moving to their new smooth wax. They are currently using their smooth wax in the perfect pillars, some of the new double wicked tumblers and they have always used it in the Target YC's. I don't know how far they will take the smooth wax but they are defiantly exploring it. I like the look of the mottled paraffin better though. It interesting to watch such a large company explore a new idea like they are.

Christmas Cookie is one of my favorite yankee candles. If you burn to fmp it will have a pretty decent throw. The mushroom happens on all the Yankee Candles, Yankee fans like how hot it gets and gives them a "great" 3" melt pool (If you look at their facebook page you'll see the huge shrooms people are excited about) You'll also see those people who are rallying against the new wax because they believe the mottling is the massive amounts of FO they put in their candles... and they get all excited when they "bleed" oils. It is kinda funny when you consider their fragrance load is likely around 4.5-5% which is now kinda under industry standard.

If I didn't have 600 candles to get out by Monday I would write a larger response but here is the short answer Necessity is the mother of invention, when one is out it leaves a void, entrepreneurs come in and fill the void. Again, naive to think that there is only one way to do something Paraffin will be affected. You've been fed the line that it is a by-product. The fact is, there is no such thing as a by-product if there is a market for it... and there is. It is a product, not a by-product. Your China statements are speculation, and when you buy soy it does support US farmers... because US farmers grow soy and a hell of a lot of it... You also don't seem to know how soy works in the US anyway. We subsidize it so much if any other area in the world could grow as much as us, they wouldn't be able to compete with our price on the global market. Yes, not yet. Green energy is not a pipe dream it is happening now and will only grow. It would not be a mute point it would be a moot point.... and it isn't. Plants are the "re-breathers" (if you're into diving) If you use paraffin there is nothing to re-breath and to say it is renewable is again, nieve. It would take millions of years to produce more oil, so can you re-produce it... NO. Period. I did not say they have no emissions I said they are essentially the same, the difference is soy is sustainable. Paraffin still is not. I said when it runs out, either 50, or 100. It will run out, it is a fact. People like you don't understand how important it is to support sustainable products and services so if that were to happen "90%" of the world's population wouldn't die. It is ironically people like you that would make all those people die. If there were more people like me 40 or 50 years ago you wouldn't even consider that. Also a well wicked candle will still have emissions.... what the science says is they are comparable and there are no demonstrable difference between the emissions produced in a well wicked soy and paraffin candle. I don't know who you think I am but your assertions are for some other candle company. I make my product with soy, something that is sustainable and can re-grow... I don't tell anyone they are soy unless they ask... what they think about soy is their problem. I don't say it is "all US" because I use cargill products. I don't even mention US grown in fact. The only way I would do that is if I switched over to GB or Eco-Soya. Both "claim" they use US soy but I tell you I believe them... being that US soy is incredibly cheap and obviously readily available. Cargill's system is a global one. They own and commission around the world for all kinds of commodities and externalize their tax burden so it makes it cheaper all around. Crop disasters happen, and oil rig explosions happen. If you live in fear like you seem to be doing you'd never achieve anything. We're not going to convince each other. I can re-grow soy. I cannot grow paraffin. Soy is also cheaper and has better burn qualities. Once someone goes big with soy it will all be over. You paraffin users will be at your table saying, no it really is the same, see this report done 10 years ago? I won't have a problem with that... won't affect my business any.

I guess you didn't read what I wrote. I know the definition of greenwashing and greenhouse. I did not greenwash anything... saying soy is a sustainable product so it is better than paraffin is not greenwashing it is fact. When there is no more oil there will be NO MORE PARAFFIN Period. The pristine argument is yet another straw man, and if you really think about it the world was not more pristine then, it was hotter, had weather swings that were far more drastic, weather patterns that were more violent, and was much harsher than we have ever experienced as humans. It is also an irrelevant argument because if we were going to release all the petroleum into the atmosphere it wouldn't eliminate the "man made" chemicals (which are nearly all petro-chemicals) If you want to reduce your carbon footprint you would use sustainable products... it comes down to one thing "Can this be made again" The answer to paraffin (and other oil based products) is no, the answer with soy (or even palm, coconut, bees, and cottonseed) is yes. It really is that simple.

Wow! That is a great find! What brand are they? I am having trouble finding one since they went to "oilless" fryers.

Well mitigating any source of greenhouse gasses imo is wrong. Saying something is more ok than others because there is less of it is not exactly responsible in the big picture. All problems have many pieces and it is a piece of the puzzle. If I can help chip away at it I will. It isn't "greenwash crap" and using a straw man argument to support your claim makes it seem like you don't understand the core of the argument which is why I jumped to the conclusion that you don't believe that the problems posed by greenhouse gasses are actually problems. I just feel that a lot of people fail to look objectively at situations and come to conclusions based on a bias...

