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Candle Business PRO
The Candle Business Pro Podcast is your go-to show for turning your passion for candle making into a thriving business. Hosted by Sabastian Garsnett — co-founder of Garsnett Beacon Candle Co. and creator of Candle Business PRO — this podcast shares the real strategies that helped us grow from small-batch pours to three storefronts and 140+ wholesale accounts.
Whether you're just starting or ready to scale, each episode dives into practical, proven tactics around branding, markets, product launches, email marketing, pouring parties, fundraisers, and more — all through the lens of a candle business.
New episodes drop weekly. Hit subscribe and join a growing community of makers who are ready to go pro.
Candle Business PRO
Fix Your Candle Business Money Problem Fast
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
#049. If you've ever felt like your candle business is taking more than it's giving, this one is for you.
In this episode, I'm answering a question from Jessica, a candle maker who has a retail shop open two days a week while still working her full-time job to cover the overhead. She put it perfectly: she's robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Sound familiar?
I break down exactly how to get a grip on your candle business finances, especially when you're part-time and every dollar has to work hard.
Here's what we cover:
Why your first year is really about data collection, not growth
How to do a 90-day expense and revenue audit right now
The bank account move that makes tracking so much easier
Why I call it the thermostat vs. thermometer approach to expenses
Supply ordering timing and how to stop over-buying
How to keep your product lineup lean and still grow revenue
The candle of the month strategy that creates FOMO without big upfront cost
How wholesale, fundraisers, and email can extend your revenue without extending your hours
What "protecting the floor" means and why it changes how you make decisions
We've been through these tight seasons ourselves. From our kitchen table to three brick-and-mortar stores and over 170 wholesale accounts, the seasons of up and down never fully go away. But once you understand them, they stop feeling like failure.
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Welcome And Time Zone Fix
SPEAKER_00Welcome everyone. Can I just get a thumbs up that someone can hear me? That would be amazing. Uh here in the chat today. Awesome. Thank you, Linda. I appreciate you. Thank you very much. Uh just a moment. We'll get started here. I just got in. I was been in the store all morning. It's our um our two of time festival. I talk about it often. Uh it's here, we're in the middle of it. I was uh at the store getting orders out that came in overnight. You know, obviously thankful for that. Uh, and then I just got like stuck, right? Because I uh we opened up there's people outside, so I was like, let's open up the doors early. And then um, I kind of just got stuck in there. So it was just a little bit of a rush getting over here uh to where it's a little bit quieter. Um so yeah, I'm glad you guys are all here uh this morning. Let me was there any, I just want to make sure there wasn't any miscommunication on my end. I saw some people signed in like an hour ago to office hours. Did I was it listed as maybe 10 o'clock instead of 11 o'clock somewhere else within uh within the inner circle? I just want to make sure that if I had the wrong day or time out there, or obviously not day, but time that I am not missing other people that should be here right now. So if they're if I did have something wrong, do not hesitate to um to let me know. Uh Linda says I saw the email and correctness, I saw the invite was 11. It could be the time zone. Um yeah, so the one of the things, Michelle, based on depending on where you're at, so it is 11 o'clock Eastern time. So if when you sign up, whenever you join the inner circle, go just be sure to go to settings in your profile and update it to whatever your time zone is, because if that's not updated to what your time zone is, it's showing you times in Eastern time versus your local time. So you can go into your profile settings and update that. That might be uh an issue for some people as well, if they're not on Eastern time, if they're on a different time. Um cool. Okay, awesome. I just uh, you know, totally fine. People can sign in whenever they want. I just wanted to make sure I didn't have anything out there because I used to have a bad habit of not updating the right calendars and things like that. But uh uh welcome everyone. Hopefully, my audio and everything is okay. I don't have everything set up like I usually do because we were traveling the last couple of weeks, but now we are back on track here. Uh, and I'm excited to dive in here. If you have questions, go ahead and put those in the question box. I don't think we have many um at all uh this week from pre-submitted. So I would like to work with the people that are here today uh on anything that you guys would like to work on. So use the question box, the QA box that is here inside of Zoom, and um drop things in there and I will go through those here. Uh let me just double check what we might have submitted in advance uh here. Um no, all right. So we don't have any unresponded to emails. So we don't have any or unresponded to uh virtual question box submissions. So I would like for you guys to feel free to use the chat box. I'm here for you. Um put anything you want in the chat box and we'll discuss it. We can also look at doing other things as well. We can do website reviews, we can do um social reviews, whatever, whatever this is your time. So I know many of you may just hop on just to have this on in the background and and listen in on other people and what uh they may have questions about, but I don't have anything submitted in advance, and I want to dedicate this time for us to work together. So whatever you have, let me know. I'm looking at the thread here inside of the community to see if there's anything that was uh brought up or discussed in as a whole that might be good to take a look at here.
