Starting A Candle Business

Are you interested in starting a candle business? Making and selling your own soy candles could be the thing for you. Natural products is a booming market as more and more people become more aware and cautious of what they are putting on, in and around themselves and family. Soy wax is a natural, non toxic wax that burns cleaner and longer than paraffin wax.

There is a growing list of articles here to get you started on your candle business journey. I want to be able to show you how to get your candle business going from the ground up! Everyone loves candles, so if you love candles too and are looking for a wonderful business opportunity and are willing to put in the effort, then take a look around my site, get a few supplies and try making some candles to see how you like it and let me know if you have any questions or suggestions on what kind of info you'd like to see here!

Where to Sell Soy Candles?

May 28, 2013 by SoyCandleMakingTime 20 Comments

You’ve decided to launch your soy candle making business and you’re rarin’ to go! But where to start? Where can you get your amazing soy candles out in the open where people can buy them?

Today I’m going to list different places to sell soy candles. I will go into more detail in another post about each of these, but for now this should give you a great idea where to start. Some may have an easier time starting with one place or another depending on where you live and what’s available to you. I’ll try to list from the easiest to ones that may take more work. ( I even list Etsy down lower on the list, simply because it takes more work for each candle you sell since you have to pack them and ship them and takes time for you to get noticed online.)

Places to Sell Soy Candles….

Yard Sale. I have set my candles out while having a yard sale before and actually sold a few! Plus it gets your name out there locally, and if you make sure they take a business card, they may want to order more down the road!
Home Parties. This one is probably the most cost effective and you can definitely make some good money here! The one home party I did, I didn’t get very many people, but I ended up selling quite a bit, so if you don’t mind talking in front of people for a few minutes, the candles can pretty much sell themselves. It’s a good idea to make a good inventory of candles to take with you though so you can sell them on the spot.
In Store. You might be able to find a small shop that would display your candles. I did this for awhile at a Bi-Rite(plumbing supplies! lol) and it would have worked out better if it had been closer to home. I did get sales there though, and It didn’t take any money for me (except gas to drop off candles now and then) since my husband knew the store owners and they offered to display them in exchange for a couple candles here and there.
Craft Show/Bazaar. There are usually craft shows going on somewhere, especially around the holidays. Many times you can find ones that only cost around $10 for a table too!
Saturday Market. I’ve set up at our saturday market a few times and sold quite a bit there. It does take a little more work to set up and take down and you’ll need a pop up canopy, but the sales could be worth it! This does
Mall Space. I’ve never done this, and I think it’s probably kind of expensive, but if you live near a large mall, it may very well be worth it, so it would be a good idea to contact your local mall and see what the cost is and requirements for setting up. Christmas time would be a great time to try this.
Etsy. You can try Etsy, though I never had much luck selling there(I didn’t try too hard either since I had my own website), plus you have fees and stuff that make it hard to make much if you are wanting to price your candles reasonably since shipping is high for candles because of the weight.
Ebay. Selling your candles on Ebay isn’t the best way to go unless you have extra stock you just need to get rid of at a fairly low price.
Your Own Website. To me, this was the best way to go. Most of my candle sales came from my own website. It does take time to set one up though, and some knowledge in search engine optimization so you can get seen when people search for soy candles. But once your site is established, it can pretty much start growing on it’s own once people find out about you and start coming back. A website takes the most work to set up and maintain, but it can also be the most consistent way to sell your soy candles. You could outsource some of your website work though, like paying for a custom design and search engine optimization. (I do web design and SEO, so that link goes to my own web development site)

So that’s all I’ve got for now! Please feel free to comment if you know where else to sell homemade soy candles.

How To Price Soy Candles for Your Home Business Part 2

May 18, 2013 by SoyCandleMakingTime 10 Comments

So in part 1 of learning how to price soy candles I covered how to find your base cost for each candle and the option to find out approx. how long it takes you to make the candles so you can figure out how much you want to earn per hour. Once you figure out approx. how long it takes you to make one candle (or a batch of candles, depending on how you want to do it), then take your chosen hourly rate…let’s say $8 per hour. So if it takes 20 min. to make 1 8oz candle (counting in the heating and cooling time before pouring) then divide $8 by 3 and it would be $2.66 per candle. Now of course if you can do batches of say, 6 candles in 30 min. then that would only be $.63 per candle, so much better to do batches if you can.

How Do I Find Out My Retail Price

Ok so now to find out what to charge for retail sales of your soy candles. The general rule is “Your cost” x 3 or 4= retail price. Plus if you want to factor in your hourly rate, just use the formula above and add it to the retail price per candle.

So here’s a formula for the retail price of an 8oz soy jar candle:

Base cost: $2.50

Hourly rate per candle $2.66 (making one candle at a time) or $.63 (making batches of 6 at a time)

$2.50 x 3 = $7.50 + $.63= $8.13 (we’ll round it to $8.15 )

$2.50 x 3 = $7.50 + $2.66 = $10.16 (we’ll round this to $10.15 or maybe even just $10 even)

So there’s a nice formula for you to use, but you will need to figure out your own base cost since costs for candle supplies will vary depending on where you purchase your supplies.

