5 Candle Business Questions Answered (LLC, Insurance, Pricing, Best Scents + More)

#031. Ready to turn your candle hobby into a business that pays for itself and then some? We tackle the maker questions that matter most: when to formalize your business with an LLC, how to register for sales tax so you can buy supplies tax‑exempt, and what kind of insurance protects you once you start selling at markets, online, or in a storefront. We share the practical steps we used, the providers we tried, and the costs that actually make sense for a young brand.

From there, we get tactical with sourcing. You’ll hear our approach to labels and packaging—separating smart design from affordable printing—and how to find unique vessels without locking yourself into massive custom minimums. We talk timelines and freight tradeoffs, including when a split shipment by air and sea can prevent stockouts without destroying your margins. If you’re planning holiday inventory or a new launch, these details will save you time and cash.

We also map out a focused five-scent launch lineup that converts: a bright citrus bestseller, a masculine wood note for gifting and household consensus, a spa-inspired blend for daily burn, a recognizable mint-eucalyptus profile that reassures cautious buyers, and a versatile lavender that sells online because shoppers know the note. Then we go deep on confidence and pricing. You’ll learn how to choose your niche, study the shelves you want to be on, pick your retail first, and engineer costs to hit at least a 4x multiple—so wholesale, marketing, and growth stay within reach.

If you’ve wondered how to host profitable candle pouring parties, we share our playbook from mobile events to store-based workshops and explain why experiences can become a powerful revenue stream. By the end, you’ll have a clear path to structure your business, source smarter, pick scents that sell, and price with conviction. Enjoy the conversation, share it with a maker friend, and don’t forget to subscribe and leave a quick review so we can answer your next question on air.

SPONSORS & DEALS

💼 View exclusive deals only for podcast listeners

***

WHEN YOU'RE READY

📬 Free Candle Business Supply List

🚀 #1 Candle Making Course

🧪 Mastering Wholesale Course

🧞‍♂️ Join the Inner Circle!

***

CONNECT

🐦 Free Facebook Group

📹 Subscribe on YouTube

📸 Connect on Instagram

***

SHOW LOVE

💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts

🟢 Leave a rating on Spotify

Transcript

Welcome And Free Starter Guide

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Today, we are answering viewer and listener questions from people just like you. We are going to cover topics such as LLCs, pricing our candles, what types of fragrances to launch with, and so much more. So let's dive into this. We are going to answer five or six questions from viewers like yourself. If you have not been able to submit any questions, you can always submit questions in the comments below or come and hang out with us inside of our free Facebook group. And I will collect questions and I answer them here on the podcast for you. So let's dive into this. All right. Now, real quick before we get started on this here today, I do have a guide of starting a candle business that's completely free. You can grab that at Candle Business Pro.com slash guide or see the show notes below, and you'll be able to grab that as well. That really has helped a lot of people with looking at the whole foundation that's needed when they are launching their candle business. And it may be beneficial for some of the people that have submitted questions this week. So the first question here is from Heather. And Heather's question is at what point do I need an LLC and to obtain insurance? And then where do I get insurance from? Okay, so great question. Um, you're going to want to set up your entity, your LLC, or your sole proprietor or partnership, or whatever entity you are setting up. You want to do that once you realize you want to make this a business, that you're going to want to be selling candles at some point. Now you don't have to rush it and have the idea that you want to do that. And so you go out and do that today because there are going to be some costs involved with that. But once you get to the point, ideally, even in your testing phase of like, okay, yeah, I this is going to happen for me. I want to get into this. So that would be a good time to go ahead and set it up. Because before you start selling, you're going to want to get that insurance and stuff all lined up. And so having the LLC to put the insurance in its name is what you're going to want to do. And so if you just bought a candle kit, you're playing around and testing, you don't need to get an LLC right now. But once you say, yes, I am going to make this into a small business, you're going to want to go ahead and grab that. One of the benefits of doing it earlier rather than later is there's a couple uh steps. So once you have your LLC that you get to your Secretary of State's website, then you go over to the Department of Revenues website uh in your state, and you're gonna get what is called your reseller permit or a permit to collect sales tax or a remitter's license, a lot of different names based on your state. But essentially what that is, is it says that yes, you are in fact going to be operating a business where you'll collect sales tax and you're gonna be remitting it to the state. When you have that certificate, you can give that to your suppliers. So whether that's Candle Science, Make Sea, Hive and Honey, Dulcier, whoever you're buying your supplies from, you're gonna give that to them. And then you no longer are paying sales tax on all the stuff that you're buying. So that's why I recommend getting it earlier than later, because you can save yourself in Michigan. That's 6%. If it's gonna cost you for every$1,000 that we spend on supplies, we're spending$60 in taxes that we no longer have to pay. Something to keep in mind of getting that a little earlier. Now, your second question was about insurance. So, as I mentioned, I recommend getting it once you are ready to start selling. You don't need it when you're testing at home and doing all of that. That wouldn't even be under business insurance if you would have an accident while you are testing and stuff at home. Uh, that would just be covered under your homeowner's insurance or renter's insurance and things like that. But when you are operating as a business, you'll want to get uh insurance. Now, legally, you don't have to have insurance. Um, I might get some flack for that in the comments, but legally you don't. But I strongly, strongly encourage it. Uh, what I recommend is checking around with different discount insurance uh companies. Uh, one of those is Next, NEXT Next Insurance. Uh, I'll put a link for that in the notes below. They are who we first started with. And we use them when we were making candles in our house. They cover us when we are doing markets. They even covered us when we had our first storefront we opened. They only cover one storefront. So when we ended up opening a second storefront, we ended up having to get another insurance carrier. And I would have just kept both, right? But it made more sense to bundle it all together with a different provider. So that's when we had to leave them. But the rates were really good. I think it was like$35 a month that we used with Next. Now, some people will say that Next doesn't cover their candles. Uh, insurance is regulated by states. Next is available here in Michigan. They're also in Indiana because that's where we had started uh before we moved up here, but it might not be in your location. So something to keep in mind there. There is also a hand-made artist guild. And if you join that membership, they have an opportunity for insurance through them. And so I know a lot of makers do that, but you're gonna have to see is it worth the cost of the membership to also get the insurance, or does it make more sense uh elsewhere? So uh I don't know all the ins and outs of the other benefits of that membership, but they have been around for quite some time. Uh and so I know a lot of people do enjoy having that membership, even if it's just for the discounted insurance. All right, next question here is from Kathy, and she says, I need advice sourcing labels and custom candle vessels. Okay, so as far as labels go, lots of options out there uh to choose from. You just type in uh label printing, and you're going to get lots of options popping back up. And generally, you know, you'll see some that will be popular now and they kind of go away, or um, you know, makers shift who they like to go towards. If as far as making or sourcing the actual production