OCcandles

Thanks Steve, no hard feeling your way and wessex brothers! That was a quick draft that I through up and was waiting for my brochure to be finished (2 days ago) to change that page. I updated it now and it's a little more correct, both political and grammar. :lipsrseal I have updated that page now and it's been on my to do list. Here (and I got iespelling plug-in finally installed so my threads won't be so bad either.... ) And no, I have no expectations of making 100k profit anytime soon, but those who do in the business....................... ~russell www.orangecoastcandles.com

Again, thank you all for your experiance and suggestions. I really am taking them to heart. To answer some questions, I have used many scents for testing but only have the 2 "vanilla" and "Pineapple Coconut Lime" in larger amounts. When i do a new set for the votives I'm also getting the color down for each so I'll move on to more products when I can. I'm trying to get pillars down with the same 2 scents first before purchasing a large amount of essence. I don't have a D&B yet, i may have to look into this later as you said. If I can make it I would love to check out the LA shows, what a great learning oppertunity at worst... ~russell www.orangecoastcandles.com

Thanks everyone for the kind words and experiences/suggestions! I really haven’t tapped into the market of which I’m looking to enter. The “beach” OC type stores maybe even tattoo and smoke shops. :shocked2:Well, I’m getting my order from the printers tomorrow finalized so I should have my brochures in-hand soon to put the theory to the test. Not to look so bad, I have had a part-time IT consulting job in this year’s process of getting candles going. I do believe in the product and enough (or maybe too much) time/$ went into the development of the votive sets. An organic approach to growth sounds like the best way to move forward and that's my plan. :tiptoe: I’m not a sales guy, that’s for sure (I’m just the IT guys!), but I’m excited/scared for the next step and that generally means you are moving in the right direction. :embarasse ~Russell www.orangecoastcandles.com

Thanks guys, really appreciate the tips. My vendor doesn't offer CDN only CD I have not tried the CDN's yet, so I’ll give that a try. Thanks again!

Oh, and before I forget. Here is a red pillar. Forgive my bad kitchen shot. I have to say, these pillars are stunning looking in person the pics do not do them justice! ~Russell www.orangecoastcandles.com

Hello party people! I have a question for you all. I'm trying to get my pillar line going and running into a wick issue. Man testing pillars takes forever! I've tried LX, HTP, CC, RRD and ECO. I like the ECO wick the best but the size difference is killing me. The ECO 8 is a little large and the ECO 6 is a little small, only if they had a 7 I'm using Palm wax as the post title states @ 3" x 6" size. Here is the before and after of the ECO 8 pillar. It seems I have a 8-12 hour period before the sides will melt and leak with the ECO 8. The pillar on the left is after an 8 hour burn. and the one of the right is 40 or so hours with 8-12 hour sessions. I'm going to have a warning label on the bottom that says something to the fact "only burn candle for 5-6 hours"... Below is the ECO 6 and this is about after a 25-35 hour burn. The flame is very small, but has not burned out on it's own yet. Anyways, what do you guys/gals think? ECO 8 to big, ECO 6 too small, forget them both and use different, LX, HTP, RRD? Thanks ~Russell www.orangecoastcandles.com

Ahhhh, that sounds about right, thanks! I guess the big question would be how much do you have to order to go direct to Britz and bypass IGI?

I have had both of my credit cards stolen from online sources. I also had a $1 charge from an ISP. This is the standard method many CC jackers to (according to my bank). they are checking to see if your card is active stays open before they try a larger amount. In the last two months, I have added my CC's to many companies and I cannot narrow it down. One shocking thing is that someone in NY (i'm in CA) was able to use my card as if they had it in hand?? After talking to the bank this is very common, they have a CC machine that makes your CC as if they stole it from you. I didn't know someone could do this. My CC was still in hand yet charged hundreds of $$ at Bloomingdales in NY?? This stuff scares me! ~Russell www.orangecoastcandles.com

When standardizing I went back and forth between Soy and palm. I ultimately selecting Palm to standardize because of many reasons but one of them was the lack of well-made “looking” candles and the vast amount of soy candle companies. I did read up on all the palm/soy/paraffin debates. It took 4 months of testing, testing, testing, and you got it more testing to get the palm candle votives up to my expectations. The shocker I had was that IGI changed palm wax vendor about 2 months ago and almost dropped dead when I got bags of new palm wax from a new manufacture and it was completely different than the original. It’s close enough so I didn’t have to change much in my candles. And you know when IGI changes wax we all do unless your big enough to go direct. (and if you were wondering what it takes to order from IGI direct, it’s 20k lbs for order, that was about 3 years ago) The new manufacture is “Britz” and I went to the site direct to see what policies they have in place and they are replacing rubber tree farms for palm. So no deforestation. I Think that is the trick though, it’s not “palm” or “soy” it’s the manufacture you buy from and what they are doing, and they all do it different. The other contemplation I had when developing the site and product info is do I even address the deforestation with palm or palm in the past? I ultimately decided not to because when you bring light to something that doesn’t exist it makes it real nonetheless. Here is a site that talks politics on Palm, I didn’t find it necessary to even post this on my site. http://www.palmoiltruthfoundation.com/ ~Russell www.orangecoastcandles.com

Hello everyone! Long story short, I have been making candles for about 6 years and decided to leave my full-time position as director of IT to try to take our (the wifey and I) hobby into a business. My wife is the aromatherapist in the family and I’m the cook. When we meet up she did everything under the sun from bath salts to lip balm. The only thing she didn't do was candles. I read up on it and ordered a test kit all those years ago and fell for it. I'm not sure if I’m going to get flamed for this post, but I chose to standardize in palm wax for many reason, but mainly it's hands down the most amazing and difficult wax I've worked with (and I’ve tried them all). I didn't use sites like this because I wanted to learn on my own, but now with a completed product I thought i would venture out a little bit to the candle community for some honest feedback (from the people who know). I'm a firm believer of giving back, and after this year of standardization I thought I would help those who are trying to make the same journey I have. For example to get a custom box for my candles I had to order 1500 of them to get them under $1 per box. This didn't include the plastic top which I had to make by hand with holes, cork dots, bend and ect... 1500 times 8000 cork punch holes... lol Cost me around $4k just for the boxes. (wow!) I looked around for palm wax competitors and have been amazed to find how bad they are from an appearance point of view. Anyways, I saw a nitch in it and it's been one hell of a ride. Got a box custom made for my votive sets, tested endlessly and finally got online to try to start to sell. I'm done with 2 (yes that is all I have so far....) I have my site setup to sell, Amazon, Etsy and Ebay is next. I have had 0 (yes ZERO) sales outside of friends and family from these venues. I thought I had low expectations, but obviously not enough. My next approach is the "Brick" side and deliver a package to local stores here in Orange County. I spent a lot of time making a brochure and researching my cost and wholesale cost to vendors. I should have this done next week and give that a shot. I have higher hopes for sales in this area. Ok, enough is enough. My site is www.orangecoastcandles.com. I'm not posting to try to get sales, more for connection amongst peers. My wife won't talk to me about candles or the business side of it anymore and my family still can't believe I left my 100k job to try this... sigh Something I would love to discuss is the wholesale market and how to get your products into stores. I'm and IT guy not a sales guy. I love making candles but the sales/admin side of everything is a killer. I've done some research and I see a bunch of sites that allow a manufacture (like us) to post your products at higher volume for retailers to see for $300-$700 fee + commission of ??. Well, Hello everyone this is my first post, so be gentle. But I want brutal honest opinions. ~Russell May the light of life burn within you!