Other costs to consider that go along with a soy candle business are:

Shipping supplies (you might want to somehow figure this into your retail price of your candles too. So if you will be specially packaging any of your candles, make sure to break down the packaging costs too. Usually it is best just to use flat rate priority mail boxes from USPS if you can, and you’ll probably get a good amount of packing peanuts and other packing stuff with your candle supply orders so then you can just reuse them when you ship out candles! I almost never had to buy packing material for shipping because of this!
Higher electricity costs because of using the stove more.
Cost of gas if you are driving to shows or events.
Shipping costs when buying soy candle making supplies.
Website Hosting
Website Shopping cart costs

Well, I think that’s about it! You’re on your way now to getting your soy candle business up and running! It is exciting, but remember, it is also a lot of hard work.

Please feel free to post your questions in the comments section and I’ll do my best to answer them! Or you can contact me by email.

So what’s next? Click below….

Where to Sell Soy Candles

How to Price Soy Candles for Your Home Business Part 1

May 18, 2013 by SoyCandleMakingTime 24 Comments

Hello there everyone! I’m back.

I know it’s been awhile since I’ve posted, but you know, life get’s busy, especially as a work at home mom of 3 crazy boys! So
I had this question posed to me as I was thinking about what to write about next on here. There are so many topics to cover and questions to answer when you’re talking about making soy candles, or starting a candle business that it’s hard to know what to address next. So here we go!

How To Price Soy Candles

Pricing your soy candles isn’t too difficult if you know the general formula, but it can take some time and math to figure up exactly how much each candle is costing you in order to determine how much to sell them for so that you can make a profit and ensure that your time and effort in making them, is being paid for.

Many times, and myself included, we think that we need to compete with other soy candle companies and in order to do that , we reason, is to make sure our price is lower than theirs. Well, I’m here to tell ya, that’s not a good way to do business in reality. I know from experience, that it takes time and money to make soy candles and I tried pricing my candles at what I thought was a “reasonable price” and It didn’t end up paying for my time and effort that I put into making the candles and preparing them for packaging and shipping and all the work that goes into it.

People Will Pay The Price For Quality Soy Candles

They will! Believe it or not, and that is why you see some of the bigger name soy candle companies out there still in business and seemingly doing well! I know, I know, I’ve looked at the competition and my jaw dropped at some of the prices, but once I really dug into the business of soy candle making, I understood why they charge so much. Your business has to be able to pay you, or you won’t stick with it. You’ll get discouraged and give up because at the end of the day (or year) you find that you only made enough to cover your cost and some expenses including the extra on the electric bill that comes with using the stove so much……(didn’t think about that one did you? 😉

So you have to realize that there is a reason these other companies are able to grow their customer base while having seemingly high prices (if compared to regular candles anyway). It’s because people LOVE their candles and keep coming back for more. It’s worth it to those people. And it is. I mean don’t you have certain candle fragrances that you just LOVE and maybe only one or two companies carry that fragrance? Candles are addictive, and if you have a quality product and maybe a few unique fragrances, people will buy them even if you think you’re charging too much….which you aren’t when you consider all the costs of soy candle making.

How To Find the Cost of Each Soy Candle

We are going to use a soy jar candle for this example and I’m going to list each and every item used in making soy jar candles so you know what you need to figure out how much each candle is costing you.

8oz Soy Jar Candle Breakdown:

8oz of soy container wax (Find cost for 1oz x 8)
Jar (usually you buy these by the dozen, so cost per dozen divided by 12= cost per jar)
Candle Wick (Divide cost per package of wicks by amount of wicks, example: $3 for package of 10 wicks= $3/10= $.30 per wick)
Fragrance Oil (1lb of fragrance oil is approx. $16+ so that’s $1 per oz, with 1/2oz per 8oz candle = $.50 per 8oz candle)
Dye (I used liquid dye with a dropper, and the company I bought it from actually gave a number on their website of aprox how many drops a container, so I was able to figure up the cost per drop, but you may need to just use a scale and figure up how much a few drops weigh and go from there)
Wick Stickers (just divide the cost per package by the amount in the package like we did with the wicks)
Lids (find the cost of each individual lid)
Ribbon or other decorative items (Just measure how much you use. Take the total length of the spool of ribbon divided by the length you use for a candle=amount per spool, and then take the cost per spool divided by the amount per spool= cost per candle
Tags and warning labels (Same as wicks and wick stickers, just divide cost per package by the amount per package(or roll)

So that’s your cost per candle as far as supplies go.

How Much Are YOU Getting Paid For Your Time?

Now you need to figure out how long it takes you to make a batch of candles so you can decide how much it’s going to cost you per hour (how much you’d like to get paid!). Now obviously it will be much better for you to be able to make larger batches of candles at one time than to only make candles to order. So you have to decide, are you willing to take the extra time to many times only make one candle at a time because someone only ordered one candle or 6 candles, each a different fragrance? Or would you rather make batches at a time and have them already stocked in order to save you time and money? (remember that electric bill?) It’s something to seriously consider before you jump into business.

So I’m going to stop there for tonight, but I’ll try and finish up part 2 tomorrow.

I really hope this helps you out, and as always, please ask any questions you may have and I’ll try to answer them as best I can!

Up Next

How to Price Soy Candles Part 2