Wholesale Candle Business for Beginners: Our Proven 6 Step Readiness Check

We map a clear path from retail maker to confident wholesaler with a six-part readiness framework, real pricing math, and a simple outreach system that lands reorders. The focus stays on consistent sourcing, fast fulfillment, and building fewer but better accounts.

• shifting from retail mindset to a wholesale model
• choosing stable jars, waxes and oils for consistency
• pricing cleanly for true 50 percent margins
• aligning packaging and branding to target stores
• using a credible website and linkable catalog
• shipping within one to two weeks reliably
• setting terms, minimums and refund policies
• simplifying ordering without losing margin
• three‑touch email outreach and monthly follow‑ups
• prioritizing reorders over store count growth

Learn more at Candle Business Pro.com/wholesale or come hang out with us inside the Inner Circle
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Transcript

Why Wholesale Requires A Mindset Shift

SPEAKER_00 0:01

If you've ever had a boutique ask if you sell wholesale and you didn't know what to say, this episode's gonna be for you. Hopefully, by the end of this, I'm gonna help some candle makers confidently decide when it's the right time to start offering wholesale, what steps to take before reaching out, and how to build relationships with stores that actually last. Now I get this question pretty consistently inside of our weekly office hours, inside of the inner circle. And that's how do I know if I'm ready for wholesale? And the truth is, most candle makers either jump in too early or they wait too long. Hopefully, today, after we're done here, you're gonna know exactly what boxes to check before saying yes to your first wholesale order. The first thing we got to talk about is the mindset shift. The difference between retail and wholesale is going to take a mindset shift. And wholesale isn't a side hustle, it's actually a second business model. Now, for those that may not know the difference, but I imagine most of you do, retail is when we are selling directly to customers, and wholesale is selling to a business that is going to represent your brand and sell um your products to their customers. It requires a different mindset. Um, that is gonna be consistency, it's gonna be professionalism, and it's gonna be pricing that works even when the margins are going to be tighter. Now ask yourself, can you pour label and ship a hundred candles without any panic? And if not, that's okay. Um hopefully you're gonna get there soon. If you can, then the wholesale probably is right for you to explore. Now let's talk about the uh candle business pro readiness framework that I've put together for you here today to make sure that you are ready to wholesale. Um, let's talk about these uh step by step here. I've got six different um things for you to uh consider when you are contemplating if you're gonna do wholesale or not. The first one is going to be product consistency. Can you recreate that same candle every time? Now, that doesn't just mean am I consistent with my pores and am I confident that every single one of these are gonna burn the same way? Hopefully, before we are selling to the public in general, we know that our products are consistent as far as the safety and the burning is gonna go of them. Um, but I also want to take this a step farther. Can you be consistent with sourcing your supplies? Are you set up to be able to take on a wholesale order of a hundred candles? If someone reaches out to you today and says, hey, I need a hundred of this candle, are you gonna have any issue with making those? And sometimes I see candle makers that are getting um really creative with their candles, and that's fantastic, but it might not set you up very well for wholesale. Let's just think of this other candle here that we have. So, this is one of the candles I sell in one of my in my shops, and I love it. It's beautiful, it's gorgeous, it's more high-end, it's a it's a dream vessel. Now, these aren't always in stock, or the color goes away. Um, same thing with just something simple like this, just an aura, right? We all know what the auras are, we know who makes these. The colors come and go. So if I build a brand for retail around this vessel, and then all of a sudden this vessel is not available anymore, and I'm trying to wholesale, or if today I'm able to wholesale because I these are in stock and this is what I'm selling retail. So I'm wholesaling these to a store, and then these go away, or these are out of stock, or these are on a long back order, and we don't know when they're gonna get fulfilled, that's gonna disrupt your wholesale business. So just keep that in mind. You don't have to go quite as basic as the vessels that we do, but we are really set up for wholesale because it's a simple, straight-sided jar that even if Libby, which is what we use, these are Libby's 2719s, if for some reason these were to go away, we could just find another supplier that's gonna make something very, very, very similar to