of the labels, uh, you can hire someone right on Fiverr or Upwork. We've used both of those and had some good success with having people design stuff for us. And you can usually get it for relatively inexpensive, like less than$50 for a logo. You can get uh you can also get labels designed for pretty inexpensive as well. For custom candle vessels, um there are mostly, if you're wanting them custom, like completely made just for you. Uh you're you're probably going to want to go to say Alibaba online, and you're just gonna have to go through quite a few different suppliers to see who's gonna have the minimums that are going to align with your expectation. Because a lot of them are going to have, say, a thousand vessel minimum. And that may not be realistic for all candle makers, but you're gonna find some other ones that are going to have 200 or 250 for a custom vessel made just for you. They they they need to get their money's worth out of the time and effort it's going to take to do something custom as well. Um, so there's something to keep in mind when it comes to sourcing those, but you definitely can get some that are uh unique at least, right? Um, that are unique and aren't going to be as common, you know, in the states if you if you're in the states look uh if you're located here uh in the U.S. You'll you'll find some on Alibaba that are gonna be unique. Get those for yourselves. They're not custom, they're just something that is created and that a lot of people aren't buying. And you can buy them for yourselves uh and use them. That that's one thing that we had done with getting different colored glass. We can get a lot of different colors of glass. Uh, and then the minimums aren't going to be as high if it's not custom for us. So something to keep in mind. There's a lot of uh there's a lot of glass makers uh on Alibaba. So check that out. The one thing um to keep in mind also is the time. By C is gonna be the cheapest way of getting those orders to you. It's gonna be by C. And right now, um, as of the the time of this, the stuff that we're getting from China is taking 28 to 35 days um by boat, by ship. What we do when we're in a crunch is we will actually have them do a split ship to where we'll get a little bit of an air shipped to us, but it's very expensive. But if if you're in a crunch, if you need it, then that's what you do. That's what we did with our boxes. We were running low this candle season going into the holidays. We were low on our custom boxes. So we just had 3,000 of them printed and we had like 250 mailed to us. So we got those in like 10 days. It was a reorder. Generally, it's gonna take a little bit longer for them to design something for you. But since our uh box supplier has our templates ready to go, they were able to get those to us pretty quickly, those 250, and then the rest are coming by ship to save all of that extra cost. All right, so the next question here is from Rashida, and she asks best five fragrances to start my candle business would be dot dot dot. Great question. Of course, these are going to be a little bit more specific based on what niche you are in. If you are in an ultra niche where it's very, very, very specific, then you might need to have cents that are going to be around that, right? Um, so just something to keep in mind. If you are doing a line of candles that are targeting a certain different graphic, say you're doing a uh a line of candles for men. Of course, that's gonna be different than a line of candles, possibly uh for women, you know, or you might have a line of candles around something where just one a certain market is going to like that. If you're doing a foodie brand, right, obviously those scents are gonna be different than what my recommendations here are going to be. But in general, over the span of our time with Garden and Beacon, that's our that's our candle brand, our top sellers. And I'm gonna share this with you. So if I was going to be selling five fragrances to start my candle line with, number one would be a citrus scented candle. Lemons, orange, grapefruit, one of those. It's our number one selling candle, is a sugar lemon candle. Um, it's been our number one selling candle every single year of our business. I would highly recommend having some type of citrus as an option. The next option, I would have that masculine candle. People love to have that. It also gives people a reason to buy for others, possibly in their household. They may not personally like that scent as much as something else, but it makes it to where they can be gifting, pleasing other people in the household type of situation. Um, we sell a ton of our um, it's our right here, uh mahogany driftwood candle. Uh is a blend we create, and we do sell quite a bit of that one as well. So I would recommend having a masculine woodgy type of scent. The next I would have that spa-like sandalwood, some type of lily, um, a blend, something that's soft, um, that's not overpowering in any direction. Um, think relaxation, aromatherapy, think those types of tones for a scent uh to come up with that third one. The fourth one, I would always recommend doing that that scent that we all know, right? That scent that Bath and Body Works would be famous for. Uh, for us, it's our piece of mind candle, and that is going to be that mint eucalyptus verbanum blend. That one there is going to be one that it's not going to be tons of sales, but it's going to be that scent that people recognize. They can relate to it. And if they want to buy from you or support you, then that's one that if they're not really caring for the other options, they can definitely easily grab that as well. We have lots of customers that that's their candle and they buy lots and lots of just that candle. But I'm just sharing that it's not the top, it's not the top seller, but it's definitely going to be in our top six, eight candles overall. And we've definitely expanded our brand much wider than just our original 10 cents. And then the last one that I would say, if you're going to do five cents, is going to be a floral, but it needs to be a popular floral. I would recommend a lavender, some type of lavender or a lavender blend. Um, lilacs, you're not going to want to do, trust me. We had experience with that. That's a whole nother video. Um, but a lavender is something that a lot of people like it. A lot of people know what that scent is. So it makes it for an easy buy online when you open up your online store because people can identify with what that is. There's plenty of other floral options out there. I just wouldn't go super heavy floral. And with a lavender, you can tone it down and you can blend it with a lot of different things. And it can go a lot of different directions. You can go heavier on citrus with that, you can go more spa-like with that. A lot of different directions you can go uh with a floral lavender. So hopefully that helps you out getting started. All right. So the next question here is from Monica. And Monica asks, she says, maybe a silly question, but how do you get over the fear of not being successful in your small business? That is actually not a silly question because it's something that all of us fear. We all fear, are we going to be successful? Are people going to like our product? I'm nervous and I'm hesitant to put my products out in the world because I'm not sure of that reaction that I'm going to get. And am I going to, is it going to be successful? Are people going to want to spend with us? Trust me, it's still it's definitely there with you when you first start, but it's going to be something that you're going to question your entire journey. Because as an entrepreneur, that and that's what you are when you are thinking about opening a small business, is you have to be an entrepreneur. You have to be able to realize that there's always going to be obstacles and roadblocks that you, as a small business owner, have to be able to get through and get through usually on your own. Because you're usually working by yourself. You're a solopreneur, as I call it, or you're working with a very, very small uh team, you know, friends or family that may be helping you out. You're always going to have self-doubt. It's just not going to be so loud as the experience comes in. It's not going to be in the back of your head as much. Once you start getting those wins, once you start getting people buying from you at a market and people saying that they love your candles, and then people start leaving you good reviews online. You get that initial online order from a complete stranger. All of these are going to be competence boosters for you. You're not going to have that when you first start. We never had that. We were like, what are these people going to think? These two middle-aged guys are starting a candle business when they've got good nine to five jobs. And then, wait, one of them quit their nine to five job to do candles full time. And then months later, wait, now they're both quit their steady incomes to make this candle business thing work. What are they thinking? Like, I was questioning my people didn't care. People, I don't care what you do with your life. You don't care what I do with my life and my business, right? We want the best for each other and everyone, um, hopefully. Um, but people weren't questioning that, you know. Mom was a little bit like, oh, you're gonna leave that job because she knew how much I loved my job. And it's like, oh, you're gonna, you're gonna do that? You're gonna, oh, are you selling that many candles? You know, it's like one life, I'm gonna live it. And the the the math is math, and it's adding up that this is worth taking the risk on. I am more of a risk taker. Chad was not. Um, so we we did it in in steps, and then that was uh that's just the way it worked for us. But to this day, you know, when you first sell out of market, you're gonna have some confidence issues with that. Uh, when you start selling in person um to coworkers, even or your neighbors or your friends, your family, whoever you're gonna sell your candles to, you might have some confidence issues there. Uh, we have imposter syndrome every time we're selling something, right? That we're not gonna be nearly as good as is what they're already buying. But as you go on the journey, that it gets quieter. That noise in the back of your head is gonna get quieter. But even to this day, uh we we have three stores now. When I first opened a store, was anyone gonna come in? Okay, now we're gonna open another store. Okay, now we we're gonna start into wholesale. We actually started wholesale before we had our stores. We were doing wholesale, and it was, oh, I'm gonna go into a store and give a presentation and try to get them to buy. Now, luckily, I don't do that anymore. It's all done online. Uh, we have a mastering wholesale course that I put together, which is exactly my strategy that we use. Um, and now we're in 155, 160 wholesale stores, but it was never easy sending out those first emails and getting rejection and all of that. It was tough to overcome. Once you can, if you can get your head into the mind of this is a business, I'm making business decisions, it helps, but it's always going to be there. And I think that means that you that you care. And I think that says something about you, uh, about all of us that have that little bit of self-doubt because we want to put the best out there. It means we care about our product, we care about our customers, we want to give them the best possible candles, you know. And so sometimes we're not sure if, hey, are we gonna live up to the expectation? Um, but once people are buying from you, it'll get a lot easier for you. Um, trust me. All right, the next question here is from Jennifer. Jennifer's question is I would like to learn more about hosting candle making parties. Um, so in the inner circle, which is our community of candle business owners from people that are just starting out to six-figure candle brands, we actually have a workshop on how we do candle making parties. When we first started, before we had our storefront, we did mobile candle parties where I would load the vehicle with uh wax melted behind the passenger seat strapped in there and drive to people's homes and do candle uh pouring parties. So we actually talk about that inside the inner circle. There's a workshop for you. If you want to join the inner circle just to take our workshop, I promise you it's gonna be worth the time and effort. It's more than what I can do on a podcast episode. But if you are set up and making candles um successfully and safely, I highly recommend getting into the candle pouring um business. And you can just do it at mobile. You can do it when you're available and make quite a lucrative side of business on that. Um, so yes, it's absolutely something that we can talk about more. I recommend coming in, checking that out inside the inner circle. But I may just do an uh episode coming up just about those candle making parties uh because I know it would be beneficial to all of you. I just can't cover that one too deep in one quick episode here. So the last question here is from Alicia, and that is how do I become more confident in my pricing? So great question. This is what I recommend. You need to have your niche dialed in. You need to know what category, what theme you are selling in. Where are those candles currently being sold? Go to those locations and see what the prices are and have an honest gut check. Does my candle belong on that self next to those candles? If so, and you see those prices, there you go. Be in that range. And those ranges are gonna vary a little bit. This is what we did. We wanted our candles in the women's boutiques. That's where we wanted our candles. We wanted to make a candle where the value of that candle being uh the quality, the design, uh the size. The ingredients all fit into specific women's boutiques. That's who our customer is. That's where we wanted to be. So we went into tons of women's boutiques, picked up all the candles. Okay, what sizes are they? Okay, they're between eight and 12 ounces. Okay, so now we know that. What are they all made with? Okay, soy, soy, soy. They're all moat. It seems like a lot of women's boutique shoppers are buying soy candles or maybe some coconut blend candles. So that helped us with designing a product that our custom that the customer we were going after would want to buy. It would be something that they care about. So we knew the size, we knew the ingredients. Um, and then we also knew um scents that helped us to kind of see what kind of scents are in these stores, right? That we want to be in. So that we can kind of fall in line with those. So now we can almost replicate what these stores are already carrying. But how do I want to be different? Okay, well, when I go into these women's boutiques, I'm seeing a lot of minimalistic white label with a cursive font that's been popular for the last several years. Um, they all kind of blended in, kind of look the same, a little bit different features on them, but a lot of them were the same. So that's why we said, okay, we're gonna do the same thing, but then we're gonna have bright, colorful labels. That's the direction we're gonna go with it. But as far as pricing goes, we we got the pricing from all those stores because you want to price yourselves along with where you want your candles to be. And where do you want your candles to be? Are you wanting your candles to be sold in hair salons and coffee shops? Are you wanna be in women's boutiques? Do you want to be in sporting goods stores? Like, where do you want your candles to be? Do you want your candles to be in Neiman Marcus or Saks Fifth Avenue or on Rodeo Drive somewhere, right? You need to know what those candles cost. You're not gonna find a$26 candle at Neiman Marcus. You're just not gonna do it, right? Um, so your pricing, you should be confident based on knowing what niche you're in and what is the average going price for that and seeing what's going to fit. When we were shopping a lot of these boutiques, we were seeing$24 to$32 seem to be a price that we were seeing over and over again. There's gonna be some outliers. There's definitely gonna be some that are more expensive, more uh designer that fit into a lot of the stores, some private label. Um, and there's gonna be some that's gonna be a little bit less expensive as well. But kind of find that middle of the road and make sure that it makes sense for your numbers. When we decided on$26, we had to work backwards. Um, you want to work backwards. You want to price a candle before you ever make it. That's a video for another day. You can check out my videos on in my episodes about pricing your candles. You want to know how much you're gonna make a candle for or how much you're gonna sell a candle for and work backwards. If I decided, hey, my candles in these stores, uh, we're gonna price those candles ideally for like 15 bucks, it would have never worked because I can't make that this candle at a price where$15 makes sense. You want to build out the pricing of a candle you're going to make and then work backwards and see how inexpensive or expensive is it going to be to make that candle that I can sell for$26. We did the math based on the size, the oils, the ingredients that we saw were in the market. And then we crunched the numbers and it was becoming, you know,$550 around to make that candle. Okay. So it worked for us to price these candles at$26. So we're getting over$1. You got to get over$x. If you're not over 4X on your pricing, you're not going to have room to do some marketing, um, to do some advertising. You need to give yourself some cushion if you plan on turning around and doing wholesale down the down the road. So say your candle is costing you$8 to make, and where you're planning on selling these candles are only charging$13,$14 for them. You can make a business out of that. You just have to sell a lot of candles, but you're not going to be able to wholesale at that price because your your pricing has to be at least half a retail for wholesale. And you got to do the math on that. For us,$26 retail,$13 wholesale. It's costing me$5.50 to make that$13 candle. It works. We can rock out some wholesale because of that. So make sure that your math is math and is adding up. If it's not, then you need to shift what niche you're going after and where you're trying to get your candles. That's what I end up seeing people do too late in the journey and who they're trying to sell for aren't spending what they have to charge to make it a sustainable business. So hopefully that helps you out. That is it for questions this week. Thank you all so much for tuning in. If you could hit that like or subscribe button, that would do me a huge favor. Really, really would. Um, if you are listening to this podcast, check us out on YouTube. And if you are watching this on YouTube, check out our podcast where you can listen to these episodes on the go with you every single week. If you have any questions, drop them in the comments below and I will answer them on an upcoming episode. I am very in on following the comments and replying as well. So don't hesitate to comment and let you let me know uh what you think about this episode or any other ones, uh, and I'm happy to connect with you. So have a fantastic rest of your week. I'll talk to you soon.