Do people even purchase votives anymore?

[classiccandle]

I currently sell container candles and melts but am thinking of making votives and was wondering if anyone even buys them today? My wife loves candles but prior to me making them she only bought a few pillar candles and the rest were containers. We don't have one votive in our house.

Are they worth the investment and time to make? Do they sell individually or packaged in groups of two or more?

Any advice you can provide before I decide to start purchasing molds, pins, and wax would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

[nursenancy]

Votives are by far my best seller. I have one table with about 30 different scents. I have the display boxes and people just pick their scents and I put them in a paper bag. I can barely keep up with them. I don't use wick pins. never had any luck with those..

[ksranch]

I don't sell as much as nursenancy, but they are in my line up, and worth having there

[Candybee]

I quit making them long ago. They are not big sellers for me and when they did they were not worth all the money and effort to make. However, I did switch to 4oz hex jars and sold them as "votive" jar candles. They sold like hotcakes.

[pcbrook]

I never sold very many of them when I made them either. They were too much a pain for me to continue them so I stopped. I guess is depends on what area you live in.

[HayCreekCandles]

They are a good seller for us around Christmas time. People snatch them up for stocking stuffers and "teacher/boss/babysitter etc gifts". They are small and inexpensive gifts.

[ChrisR]

I sell lots of votives!

[shimmerglo]

I just started up candles again, but when I was making them, the votives weren't a huge seller but they were steady for the most part!

[emilyspoppy]

Russ;

I think it depends on your market venue and what you consider is the most effective way to use your most valuable resource . . . Time.

Unless I sell them for a buck apiece they just sit on the shelf. When I lower the price from $2 to $1 (BOGO) they have good movement.

That's just my experience.

They also are my least favorite chandlering project.

You do remember me telling you that I've grown to hate candle making, too, don't you? (lol)

Good luck whatever you decide.

Dave

[TallTayl]

Gosh Dave, those numbers are like mine. I don't like to carry items with high volume very low margin any more. They take too much space and time relative to the profit potential.

I am slowly learning to let go of things that do not bring joy to make. Votives were highest on the list. I do not regret discontinuing them for one second. It gave me back time and space for much more fun and profitable items.

[emilyspoppy]

Gosh Dave, those numbers are like mine. I don't like to carry items with high volume very low margin any more. They take too much space and time relative to the profit potential.

I am slowly learning to let go of things that do not bring joy to make. Votives were highest on the list. I do not regret discontinuing them for one second. It gave me back time and space for much more fun and profitable items.

If I had even a smidge of your talent, my "most precious resource" would be spent creating more of your great B&B products and your award winning crafted candle projects.

I actually didn't mind making the first 10,000 or so votives, but I would rather eat dirt than routinely stock them now. Every now and then I find that I manage to work-up the energy to make a batch or two. I think the worst part is cleaning the dang molds. The scars on my fingers testify to that.

The strange thing is . . . I actually enjoy burning them more than most other candles.

:undecided

Dave

[Scented]

I sell lots of votives!

We do too.

[emilyspoppy]

We do too.

That's just because you're more talented (and patient) than me! (lol) . . . but TRUE!

[Candybee]

My hat's off to those of you who do well selling votives. Like Dave and Talltayl mine just didn't do well unless I lowered the price... a lot! They just weren't profitable for me to make on top of the time and effort I spent making them I just let them go. Same thing with tea lights and floating candles only worse.

The only 'small' wax products I do make from time to time during the fall/holiday season now are tarts. There is still a market for those and they do well here in this area. Again they don't make a big profit for me even when they do fly off the shelves but I sometimes make them so I have a smaller affordable item to sell. I noticed that even thou I don't make a big profit over them the attraction of them brings in more customers and I end up making more money selling other products as a whole.

Edited July 4, 2013 by Candybee

[TallTayl]

Oh candybee.... Teal lites... Poke my eyes out before i have to make a ton of those.... It takes as much labor to produce a tea lite from start to finish as it does any other candle, with much less return per unit In my case.

The two things it comes down to in my business model are: 1) profit potential per square foot of display (and storage) space and 2)minimum $ amount per sales transaction.