it. Same thing with our uh sweet memory collection of candles, right? It's an amber jar, right? So if we had to change supplier of the amber jar, we can do that. Uh, it might not be exactly the same jar, but we candle makers would know the difference. The stores probably wouldn't know, and the customers definitely aren't going to know. Amber jars is always gonna be always going to be around. These type of jars always going to be around this color. It was super popular last year. It's not even around now. So I if I would have built around this, I would have to just completely change it up. Um, and then you're also gonna have things like this, which are really nice um and popular for a bit and then they go away. Uh, we don't want to be switching things all the time. Another thing I always talk about when it comes to product consistency is what I like to call designer waxes. There are new waxes coming out onto the market all the time. In fact, last a week, Candle Science came out with a brand new wax. It might be the best wax ever made. Here's the thing when these new waxes come out, they're popular and then um then they last, that's great, but a lot of them don't. There is some of the apricots, apricot soys, uh, the apricot blends, uh, the olive oil blends. A couple years ago, there were three or four suppliers that uh carried it. Now I know of one that carries it. So if you build your brand around something that's not going to consistently stick around, you're gonna be making a lot of pivots. And if you are in specific retailers that do you do really well in, and if I say, hey, I don't have access to this type of vessel anymore, would you like to switch to this? That might not work for them. So just something to keep in mind um when you are building this out. That doesn't mean you can't. That doesn't mean that you can't have some unique, really nice type of vessels um or waxes and even oils. Um, because oils is another one of those things that come and go, right? Our classic lines, we blend these ourselves. Uh, we have 10 candles. Um, one of the oils that we blended with, we had to find a uh replacement for that, but we're not buying seasonal oils and putting those into our year-round, year-round collections because generally those seasonal oils they go away. Now, of course, for your seasonal candles, absolutely pick those totally fine. Um, when you are wholesaling, as long as they know that they are it's something seasonal, possibly a limited edition. Um, totally fine. Same thing with the best cells. We have wholesale um candles like these into some more of the higher end shops um here in our city and within Michigan and in the Midwest, actually, uh, we have a lot of these in Chicago. This is fine, but don't build my entire brand around it. So hopefully I'm I'm clarifying there. Uh you don't have to go as basic as we do with these, but I tell you what, we've built a million-dollar brand on one dollar jars. So something for you to maybe keep in mind, uh, depending on the direction you're trying to go with your business. That is product consistency. So, number two is going to be pricing competence. Have you done your cost of goods math and built in a 50% margin? Now I know that some people will say that, oh, you you can you don't have to take off 50%, you can take off 40%. And in fact, when we first started doing wholesale, my catalog that I was sending out to the stores to try and get these accounts, I had tiered pricing. I said, hey, this is a$26 candle to re retail. If you buy uh up to$25, or if you buy$25, that was the minimum for my wholesale when I started. If you buy$25, um, then they are$15. And if you buy$50, then they're$14. And if you buy more than$50, they're$13. And again, this is a$26 candle. So you had to buy at least over that$50 to get that 50% off. Um, two stores within the first month, three weeks to a month, said, Hey, I want to carry your stuff, but I don't want to buy a hundred of those yet to get a 50% discount off of retail, but we have to have 50% margins on these. Like we can't, like my business operates that way. And now that I have three stores and I put other products in my stores besides candles, I get this. For instance, we have someone that um we sell their soaps, right? We sell lots of their soaps and um they're retailed for$8. And so I'm not going to buy those for more than$4 to then put on to my shelf. If they were$5, I wouldn't do it. I'm not making enough money on those to uh cover my overhead and my expenses um and paying the team. So every retailer is going to want that 50% off. You can find a couple that might do that 40%, those are generally going to be things like salons, the smaller things that aren't selling a lot of other stuff, usually like service-based businesses. So like hair salons, uh massage studios, things like that, where they're not running their, they're running their business off of the services that they're providing. And your products are just gonna be like a bonus or an addition. So if they're gonna make 40% on it, they might be okay with it. But it's just a standard gift shop, convenience place, uh, women's boutiques, all types of like downtown shoppings in in those types of shopping districts, they're they're gonna want at least a 50% margin. So once we got that feedback within our first month, we got rid of that tier pricing. It was already confusing. So we went ahead and just got rid of it, and now they pay 50% of what our retail price is. Number three is going to be your packaging and your branding. Does your line look cohesive on a shelf next to the other brands for the stores that you want to be in? Okay. What I would recommend is go into the stores that you want to see your candles on the shelf. And does it fit? If I'm going in a store that has all vessels like this, and my whole brand is built on this, this is gonna be, you know,$50 plus type of candle. This is gonna be that mid-20s type of candle, right? Is the packaging the same? Absolutely not, right? Um, it's definitely, you know, that they're they're not the same type of thing. These probably wouldn't be in the same type of stores, right? So go into the stores where you want your candles to be. See what the price points are, see what the sizes are, what the vessels are, um, and see if your candles are actually going to fit in there. And this is like that reality check and that gut check that we need to we need to uh take and say, hey, you know what? Does my packaging look good? The the the vessels that they're in, the labeling. Also, the branding is the branding right. Are you printing your labels at home off of that printer that's 20 years old, right? No shame to anyone's game, no shame to what you're doing and how you're selling your candles and where you're selling your candles and where you're getting your labels printed. It doesn't matter as long as it looks good, right? If you can tell that your labels were printed on a not so great printer, there's some lines through it, they're not as colorable and colorful and vibrant as maybe they should be. Are they gonna stack up in that store that you're hoping to get your candles into, right? Um, there's also uh gonna be other places where completely made at home, printed at home type of candles are gonna fit in totally fine. So just make sure whatever you're wanting to put onto that shelf is going to um be competitive with all the other candles that might be on those shelves. One of the questions one of our members asked me last week was, hey, I made a list for what you told me of all these stores that I wanted to be in. But here's the problem they all already have candles. So what should I do? Should I even waste my time reaching out to them? Which is a great question to ask. I I had never been asked that. And the thing is, is you absolutely want to reach out to those because those are the easy ones to get. The hardest stores to get from our experience, we're over 160, 170 active wholesale accounts now. I'm not sure any of them ever didn't have candles, and then we were the first ones, right? There might have been a few of our the smaller accounts like um floral shops, hair salons, things like that, um, that didn't have candles before and they wanted to pick up candles. But like any of the women's boutiques that we are selling our candles in now, they already had candles and they wanted something fresh. So you absolutely want to reach out to those that are selling other brands candles because they they want to keep it fresh too, right? The stores that are selling my candles right now, at some point their customers, they'll be excited of something new and fresh for them to buy, but they might want to change it up and see what the what the next hottest thing is, right? Uh, that's how you see some of these candles, uh, brands that become kind of big and they just kind of go up, you know, and down as far as what we hear and see about them. So if a store already is carrying candles, those are the perfect ones to reach out to because you know that they want to carry candles, but the candles they're carrying might not be connecting or landing right with their customers. Just because that store puts my candles in their in their shop doesn't mean it's gonna sell for them, right? The best stores um are ran by people that understand their customers. They are going to make mistakes. I make plenty of mistakes in my retail stores where I'm like, oh yeah, let's let's try this. I get something in and it'll completely flop and it just won't do right. And the same thing is gonna happen with any of the stores that you're reaching out to. So keep that in mind. Yes, reach out to stores that are already carrying candles because they might be ready to make a change. They might be kind of over what they have. It's happened a lot where I reach out to a store, they respond back and say, hey, I like your branding, I like your packaging, I would love to carry it. But right now, I've got 500 of this other candle I got to get rid of. Please check back with me, or I'll check back with you once that um amount is getting lower, because I want to want something fresh in here. I say absolutely. And then I just I keep reaching out to them once a month. I'll reach out to them and then also reach out to them with all of my seasonal changes just to let them know, get them excited about this. So, number four is going to be your website in your catalog. Do you have a line sheet or a catalog PDF with very clear pricing, uh, very clearly laid out? Are you connecting it with your um website for people? Whenever they see your catalog and they receive it from you, they're gonna want to go in and check you out. They're gonna want to go and make sure that you are uh a legit and established brand, uh, and that you have a cohesive um lineup on your website of just products in general. So making sure that your website, even though retail is buying from your website, wholesale is buying from your catalog and dealing with you, right? They're gonna still want to go and check you out. That's just how we all shop. We we see something on Facebook or Instagram for sale, right? Whether it's clothing or an accessory for our gadgets or something, and we like it. We think, oh, that might be a good fit. Let me go and check this brand out a little. Let me make sure that they're legit, right? So then we're gonna go to their website and then we're gonna go to their social media. So we're not just going off of an ad and buying right away generally. We're gonna go check them out. Make sure that their website is legit, that they do exist, that I see reviews, that they have trust badges all over their website, that um, that I'm confident in this purchase. So they're gonna want to do the same thing when you're reaching out for wholesale. If you're reaching out to someone for wholesale, but you don't have a website, they're not gonna buy it from you. It's just they're just not going to. Unless you know them, unless you know the people, um, they're they're they're not gonna take that risk because everyone in e-commerce runs a website and any business nowadays runs a website. Just think about if you wanted to go to a restaurant and they didn't have a website. Like you don't need a website for a restaurant necessarily. You wouldn't, I mean, it doesn't prevent you from operating, right? Like you are gonna go into a four walls of a restaurant, you're gonna place your order, you're gonna eat, and you're gonna leave. Why would I need a website? Well, because we want to, we want to see photos, we want to see reviews, we want to make sure that it's legit, right? You know, we'll check your hours. We want to, we want to investigate you a little bit. Same thing's gonna happen whenever you are trying to get someone to buy from you wholesale. They're gonna want to check you out. Number five is gonna be uh your fulfillment plan. Can you ship or deliver your orders quickly and safely? So here's my my frame that I suggest to anyone that goes through our course or that inside of our inner circle, and we talk about this pretty often, is two weeks. Two weeks should be the maximum amount of time from someone ordering from you and you handing them or delivering to them their candles. Now let's let's break this two weeks down. That doesn't mean you have to have everything stocked and ready to go inside of your home or your warehouse or your store. You don't need that, you don't need to invest into the products of wholesale until those orders come in. So that's one of the really nice things about wholesale is you can be out selling to these businesses without having the products made, right? Once they order, you turn around and order the supplies from your supplier. You're gonna get those three, four, maybe five days later. You're gonna turn around, you're gonna produce all those candles, and you're gonna get them right out to them. If you are, there's a couple of different bandwagons here, and I don't want to get off topic here, but let's talk about the soy curing time bandwagons, right? You've got those that say you must wait two weeks. And then you have those that say you don't have to wait at all. You can just wait 24 hours. In our testing, it's been five days is our sweet spot. Um, we're not concerned about waiting any longer than that. I'm not gonna miss out on sales from that. That's a topic for different conversation. Let's talk about wholesale and fulfilling orders. I get an order in today, someone wants 500 of this candle. Oh gosh, I only have a stuff, enough stuff in um to make a hundred of these. I need to place an order. So I place an order for the vessels, the wax, the oils, all that stuff. I get it all in and say four or five days. I'm gonna spend it, you know, if I had to make 500 of these, it's gonna take me two days instead of one. Um, and we're gonna knock all those out. The next day, I'm mailing these off to that boutique to get these to them. They don't need to, don't be concerned about the whole curing time because what's gonna happen is you're making them, you're mailing them to the shop. The shops that's gonna take several days to get to them, possibly, depending on where they're at. They then have to make room for these candles on their shelves. Then they have to put their pricing on them, get them into their computer system, then they have to get onto the shelf, and then their customer has to buy it, and then the customer has to either re-gift it or they're gonna use it for themselves. So they got to find a time when they want to light that candle. Or this time, it's probably a month later, right? Uh, so I don't get don't get caught up on cure times when it comes to uh wholesale. But that's usually what the biggest hang up for getting these out really quick is. So some people will put in their wholesale catalog that they will fulfill orders in three to four weeks. That's just that's just too long. People are operating when when I go looking to add new products into my store, it's because I have a place for them. And that means I want to put something in that space right away. So having quick turnaround times is going to be ideal. So I would promote it as one to two weeks. That's what I would promote that is, um, promote that as for my fulfillment. Number six is gonna be your policies. Do you have a minimum order quantity, payment terms, and a refund policy? These are all gonna be things that you need to figure out and have in advance for people when they ask you questions. You want to make sure that you have answers to all of this. I would have these on a terms and conditions page inside of your wholesale catalog. Just a little plug here. Inside of our mastering wholesale course, I actually give you three different versions of our wholesale catalog as a template for you to edit and make as your own. You can literally take my uh logos out. You can actually take my candle images out and just put yours right in there. So something maybe for you to consider. Uh, some people like to go through the course just to grab those wholesale catalogs. You might be thinking, why do you have three different ones? Great question. I'm glad you asked. Um, one is very short. Um, when you are going after a specific type of store, for instance, we have our odor eliminating candles that we do uh wholesale to pet boutiques, pet shops, right? They don't need a 30-page catalog with every offering that I possibly have. They want one with what's gonna make sense for their store, which is just gonna be our odor eliminating candles. So it's only a few pages. It kind of looks like a magazine on the front. It has a dog and a cat on there, and it's really cute. And it looks like a magazine. They look at it, they're gonna comb through it, and then they're going to hopefully place an order with me, right? And then I have a couple of different uh wholesale catalogs based on how robust your um your collections are. How many candles do you have? Uh, do you have, you know, your fall, your winter, your year-round, um, other offsetting or offshooting collections like our sweet memories collection. We also have like our duos collection. So as you build out more, you don't want it to seem overwhelming for someone to go through your catalog. So if you only have, say, six candles, then the layout's gonna be different, right? I'm gonna want to put maybe three candles on a page. So then I at least have a couple pages of the products. If I have a hundred products, I might want to put six or eight products on a page. So I gave you a few different versions for you because as we have grown as a brand, we've um had to kind of reiterate how we how we do things. And so I give you uh those just so you can see the difference. Also, inside of that wholesale course is our email templates that we send out to all of these stores. It's gonna give you your initial emails and then all your follow-ups um emails as well. It also gives you um the spreadsheet that we use to track all this stuff with. So let's talk about prepping your wholesale offer. Now, your line sheet does not have to uh be your entire collection. Again, if you have different things inside of your retail brand that might not be suitable for wholesale, then just exclude it. You don't have to put the entire thing in there. Uh, I would recommend just stick with your best sellers and your proven sense. This is a proven scent. This is our number one selling candle, our circuit women, uh, year after year. Uh, we're of course gonna have all of our classics in there, and then we're gonna have some of our others, but we have lots of candles now as we keep growing. And I don't want to overwhelm the person going through page by page of our catalog. So I'm gonna stick to um being really straightforward with my catalog. It's gonna have a very clean layout and it's gonna have our best sellers in there. I'll certainly make a blurb on there to where they can reach out to us if they want something else. If they're looking for something that they don't see, let us know. We are happy to um work with them on it. In fact, one of the last pages inside of our catalog, it's a, you know, we do custom orders and it has a whole variety, it's a has an image of a ton of varieties of different vessels for them to kind of to envision what they could possibly do. Uh, that's custom. If they if they want to do private label, we also have a little section about that uh as well. So one of the other things I want to talk about with prepping your wholesale order is UPC codes. Some people get caught up and don't want to go down the road of wholesale because you're concerned about you need to put UPC codes on your products and they can be very expensive. If you get a G10 code, um they're like$35 a piece. So if you have 10 candles, that's$350. And if you have 100 candles, you see where I'm going with this. The reality is we have over 160 wholesale accounts now, and two, maybe three, have required UPC codes. The airports, uh Rally House, which is a really large um sports apparel goods store. We're in 44 or 45 of those, hoping to go to all 300 here soon. Those two stores that are larger, the the stores of Rally House and then the airports, they require uh a UPC code on here. But here's the thing when they require them, they provide them. So they provided us with a code to put on to those products. So then we just print uh we put the code, uh, we print it off to their standard, to their liking, and then we stick it on there for them. That's all it is. So that once those locations receive the product, it already has a price tag on there for them, right? So we have not spent anything on getting UPC codes on here. And we sell, like I said, 100 160 stores um plus now, those are active. Uh, plus um, we have Amazon orders. You can sell all different ways. You do not need to have a UPC code. So don't get caught up on that. One of the other things that you want to prep for when um you start to wholesale is going to be make your ordering very easy. Now, in my catalogs, templates that I give those inside of our course, there's a line sheet at the end. Now, um, a little quick bonus here. Some people call this a line sheet, some people call this a catalog. It's called a line sheet because back in the day, a salesperson would go into a store and they would have, they would show them a catalog, and then they would fill out what was called the line sheet. And it was the very very last page, and it was just a line where that you would write down what the item was, how many you want. If you've ever done a fundraiser, um, or you've had kids that have done fundraisers or like Girl Scout cookies back in the day, where before everything went electronic, there was a whole line, right? You would write down a name, and then you would find with kind of cookies you wanted, you'd put how many boxes you wanted, and then you would add it all up, add in tax if needed, yada yada shipping. That's a line sheet. So we often refer to it as a line sheet. That's still just something that everyone knows what that is in the retail world. Um, but it's essentially it's just it's your catalog. So when you hear those two things, uh, those words are just interchanged. So I interchange them often. So um inside of your catalog, uh, have a line sheet in there. People are always looking for an order form. But I'll tell you this we've had one or maybe two that have actually filled that out. Uh, you want to make sure that you have very easy ways for them to order from you. Now, people will talk about fair and then how you can add your fair link in there, which is totally fine. Here's the thing, though. If they see that you're on fair, they might not actually click on your fair direct link. They might just go and log into fair because they use fair, right? If they do that and not using your fair direct link, and this has happened to us so many times that I've taken it out of my catalog because I will email someone and then I get an order from them on fair. And I'm like, oh, why am I paying a commission to fare? And it's because that that uh store did not use that direct link that I gave them. So then I'm dealing with fair on proving to them by showing them a screenshot of the email that I sent to that store. Fair's been really good on reimbursing us that. Um, so they will give you that credit, but they have put out notices uh this year about their being much more strict on that. So keep that in mind. So I don't even have a fair link um anymore. I send them my catalog, um, and then I say, hey, here's the email address. Just let me know what you want. And that's how the majority of all of our orders come through is they will just email me back and say, hey, uh, I want six of this, I want 20 of that, I want 15 of this. When when are you gonna send this to me? Right. And it's very simple. And so what I do is they email me what they want, I put it into Shopify. I create an order, I invoice them um through Shopify. As soon as they pay it, I make it. Uh, that's one of the things I will talk about here in a moment is making sure that you collect payment ahead of time. All right, so you've got your catalog together. You've got all your best sellers at the front of your catalog. You are ready to start sending this out. Here is my three-touch outreach method. You want to have an initial intro email with your catalog in it. Now, don't do your catalog as an attachment. You actually want to have a link to your catalog because a lot of you are not going to open up attachments. Also, like with our catalog being pretty robust now, it's a large file. So sometimes it'll automatically send it to spam or they'll get a warning. Do you know this recipient? Do not open up this attachment. We've all been told not to open up attachments from people we don't know because of malware and phishing uh and scams. Um, so they don't want to do that. So you want to have a link. Um, I actually teach people how to do this and I set it up to where you can just, if you have a Canva account, just use a link to where it is a readable only. Um, I also tell people how to do it through um Google Drive. You can also just uh put your catalog in Google Drive and Google Drive, take that link, whatever link that you are going to use, put those links on your Shopify store on a hidden page. Okay. Have them on a hidden page, and whatever that page URL is, you just send that to the Potential store that you want to get into. And this does a couple things, right? It sends them to your website. So right there is that whole trust that we were talking about earlier about them wanting to go to your website. Send them to your website. Put it on a page that the public is not going to get to, only whoever you send that special URL to. When you do your initial outreach, you include that catalog as just a link. Also, let me give you the example of those initial emails that we would send out. A super basic example here would just be, you know, hey, I'm a local candle maker here in Holland, Michigan. And I think that our candles would be a great fit for your shop's aesthetics. We love visiting your shop, and we just picked up some of those tea towels that you're now carrying. Since I'm local, I'd love to stop in and show you our best sellers that your customers will love. Let me know if there's a good time for me to stop by. So I never just show up unannounced. I would never do that to a retailer. I don't like when people do that in my store. That's personal preference. I know some people do that and it works for them. Doesn't work for me, I don't do that. I want to send them an email, but I need to stick out from the rest of the hundreds of emails that stores get every single week. So letting them know that there is a local connection there or letting them know that you know about their brand by talking about, like I said, those tea towels that we just picked up that they're carrying. That makes them know, hey, you are a legit person. You know them, you know their brand. Um, and that gives them um, it makes them feel good that you're not just one more um wholesaler reaching out to them to try and sell products too. There's a little bit more of a connection there. So that's my first email. My first email is gonna be that um intro email with all of that. The second email is gonna be our follow-up. Uh exactly a week later, I'm gonna send them a follow-up, a quick reminder. I'm gonna do that again a week later. Uh, and if they still don't respond, I am gonna put them on my monthly uh mass outreach. You have to keep following up with these um different stores. They all get busy. I get busy, in fact, on my computer here uh with my work email. I have an entire folder of like uh follow-up or uh to do. And it's a ton of emails that I want to read. I would love to go through it. I just don't have time now. They're gonna see your email. They're gonna say, hey, you know what? We need new candles, but we're not gonna need new candles for a couple more months. So I'll I'll circle back on this, right? So keep reaching out to them, keep following up with them until you get an answer. And if they tell you no, they're not interested, perfect. That means you don't just don't have to worry about it anymore. Okay. So uh don't uh don't feel like you're gonna bug them. If they feel bugged by you, they'll they'll block your email or they'll tell you they're not interested. It is completely okay. We're running a business here, we're trying to get our candles into their customers' hands because their customers are gonna love it. So we're doing them a favor by trying to sell to them. Just keep that in mind. All right, so now I want to switch gears here to some common mistakes that you need to avoid when you're doing wholesale. And the first one is simply underpricing. Don't chase low margins uh just to get into stores. Don't lower your prices just to get into stores. Make sure that your pricing is right. I know when we're first starting out, we just want to get a wholesale account. So we might do some price negotiations and things like that. We did that when we first started. If you're just getting making 50 candles at your first store, it might seem okay to discount at a buck or two. But would you do it for a thousand candles? Uh, would you do it for that order, your hundredth store that comes in? You probably won't. You're gonna want to make sure that you are confident in your pricing and you're not underpricing yourselves, um, especially as we grow. Uh, number two, for uh common