SPEAKER_02Um we take a look and see.
SPEAKER_00Taking a look at the open chat here. Again, feel free to put any questions, anything you guys want to talk about in the in the chat. Also, if you want to verbally talk about something, just you can unmute yourself if you'd like. That's totally fine. We can do uh that here as well.
Luxury Vessels Without Supply Risk
SPEAKER_00Um I do see there is uh a thread going inside of the open chat that uh Travis um posted about. Um and it looks like he had he had posted some vessels inside of there. Let me just let me just do a screen share here. So he posted these vessels and he was asking for everyone's feedback on if these uh felt like they were elevated uh to the eye on there. Uh he says he looks like he's gonna be adding and he wants to add a more luxury line for his candles, and he's wondering if these vessels um would do the trick. Uh I yeah, I definitely think that those vessels would definitely do the trick, but I would be concerned about stock issue. The reason for that is a lot of these say we'll we'll call them Alibaba suppliers. So these Alibaba suppliers, they'll create a bunch of different vessels and then they'll throw them out on Amazon. If they sell, they'll keep putting more out there, right? That's great. It's a good way for businesses to also get rid of overstock that they have. They could have made a thousand of those vessels for, let's just say, let's just throw with the name out there. Let's say that they made a thousand of those vessels for Makesy, and then they ended up not needing as many or they overproduced. For whatever reason, the these businesses have extra. So they'll throw them on Amazon, and when they're gone, they're gone. Unless they, of course, they do really well. I would be really hesitant on building an entire line or collection around a vessel that is only a available on say Amazon. That's what that's what I'd be cautious of. I would go to Amazon for in case of emergency, we have gone to Amazon for some vessels. We used to have the uh Nordic ceramic, or not, yeah, it was the Nordic, it wasn't no, it was a modern ceramic. The modern ceramic from Candle Science. They come in like uh a bunch of different colors, but they come in black and white, uh, is what we started with, and then we did a bunch of different colors. Uh, the black ones had ran out, and I was able to find one that looked very, very similar on Amazon. It even came with the bamboo lid, so I didn't have to buy that separate. That was great. So I used those like for an emergency reasons. Um, but I wouldn't build or base a collection around vessels you can find on Amazon unless they've been around for a while. I can't see the history on that vessel uh that Travis shared. Uh there's, you know, so I can't see like how many reviews they are, the listing date on that, how long it's been around. Um, if if that uh information looks secure, if they've got a hundred reviews, they've sold several thousand, it's been out there for a couple of years. I would be more open to it, but I wouldn't just um build around that if I didn't have to. But that is a great looking vessel. So, what I would do is I would find that vessel, I would go to Alibaba and see if I can't find a supplier directly to work with so that I can continuously order from them. That's that's the approach that I would take on that. Um let's see here. Uh all right, let me take a look and see uh what we got here in the chat. Uh, also feel free to use the QA box. So a couple people are using the QA box, but others are actually putting stuff in the main chat. If it's something for me to take a look at and and respond to, uh put it in the QA box because that's where I see all the questions listed. Um, I'll also look in the chat because we're not that busy, so I can keep an eye on it. I just don't want to miss anything, and that's the reason why we want to use a QA box,
Cash Discounts And Sales Tax Math
SPEAKER_00just so I don't miss anything. So I do see a question in here from Jackie in the QA box. Hey Sebastian, at markets I offer no tax with paying with a cash, but I also have a special going two for 60. What would you do if someone paid cash for the two for 60? That's a double discount now. Um I mean, the the discount of cash, the reason the discount of cash is for our convenience, right? Your convenience and my convenience, so we don't have to have a bunch of change. That's why we eat the tax, and could we still have to turn around and pay the tax, um, the sales tax on any products that are sold? We're eating that tax. Um, but like for me, it's six percent or six and a half percent, is what I'm eating with that. Um, but I'm still gonna be offering my buy three get one free. So the buy three get one free on my $26 candle that comes to $70, whatever, $78 uh when they buy three candles. So I'm gonna tell them it's $78. I'm not gonna charge them the