I had to take a hard look at display space. Every square inch matters. I started out with 4 square feet of votive display at one large fair. When i ran the numbers, the most i could potentially make in a day with that space filled with votives was pretty low even with the fairly rapid turnover. Replaced votives in that display space with higher margin items and suddenly i could actually make some real money on that space that cost the same to rent as every other square foot in my shop.

Interesting observation on customer behavior.... When votives, a low $ item, were toward the front of the shop it set the $ mind set subconsciously for other items. When leading with a 'cheap' item, sales of higher priced, higher margin items was slower than when the higher $ items were the first thing customers saw. It easy easy to conclude that votives were actually costing me sales where they were located.

On the minimum $ per transaction, It costs me the same base amount to conduct every transaction. i figured out what the optimal minimum sales amount was for my operation to not cost more than the transaction yields. Then i adjusted the items and displays to favor that amount. Sure a lot of $2 sales add up, but i would rather invest resources into say, one $20 sale, than 5 $4 sales, especially when the item(s) in that one transaction take much less time and energy to make.

@Dave- TY for the kind words. Don't sell your own talents short my dear.

[nursenancy]

I find tealights to be a pain also, but I have one customer, a Russian chiropractor, that buys literally hundreds of tealights from me. He buys them in batches of 40, 10 scents at a time EVERY week. He pays my rent at my store. He says he can't go one night without burning my candles. Then when he comes in to pick them up, he always buys a bunch of other stuff. I love him, LOL

[Scented]

I find tealights to be a pain also, but I have one customer, a Russian chiropractor, that buys literally hundreds of tealights from me. He buys them in batches of 40, 10 scents at a time EVERY week. He pays my rent at my store. He says he can't go one night without burning my candles. Then when he comes in to pick them up, he always buys a bunch of other stuff. I love him, LOL

I think I'd be in love with him too lol!

[Scented]

That's just because you're more talented (and patient) than me! (lol) . . . but TRUE!

I dunno know about that. I will say that our votives move, but we don't stock 'em by the box any more. I use whatever is leftover from making my 3x3s to do the votives any more. Thing is I can't seem to keep anything stocked and it's making me loony. ha!

[nursenancy]

Interesting observation on customer behavior.... When votives, a low $ item, were toward the front of the shop it set the $ mind set subconsciously for other items. When leading with a 'cheap' item, sales of higher priced, higher margin items was slower than when the higher $ items were the first thing customers saw. It easy easy to conclude that votives were actually costing me sales where they were located.

Hmmm. that is definitely food for thought. thanks for that..

[emilyspoppy]

Hmmm. that is definitely food for thought. thanks for that..

I think Shannon is absolutely correct. She knows this business.

We have a very regular customer base in our shop. They are loyal, but they are frugal (cheap), too. They never forget a sale and always expect to pay that price whenever they buy. I always loved seeing new faces (tourists). If some regulars were in the shop at the time, I let them sell our products. They always want some payoff, though. Grrrrrrr!

I have a difficult time sometimes with my wife, but I think I have pretty much even convinced her that we want to emphasize high quality rather than low price.

[Chefmom]

Back in the days when I was a candle purchaser instead of a candle maker, I would ONLY buy votives. I too am frugal, but I didn't like sinking $25++ into just ONE scent. With votives I could have the scent for a couple of days, then switch and I wasn't spending a ton of money. I already had some really cute votive cups and so it was my way of saving money.

I also don't like to commit to the scent if I don't know that I will even like it when it's burning, and a votive was perfect because if I didn't like it, I wasn't out a lot of money. I want to have an affair with the scent, not marry it.

I did finally break down and bought a homemade candle in a scent that I really liked at the time. It was horrid. Black soot all through the neck of the jar, a tall torch of a flame and I ended up with soot on my wall. I had paid $30 for this really pretty autumn scented with cute pumpkin embeds in a giant jar (gel candle) from someone on ebay with GREAT feedback and then paid shipping and was really ticked with the way the candle burned. I went back to only votives for quite some time.

So the moral of the story is that if you want to entice more frugal people, and you don't hate making votives then yes, make them. If you only want the high end market, don't.

And the advice about where you place them in your sales display is really great advice!! It reminds us all that every single item in stores is studied and analyzed for optimum movement! :highfive: