Your product line should reflect your candle business. But, where should you begin?
This article will discuss seven steps you should take to start your business.
Do not sell candles that you don’t know how to make
Many people mistakenly believe that candle skills are easily converted to business skills. This is one of the main problems with starting a candle business.
This could not be further from reality.
It takes a different set of skills to start a candle business than candle making. These are just a few of the many:
- Marketing & sales
- Branding & logo design
- Digital presence
- Customer experience design
- Sales copy
- Planning for business
The list goes on and on.
It takes more than just basic candle-making skills to become the CEO of your business. While many candle influencers have created small kingdoms within our niche, it is possible to learn the business and entrepreneurial skills from many non-candle sources.
There is a vast difference between these two skill sets.
It’s possible to start a candle business without being familiar with the business, but it is impossible to know how to make candles.
Do not start building a candle business unless you can make candles.
It is essential to learn the basics of any skill to succeed, and candles are no exception.
You are not ready to invest in your future?
You should be a specialist and not a generalist.
It’s easy for people to like you. What about when you are starting your own business? You get desperate.
Losing-your-identity desperate
The temptation to be all things to everyone is tempting, but this will lead you to your demise.
You will burn out quickly if every candle you make is every color, every shape, and every scent.
It is important to move outward but timing is key.
You can choose to concentrate on a limited number of designs as your first product offering.
More to come
There is only so much bandwidth. Your success in the future depends on your early successes. Burnout can be caused by a lack of focus on inventory, testing, and other overheads.
Not to mention that if you try and sell to everybody, you are selling to no one.
Make it different. Keep it small.
Expand your product range starting with one base
The priority should be simplicity.
This means you only need one set of materials to build your initial offering.
Specifically, you will find the same candle and wax combination in your early products.
Common bases are best practices in candle design. Too many variables in the base of the design (multiple sizes, waxes) make troubleshooting more difficult.
You will find it difficult to navigate the murky waters of an adventure if your supply chain is too complex.
It’s easy to see how it works: If you open a container candle store with a single type of wax and a single-sized container, then you will only need to source one wax and one container.
Simple = Speed
Two additional risks are added to your business by having more stuff.
Financial investment into twice as many supplies
Time investment wick-test the naked wax without fragrance oil or dye for two bases
Scaling into new options makes sense if you can make the necessary financial and time investment. Before that point, simplicity will keep you agile.
A Shared “base” in practice means that all your products will share the same container and wax but have different fragrance oils, wick series/sizes, and colors.
Every major fragrance category should be targeted
Each fragrance oil falls within one of the following four categories:
- Floral
- Oriental
- Woody
- Fresh
The first business should not offer more than one fragrance from each of the various categories.
Keep in mind the “base”.
There are only three things that make a difference in fragrance oils, dyes, and wick sizes. You will need to spend some time experimenting with different combinations of fragrances to determine which ones you want to offer to your customers.
This list isn’t exhaustive. Many fragrance oils combine different aspects of each to create a complex scent profile.
Floral
Oriental