tax, which is another $4 and some random change. So yes, it is a double discount in a way, but it's not it's it's not to where I would ever think about not doing that. Um, I also, when we get orders that are that size, generally people are gonna pay with a credit card at that uh price point. I think when we're getting up over 50 bucks, most people are gonna pay with a card. Uh people just don't carry cash that often anymore. Um with a card, they are paying taxes on that, right? But we're not charging them, say, that credit card fee, that 3% plus that 70% or 70 cent swipe or 30 cent swipe plus 2.9 percent. So there's always a cost involved. And so if the the convenience factor for you would have it to where you eat the tax, um then that that that's a choice that you have to make. You can if it's a concern for you, then maybe the pricing uh needs to be addressed, or if you have a buy two and get a discount, maybe you ease up on that. You don't discount as much. Um, again, we always do buy three and get one free so that when they're spending $78, we can eat a little bit more of that overhead because we have a bigger margin on that. But I wouldn't overthink the I would still offer that for sure. I wouldn't, I wouldn't not do my I don't promote the we pay tax. When they come up to my booth and they pick out some candles, they got candles and they pay for it. They it's this is a $26 candle. I say, Are you paying cash for card? And when they say I'm paying cash, they say, Okay, great, that's $26. And that's all the conversation. I don't get into like, okay, I I'm gonna pay the tax for you. I mean, you can say that if you want. Say, okay, you're paying cash, then I I will pay the taxes for you so good. We don't deal with change, right? It almost seems kind of shady, like, oh, you're paying me cash. Well, then there's no tax on that. Because the reality is there is tax on it. It's just that I'm gonna pay it myself versus having you pay it just so I don't have to work with coins to give it you back. But another way you could do it is I ring it all up because I still have to ring up what that tax is for my accounting side. When I ring this this $26 candle up, it comes to uh $27.56, is what this comes to. Um, when I'm doing markets, I could say, okay, it's 20, you know, oh, you're doing cash? Okay, it's $27. I'm I pay the coins, right? So then I'm only losing 56 cents on that, and not that $1.56. Uh, that could be another way for you to do it, Jackie. There. But as far as like the tax issue and then your discount issue, I wouldn't think about or I wouldn't think about not still doing both. Uh, I see here you followed up with um on your discount, you have a 20% off when you sign up on the first order. Do you keep this for a long time? So my 20% off offer is it's good for a week. That's it. Like my when I send them a coupon code whenever they first sign up for an email for uh 20% off or whatever that that um email capture discount is for brand new customers, that is um, it's available. I I want to have an end date on every offer, every email offer. Uh, when someone buys candles from me and I send out that order to them, I'm going to include a little discount card in there for them to come back and save 25% if they shop with me within seven days. I want it to expire because if you give someone a coupon, and like, I mean, just think about how all of us shop. The majority of us, I would, I would think, I don't think I'm crazy here, or that I'm the odd one out on this, but we all got stacks of coupons, right? We all got stacks of gift cards, we all got stacks of stuff in drawers that we ended up saving, thinking we're gonna use that in the future sometime, right? But if it says expires in seven days, I'm not gonna put it in that drawer. I'm gonna keep that out, I'm gonna keep that handy, especially if I'm gonna want to use it. I'm gonna want to keep that close by and I'm gonna have a higher uh conversion of actually redeeming that discount code, which means it's a higher conversion rate of it actually working. When we first put in discount cards inside of, and I tested this on Amazon uh because when we were first starting, that's where I wanted to test this out to see if it made sense. I also did it on Amazon because I wanted people to go to my website versus going back to Amazon to buy their second time to avoid all those Amazon fees. So, what I did is I put a coupon code inside of all of the orders that Amazon sent out. The coupon code was for 25% off when you shopped on my website. I didn't have that urgency factor to it. And very, very few of those got redeemed. When I started including that urgency factor, this expires in seven days or valid for seven days, a lot higher percentage of those end up getting redeemed, which means more orders for us, right? And then there's so there's this cycle of they come back, they buy from you again, you put another discount code in there, it's good for seven days, and this cycle just keeps going around and around. Now, don't overthink this. Put a discount code in there that doesn't actually expire in seven days. That's what we do. Uh, I think ours is like bounce back seven or repeat seven, something like that. And um, what is it? It's repeat oh seven, I think is what it is. And so don't overthink it. Um, some people might try to still use it after the seven days, and that's okay. That means they're buying again, and that's what we want them to do, right? But the majority of people, I don't think, are gonna be like, oh, let me see if I could actually redeem this at a later date. They're just gonna, oh, this expires in seven days. Okay, great. I got to use it within seven days, and they're gonna come back and buy from you. So we're not having to set up new discount codes over and over and over again. It's the same one that we use, and we'd use that for all a year. Um, so just something to think about doing there. Um, and I see actually, uh, Linda, you said, how do you know when the seven days are over? We we we don't care. If they're gonna come back and spend more money with me, they can use that coupon code for the next five years. I really don't care. Um, but I'm creating that urgency of, hey, you got to sign up by this day. You got to come back and buy from me by this day. Um, I don't want to have to create new cards with new discount codes every single time they buy. So we have a whole stack of them and we just put them in there and they they're good for seven days. So that's all it is. Um, so hopefully that hopefully that uh clears that up. It's one of those things like we don't have to overthink it at all. It's just but put on there that it expires because that's that's the critical part. Hey, this expires, so that it stays top of mind for them. Take a look here in the chat. I know there's some questions put in there.
Press Releases And Gift Guide PR
SPEAKER_00Uh Audi says asks, where do I get the press template? Hold on one second here. I'm just going inside of the membership. I'll get to a stranger here in just a second when I get to the right here. Oh, yeah, I'll just check my work here. I don't want to confuse anyone by showing any wrong things. And we're starting to add a lot of sweet, cool. All right, so let me now that I'm more confident in my answer, I will show you uh where to get that at. So what uh Audi is asking for is uh for press releases. So we do a lot of press releases, it's how we get newspapers, how we get news articles, all of that. If any of you have not taken the uh how to do PR uh workshop, I'd recommend doing it. I think I think it's super valuable to do. Um, you like to own the story uh of things as well. Also, like in the like the one I I just did, and we got uh we got right on the in the newspaper uh and all over the newspaper of social media was about one of our stores that we're closing and relocating. Um, I wanted to own that story. I didn't want someone just to hear about it and then an article to go out saying, oh, Garzana Beacon Candle Company is closing their Holland store, because that's not the case. I want to make sure that I own the story. So I will do press releases about different topics. I have done a press release about my store opening, uh, store closing, another store opening, another store opening. I have done a press release about our candle that we do every May, our our Tulip Time candle. That's what got us news because it was related to the local community. So the news station wanted to come out and just do a super short little interview of small businesses that um generate a profit from these local events that happen um and how we how it affects our business. And that got us lots of sales. So we can do a press release about all kinds of things, but also how to get into gift guides. That is huge. How to get your products into gift guides at the end of the year for holidays, but also if you do things for instance, if you have something local or um, you know, I know uh one of our members here today, like her whole brand is around um horse racing, right? So anytime there's a we're in horse racing season, big, big uh events are starting to happen. It's like, okay, I would be doing press releases about my products that relate to that. And I would send it out to the local newspaper, all the news stations, all that stuff, right? And see who wants to pick up the story, who wants to pick up a story for uh so what I recommend is I would highly recommend don't think that you have to be at a certain level of sales or business growth before you can do PR or do press releases. In fact, we were all of our first interviews were literally inside of our bedroom that we made candles in, that we that we turned into our studio at home first, right? So um, that's where all of our first interviews came from. Um, so uh it's totally fine. And we've also gone on to the news station to make candles in a 90-second segment. Like we so like we've done all kinds of things with the news. Uh so sending out rest releases will open up opportunities for you. With that said, so how to find this? Um oh, I'm talking and I didn't show you. Okay, so here's the uh main page of the membership. Down the left-hand side, we have the workshops here, right? Click on the workshops tab. And then when you go to the workshop, uh, do your own public releases or public relations, excuse me. Um PR, people use it interchangeably. Public relations is like a division of a business that just does this. So that's what this is because we're doing all different kinds, and then press releases is also PR. So same acronym. So this is the workshop that I go through and show you exactly how I do it. Um, I show you how to reach out to different uh people. In fact, here I show you an email that I wrote. Um, and then we got picked up by Hearst. So Hearst is the um the company that owned all the big magazines. I'm talking Cosmo, L, um, all the fashion magazines, uh, and more. And so Hearst is who owns them. I reached out to them to pitch my um candles where we get back to the community. They actually said, Hey, we love this idea. They did they didn't, the people that reached out to me, they weren't trying to do an article about it. What they wanted to do is put my candles inside of their employee uh discount directory. So now their employees can save 20% when they shop at GarsNetbeacon.com. And that went out to all their employees and then and all the journalists. Uh, so I show you exactly how we've done all of that here. I show you how I write those emails and what we do, how we get into the guides. But to answer your question, Audi, here is one example uh for you here of my template. Um, but at the very top here is the download button. I know it's hidden up there. I can't change the color. So anytime there's a download in workshops, um, if you're looking on a desktop, it's right here. I think on the phone, a Looks better or it's but on your phone, you usually don't want to download on your phone. So it's right here at the top. You click on that and then it'll say press release template. And then you can open up the actual Word document of this. And I have a couple of things in here for you. I have three different things in here for you. So I've got a press release that is just a simple press release. It's for immediate release. This is going out to newspapers, news stations. Um, it's going out to magazines, things like that. Uh, so this is my press release template. The second page here is my journalist pitch template. This is what I use to reach out to journalists that have already written an article. And I want them to include me the next time they update that article, which happens every single year. So that's going to be best candles to buy in the spring, best candles to buy in the summer, best candles to buy in the fall, best candles to buy at Christmas time, best gifts for uh women in their 50s, best gifts for um that hard-to-buy man in your life, right? All those different articles that are out there in the world, um, best gifts for stay-at-home moms, um, best gifts for empaths, everything that you can potentially search for. Um, this is my pitch to them. Um, so go through the workshop on how to find those. Uh, and then here is the template to write them. And essentially what this template says is like, hey, I came across your article that you've written. Because what they do is they they write an article, and then next year they don't rewrite it from scratch. They've got they've got their own template, right? Of that gift guide that they're they're putting together and they're just swapping out the products. So I'm sending them a press release and information about my business saying, hey, I would love to be included when you update it. That's all I'm doing here. Um, last year uh for Pride Month, we had our candles put into like six different articles, right? Um, and it was just a matter of, hey, I got to do that now for then and make sure that you think ahead, right? Um, so for like Christmas, you want to be pitching people by October. At the latest October, you want to start sending people um this stuff because those gift guides are gonna start going out November 1st for a lot of them. So you got to think ahead on this. Um, but this is a year-round strategy because, like right now, I could let me just um go out to something here. Um, let's see here. Oh, I was just, I'm sorry, hold on one second. I'm I opened up that download and then my screen wasn't sharing it. So you guys are probably like, what the hell are you talking about? Uh excuse my language. Let me show you what I was just sharing with everyone, or I thought I was sharing. All right, so here is the template that you download