Diamonds, rubies and emeralds are not released into the air, they are an inert material that has no bearing on the climate. Apples to oranges. I guess if you don't believe in science though it would be easy to dismiss the problems greenhouse gasses pose.

They are getting the three weeks from me, I tested my candles in 3 weeks and posted that information above. Please don't be sorry for starting the post, it was actually very important I believe. It started a discussion that I believe was beneficial to the board, and community at large. "I have faith in me even if no one else does." First I say I love this, second, I have faith in you. Remember Yankee Candle was started when a 16 year old melted crayons with a string in the middle for his mom. He sold it to his neighbor for enough $ to buy enough to make two more. One for his mom one more to sell. I have faith in the 'little guy' which is why I support what I support. You never know when the next Steve Jobs, or Bill Gates will come up and you don't know when or how they will show themselves. If 25 years ago someone said that a man named Steve Jobs was going to spearhead the death of the local music stores with a device that was about the size of a pack of gum... nobody would have believed them. They wouldn't have believed that there were going to be computers the size of a notebook that can hold millions of pieces of information, and it would be affordable enough to have in every home they wouldn't believe you. It is Mary Poppins technology at it's finest. You put in as much as you want and it doesn't get heavier. The point is you just never know... and assuming you do is the first mistake. When you know enough to know you don't know... you know you'll be good... as long as you never stop improving.

Green heads would be people who do everything considered "green" without question. We don't need another inch of farm land even if we were to populate to 11 billion which is where they believe the population will stabilize. We need to stop feeding it all to cows. Soy and corn farming is destructive to the soil which is where we need sustainable farming practices, rotation and biodiversity are probably the most important. We also need to find a way to more sustainably produce farm animals. That is the most unsustainable farming there is... using 6-10 pounds of grain to produce 1 lb of meat is just crazy in my opinion... All seven billion people on this earth now can stand within the confines of LA county. 11 billion I believe we'd all be able to happily stand side by side within the confines of New Hampshire. We don't need more space, we don't need to cut down any forests, we don't need anything like that. We need sustainable production. The solutions mentioned above are just part of it. We also move into more shared space (who really needs a 5 acre lawn for themselves?) and work in other solutions like vertical farming, and vertical living (aka city living) Before I get the question I DO eat meat, I do choose grass fed though when I can.

Oy, where do I start, I'll start here... It does not surprise me they use Hexanes, and to assume that if there were no petro-chemicals we would not have soy wax is false. It is not the only way to extract the oil it just so happens to be the cheapest way right now. It won't always be. The link you provided says that most of the world's soy is produced in America and a lot of soy is exported into china. I don't understand your point when it comes to the article. It doesn't even make sense that they would even want to export soy, it takes a lot of water to produce soy (and other crops) and it is expensive in China to properly get water to farming areas. Coconut you claim I am a green head and then you talk of overpopulation? That is the biggest myth of all. We're not overpopulated and we have the space to fit a lot more people on our little blue ball, we also have enough farm land to produce the food we need. Also, when barrel prices are up that high yes, paraffin WILL be affected. Candles are not the only way they use paraffin, they use it to coat food (to feed the "overpopulated" world) and in the production of many other products. The oil prices will go up that high because the supply will be low, and so will paraffin.... supply will be low. "It could but it's not" YET I don't understand how it is a "Mute" point? I never said it was BETTER in fact I said above it is essentially the same. What I said was that what is released was trapped from the air by a plant probably less than a year ago. I think you're missing the ultimate point here, plants re-grow... they inhale co2, deconstruct it and breath out oxygen. They use the carbon as building blocks to make the plant material then when we burn it it breaks it down again. It is a cycle.... like building a lego robot, taking it apart, putting it back together, taking it apart, putting it back together. Paraffin is like buying a new lego robot each time, destroying it and then purchasing a new one. Eventually you'll have a house full of legos and no way to get them out. FSC certified would mean I support sustainable forestry, but even a lot of fiber that is not fsc certified are from plots of land where the crop is on a 30-40 year rotation... Not much old growth forest goes into paper production. The wood is far too valuable for paper production. I don't use it to bash anyone, I occasionally burn paraffin candles, it is rare but I do. I don't even put on my label they are soy, and I don't really say anything bad about paraffin. I believe that soy is much more sustainable than paraffin or palm, so I use it. It also burns easier in my experience and will be around when there is no petroleum left, be it 50 years from now or 100. That is the definition of sustainable, you can sustain production.... I also take issue with the idea we cannot live without petro-chemicals. We could, we just don't right now. I also think it is INCREDIBLY naive to think that when oil is gone we'll be stuck with candles as light. It doesn't have to be drastic you just have to support sustainable sources- solar, wind, hydro-electric, algae oil, geothermal, the future will be the same if we can switch over to fuel sources produced above the crust like I said. Thanks for proving my point.

