Start A Low-Risk Candle Business

Author: Sylvia M. DeSantis

What do a relaxing bath, a romantic dinner, and a power outage have in common? They’re all improved with candles!

No longer just for décor or even utilitarian purposes, the popularity and usefulness of candles has grown dramatically. People use candles to clear away invasive scents from their homes, beautify rooms, relax their souls, or get lost in the charm of a flickering flame.

Starting an at-home candle-making business is both an easy and inexpensive way to make a product you can stand behind and market easily.

Do Basic Research

I was spurned on by a simple how-to book, and old aluminum pot and the desire to see my creativity in action, and you can be too. Before buying supplies and trying to melt and mold anything, invest in a well written candle-making book like Candle Making: A Step by Step Guide From Beginner to Expert.

While there’s lots of information on the Web about candle-making, realize that when you’re working with flames and flashpoint—the point at which wax ignites—you want the best and most reliable information.

Find A Candle Supplier

While many local craft shops will have what you need for making your first or second batch of candles, you can purchase supplies much more inexpensively in bulk; from wholesalers on the Internet. And the best part is that bulk no longer meands hundreds of pounds of wax!

A reputable wholesaler like One Stop Candle offers various bulk waxes for as little as roughly $1 a pound, basic inexpensive molds, wicks, wick holders, and additives like scents, colors and wax primers for anywhere from a 1/3 to ½ less than what you’ll pay in a craft or specialty shop.

Get Your Supplies

When I first began making candles, I didn’t have a lot to spend; in fact, for a meager $85, I was in.

But once I had my most basic supplies in hand, my how-to book, a few pounds of wax, some colored wax chips (a little goes a long way), essential oil for scenting, a sturdy pot, a dozen votive molds, wicking and wick holders, a thermometer, a few pot holders, and a clear workspace I was ready to begin.

Then once I knew what the tricks of the trade looked like, I nabbed amazing deals at garage sales, like the funky containers for .25 that made unique mold shapes, or the box of silicone molds worth about $150 I snagged at a flea market for $5.

Decide How Your Time Will Be Spent

While individuals who enter the candle business do so with very practical goals in mind, like being able to work from home and make an income without a huge investment, one tenet of candle-making that is rarely considered is the concept of making one’s time equal money.

Before beginning, decide how you will make the effort of the candle-making process pay for itself because, although you will need to be present the entire time the process is underway (anywhere from one to multiple hours depending on your energy level, and what kind/how many candles you’re making), you’ll find that you’re really only doing about 15 minutes worth of actual work.

Although candle sales, even modest ones, can yield as much as 300% pure profit, it's too easy to forget to figure in your time investment. Making candles takes more than just a stove and materials; it takes odd chunks of scattered time—time to melt the wax safely, prep the molds and the wicks, pour carefully, pour again when the wax shrinks (sometimes in a different color, which requires another batch of melted wax), add scents, and release initial batches from the molds so you can keep the process cycling seamlessly.

Make a plan for those days you’ll be making candles. This means plan on doing other tasks you’re able to do in and around your home, specifically in your kitchen or wherever it is you’re melting where you can watch the stove while wax is both melting and settling between pours. In my case, I spent the balance of my time grading Freshman Composition essays, something I had to do anyway and could do at the table while watching the stove and the wax thermometer.

Make A Simple Marketing Plan

Candles are a simple product and marketing them doesn’t take a huge amount of effort. Choose stores carefully. A large mega-mart store will almost certainly have no interest in selling your homemade creations, no matter how inexpensively you can wholesale them, but a small, locally-owned store with similar appeal items likely will. And you have nothing to lose by approaching these venues.

Remember to speak with managers and owners, not salespeople who don’t have veto or buying power for the store. If it’s a place where you’ve shopped in the past, even better. Be polite and bring samples.

To encourage a purchase and ease sales for the retailers, I always offered free displays with each dozen votives purchased. My displaced came from recycled brown boxes that began their lives as shipping boxes for CDs. I then had an artistic friend decorate them with a sketch of a sleeping cat, Zoli-Ann (the company’s namesake).

I also included small business cards with candle-burning instructions on one side and the scent information and logo (same sleeping kitty) on the other side. The current contact information and—Zoli-Ann Candles—were written across the top. Offering these kinds of simple additions will help the retailer display your product without a lot of fuss or effort on their part. The more you facilitate a store’s sales, the better.

Choose Price Points And Sell Your Candles

The beauty of candle sales is that, even by offering votives at very reasonable wholesale prices of about .40 each, you should still be able to make over 100% profit on the materials as well as allow your retailers to sell the product for nearly three times what they’ve paid; depending, of course, on where they place their price points.

In my case, when the candles sold, which they did quickly, retailers didn’t hesitate to order more, knowing they were getting a fantastic deal and feeling reassured that votives selling for a $1.10 was a reasonable price point for just about anyone.

Don’t Be A Stranger

Stop by the shops where you’ve sold your candles and check your displays. With permission, do some dusting and maybe a little rearranging of your products. (I did this and was thanked profusely by one especially busy boutique owner.)

Bring more cards with contact information for custom orders and leave them by the register (again, with permission). And most importantly, offer to switch out scents that aren’t selling with those that seem to fly off the shelves (which will inevitably be the most unlikely scent in your mind).

Being your own entrepreneur doesn’t always take the savvy of Martha Stewart, or the media power of Oprah Winfrey. Sometimes a good idea and little bit of cash is just enough.