mistakes to avoid is gonna be overcomplicating it. Don't offer such a massive um range of sense and vessel options. Keep it really simple as they're going to the catalog. Um, we don't want to overwhelm them. So keep it very simple and just let them know hey, if there's something else you're looking for, let me know and I can I can work with you on it. So just keep it simple there. Don't don't overcomplicate it. Uh number three is going to be that poor follow-up. Here's a tip. At least 80%. At least 80% of all the wholesale accounts that we have received over the last three years have come from the follow-up email. That initial email, when I send that out, people forget I sent it to them uh during a busy time for them. They don't need candles right now. Over 80% of our wholesale accounts come from the follow-up. You have to follow up. This is generally when I see people that are succeeding and not succeeding inside of our inner circle or just inside of the different candle communities for people that are doing wholesale. It's the people that are following up or not following up. And it's it's really, it's really simple. You know, the way I do it, every Monday I collect a list of stores that I want to get into. Now I'm not even in Michigan anymore. I've moved on to other states that I'm now targeting, right? Um, and every single Monday I would create a list. Uh, and I'd get that all the contact information. All this stuff is on that spreadsheet side of our wholesale course if that was something you were interested in. But it's a very simple spreadsheet. It's a you want the store's name, contact information, an email address, Instagram handles, something to connect with that store with, like I said, the T Tal uh reference earlier. So that's one Monday. Then the following Monday, I am emailing all of those different stores. And then the next Monday, I'm following up with all those stores. Then the next Monday, I'm following up again with all of those stores. And then I repeat. So I'm doing all this outside of my store hours. When I'm with my store, I'm with customers, uh, we're doing production, me and the team. Uh, I don't have time to do whole stuff during that time. This is like my Monday night watching TV and uh collecting a list of wholesale um potentials uh to reach out to. So this is something you can do on your own time. Just keep that in mind. Don't overcomplicate things. The next common mistake to avoid is going to be to ignore reorders. One time, wholesale partners are rarely going to help your store grow. Wholesale isn't about getting into 100 stores, it's about staying in the right 10 stores. Keep that in mind. Once you get an account, it's just like once you sell a candle to a stranger uh on the internet or out of the market. Once you sell a candle to them, it's a lot easier to sell them more candles versus going and finding a new customer. It's the exact same philosophy when it comes to wholesale. Once you get wholesale accounts, you're gonna want to follow up with them in a couple weeks. Hey, how are things going? Um, how are your customers receiving these um candles in your store? Is there anything I can help you with? Do you need candle care cards? Um, is there anything I can help you to help drive more sales for you? Letting them know that you care and that you weren't just a transaction um for them is going to be huge because they're going to need seasonal candles every season. They're going to want refreshes and they're going to want to do business with the people that makes them feel uh good about doing business. So keep that in mind as well. Hopefully, you'll take what we've uh talked about here today and you will just start small. Pitch one store, learn from it, and then refine your process and keep doing that over and over again. It's gonna be a learning experience. We still learn things to this day, and we're 160 plus stores into our wholesale journey. There's always gonna be some hiccups. There's gonna be some things that we're gonna learn from the boutiques of things, how they like to have things done. Um, so whether you're ready to pitch your first store or you want to grow your wholesale line strategically, our mastering wholesale course will actually walk you through every single step uh from pricing and packaging to uh pitching and following up. You can learn more about that at Candle Business Pro.com slash wholesale or come and hang out with us inside of the inner circle. The inner circle is our monthly membership where all of us business owners come together and we work together to help each other scale. So hopefully you have found some value in this episode today. Leave me a note in the comments below. I would love it if you enjoyed this to subscribe and maybe even share with others that you might think would enjoy it just as well. But comment below of what you either learned today or if you have other tips that you would like to share with the community, um, that would be really, really awesome of you to do. So thank you so much for tuning in. Have a fantastic rest of your week. Bye bye.