What, then stella would you have done differently than I? If what I did wasn't testing I don't know what would pass under your definition I don't know what would. By the way I don't believe pouring and burning over 600 candles to find 30 that "worked" is a quick run through. Combined it is a little over 18,000 hours of burn time. If you were to test 4 at a time it would take over year if you burnt for 12 hours per day every day. If you heard someone had tested their candles for a year, found 30 they liked and had burnt over 600 candles to get there you wouldn't have said anything but congrats... but because I dove in with structure and method and got the same amount of testing done in about 5% of the time I am feeling like there is a penalty, not that I have to prove anything to anyone. I think I am taking this a little personally because I still use the system today, even after testing different jar sizes, waxes, and wicks... I keep coming back to the same system because it works... excellently. On top of that from what I have read it is almost identical to your system. It wasn't luck I stumbled on it was the result of meticulous and obsessive testing. The days I was testing was absolute hell, everything had to be added and I couldn't skip a beat, I had to get through the entire line of candles in 10 minutes so I could get back to the first one to record the next round of data. I didn't have work, I didn't have any external stimuli. I only had the occasional visit from my mentor (who has adopted my system btw)

So again, would you rather support farmer bob or deep water horizon. It doesn't matter where it is refined, which, by the way most soy wax is made in the US with US grown soy, GB and EcoSoya are two of the three major manufacturers of soy wax and both exclusively use American soy and process right here on shore. Cargill is the exception. Personally I prefer farmer bob. In 50 years when oil is 400/barrel and paraffin is $25/lb soy will be around, and from a personal standpoint I take the "radical" ideology that soy comes from and goes to the upper crust. There is energy involved but it can be sustainable energy. I know when I burn a soy candle the things that are released were trapped from the soil and air in the field. When I burn paraffin it is a fossil fuel, and I'm releasing something that was at one point stored deep underground many hundreds of thousands if not millions of years ago. Yes I use petrol-chemicals, plastics, and I have a car but when I can I choose products that are from the upper crust. I am a paper bag kind of guy. FSC certified if I can... then I recycle.

I agree not worth it but if it was towards the end of the candle (full melt pool) it could have overheated and the entire surface of the candle could have been set on fire giving you the same look.

All Yankee store employees should be trained on their waxes. The ones I've encountered have. They don't know much about soy but all the reliable information on soy v paraffin does say that a well wicked candle is essentially the same (from an air pollution point of view) The difference is soy is farmed, paraffin is drilled. It comes down to this, do you want to support farmer bob or Deepwater Horizon?

I could get into a legal argument here but I won't. It is best to consult your personal attorney for advice in this area. An attorney's mind is built to construct and distroy cases. Sitting down for an hour or two with your products gaining information is worth every penny, not just for the liability part, but business advice. You can go over different business structures (never.... EVER do sole proprietor) and their recommendations for a direction. They may even bring something up you hadn't thought about. Back to clueless. I still say go for it. If you commit to something it sort of forces you to 'get it together'

Well due diligence is subjective. If testing everything on the market 3 or 4 times is due diligence than no I didn't. I knew what I wanted to do - create a soy candle that burns smoothly and evenly with no problem. My mentor gave me the 'basics' told me about the different wicks, the difference between them, how they perform and what they have found, so I ordered a lot of each. Then I knew I wanted to be without paraffin and palm, so I focused on soy. Some soy simply sucks, and the reviews tell me this, so I avoided them and picked four. I tested four in every wicking combo I thought would work in an unscented candle. I had 190 wicks going at once the first night, knocked out quite a few of them and proceeded with the bests, then I poured 15 scents in each wax and burned them for throw, knocked out two waxes, and some of the wicking, then I went onto pouring the rest of the scents. I poured, cured, tested, powerburned, and re-tested. After 600-some candles I came up with 30 I liked how they performed and yes, it took 3 weeks to do. If this is insufficient, so be it, but I have around 2,500 single spaced pages of information including the viscosity of the FO v wicking, depth of the wax pool over time, height of the flame over time, time to edge, ambient temperature, temp on the bottom of the container, and what kind of flame it is producing. All this information was taken every 10 minutes, and graphed. I tested at ambient temps at 64º, 70º, and 74º. I also paired this with information I have from blankey, the cheep wally world ones, a few local companies and colonial. I've also mapped performance and found a sweet spot based on a few different factors, which is why I guess which one will work at first. As for performance over time, I don't really understand that, over the life of the candle or the shelf life? Shelf life is something I do not test, I personally won't sell a candle that is over 2 months old. If I pour an order and it isn't picked up or returned they are given away. The oldest candle I have now is around 4 years old, and was one I had at my first table at the show mentioned above. The three week thing is not for everyone, and shouldn't be taken lightly but to assume a product is inferior because it didn't take months, or years to test is, well, bold. Candle science is not some new frontier, we have enough information on this board alone to come up with a system that will work, and with some super fine tuning and testing they could have a marketable product in just a week or two. It would take a decent amount of information gathering up front, and masses of meticulous testing run consecutively but it could be done.

This is an interesting topic, how people get competitive when they are face to face but not really on here. I had someone ask me once if they could buy some FO from me because they wanted something similar, to make a product for a customer of theirs and it didn't seem too offensive. I sold it to them for $3/oz which is a lot but I said my blend my price. I have sold that fragrance to that person a few times now and it's worked out well.

Yes and no I was building off of a mentor who gave me the 'basics' and let me loose. They did not tell me what kind of wax to use either so I had tested 4 (all soy) they did give me a 'primer' on waxes and wicks though. I started off with cd and eco wicks, they have very similar attributes but the cd wicks "turn" the wax more which helps the fragrance throw. I had also made candles with paraffin wax before (from Michael's) So like I said, yes and no. I did learn my system in 3 weeks, and since then I have only tweaked a few things, most of it has to do with pour temps but even that hasn't changed much.

This is where the confidence in the product comes into play. I had my product down, I sold 2 size candles in 30 different scents. I created a system and I had three sizes of wicks I used, two for the smaller ones, and one system for the larger ones. I did what I thought would work in the smaller ones and the larger ones if it didn't work it just didn't come in the larger one. I would burn, if it 'protested' in the large jar I would immediately eliminate it, I didn't sell enough of them to bother myself with them (at the time) and I would do a 4 hour burn, a 10-12 hour burn, and then a 4 hour burn, and then another 10-12 hour to finish it up (the small one). If I didn't like it I did another burn with the smaller, or larger wick (the one I didn't try out of the two) If it didn't work I just tossed it out. I now have 120 scents I keep stocked, testing 15 or 20 per month including re-testing old scents to make sure they are still "working" the way I think is acceptable. I am now on a rotation to test all the scents once a year. When I first started I tested 50 scents in 7 days, eliminated like 30, then tested 25 more in about three days (both not including cure time of 4 days.) In total I was pretty confident in three weeks in my product. Got the rest of my ducks in a row and there it was. I didn't have a name or anything, I went on a domain search, found a short, simple name I liked that reminded me of a place I love vacationing and it just 'fit' I registered the domain went to the lawyer, got my llc in order and had everything done within 8 weeks from the first order to the open for business. That show was about a month after that, showed up with no table cloth, no stands. I just had candles that I believed in on a bare generic 6' faux wood grain table.

My first show I was not prepared at all, I had my product down but that was about it. I was the only one without a 'look' for the booth and guess what... I was the "winner" at the show. I did several hundred dollars and there wasn't a single table there other than mine that did over $50. Sometimes we spend too much time thinking of things and you get lost in what you're really doing... we don't sell bottles, tins, or glassware, we don't sell tablecloths, we don't sell a fancy display. We sell what is inside. If you believe in that product you'll be just fine!

I did see this from Blankey when they first came out and I was just amazed, for one thing this, I believe was the response to the trend that was happening on their facebook page. People were pouring used wax, or crumbled wax from tarts they didn't like the ht for into jars, wicking them and burning them. 5 months later this thing appears. But I guess that is what good companies do, right? The second thing I noticed is that this stuff is suspiciously similar to wax crumbles used for their tarts, so they could conceivably just break up the tarts and do the same thing for $5 less... The person I know at blankey said that these are different than the crumbles they use for the tarts but I am not sure I believe that. I believe she believed they had less fragrance oil in it, which would be more like the stuff they make their votive candles out of. Interesting for sure! I have been playing with the idea of doing a create-your-own sand-art style booth to take to shows. I think it will pull a lot of people in, I remember doing a sand-art style candle when I was around 10, and it was really fun and in retrospect it was really the first candle I ever made.

This is a good seller for me too, I don't know why, it is one of those scents that gag me when I pour it. Other than that Apple Butter Caramel from Nature's Garden has been quite a hit for me this season.