out of the workshop there, and I got three different ones here. This first one is your simple one that you're gonna mail out to a newspaper or news station. Um, and then this second one here is the journalist pitch. That's what I was excuse me, that's what I was just talking about, how to get into gift guides. This this talks about, hey, I came across your article, and then you you mention it, and then you basically ask them to include you next time. Um, and this is just a gift guide pitch email that you know, so this doesn't need to include this is when they've already done one, and this is when they haven't. So read through all three of these that I give you and see which one just fits for what you are working on. But let me go back to sharing this other thing just while we're on on this, because I'll be doing this for uh our pride candles again. But let me just show you here like the the simple gist of it would be just to see how much opportunity is out there. You can simply just ask um uh best uh best candles to buy um. Okay, so you're gonna get, of course, some sponsored results. So these people are paying to have theirs come up, but I'm actually gonna go here. Look, so New York Times. This is gonna give you an article. So this is the best candles of 2026. They wrote this at the very end of uh December 18th, 2025. So that's an article. So I could reach out to this person and I could say, uh, you know, so I could put this on my calendar. Hey, I know that they're gonna update this uh in December. So in December, I want to reach out to this person and say, Hey, would you include me in this? Right? I would love for you to include me in this, and um, you know, see if they do it. Uh, but you can keep going. Uh, best uh summer candles to buy. Uh, this person wrote one, this one here, best summer candles. So there's so many different articles here. Of course, some of these are gonna be written by candle brands themselves, putting out their own blog, like Yankee has done here, which makes total sense. And that um something we should do if we have uh the time to do that, right? Um, but this is how you find who you want to reach out to. Um so let's do um best gifts for stay-at-home moms. And you can go and see all these different articles. And you it's all like this one here, like bucket list tummy uh has you know 30 gift items. Uh, so I could hop in here for moms with toddlers. So you could, you know, read see if a candle would make sense. Does a candle make sense in this? Let me see if they even have one. Let's see here. Fine candle. Uh nope, they don't have one. So yeah, I you can reach out to them and say, hey, if you're gonna update this anytime soon, I'd love to be included. But usually the easiest ones to find are gonna be the ones that put a date on there on the end. So um candles for fall 2025, which was last year, right? So now let's find all of these articles that were written about this, like this one here, this home and hort. Um, they did an article for 2025, so that means they'll do another one for 2026, and it'll be the same thing. Just go through and see who uh who you have here. Another thing that you can do when you let me see if this works. And again, go through that workshop. I'm just kind of giving you the gist of it right here. I I clicked on news. After I searched something, click on news. It's gonna filter by all the stuff that's actually done by news or magazines instead of actually like personal blogs, and that's gonna filter out a ton of stuff. So now it's the New York Times, it's HGTV, it's uh Marie Claire, um, it is Oprah Daily. We've we got our candles into Oprah Daily, um, Southern Living, Cosmo, Vogue, Apartment Therapy, e News. This is how you get all of the big names. And take note of when they wrote these articles. So you see December, December, December, November, August for fall, uh, November, September for fall. So make sure you are ahead of the game and you're submitting to these journalists ahead of time. And you don't write these to like I'm not gonna send it to the info at Cosmo uh email block. I am going to do it to the uh to the actual journalist. I gotta do some navigating, I gotta investigate, I gotta find out, all right, who wrote this? Okay, so this was um this was Beth Gillette that wrote this article that post. So I need to find Beth Gillette's email address. I got a photo of her. I know she was uh she's a beauty editor for Cosmo. So I'm gonna go out and find her and go to the workshop and I show you how I do that. But I'm gonna see if I can't get her to um, you know, include me inside of her. If if I can get my candles alongside Bath and Body Works and Cosmo magazine, I'm gonna sell some candles. Um, and this is how you can really get your brand to pop off. Um, and where you get a uh a good amount of orders at once, and then it'll slow down, of course. But I still get orders from an Oprah Daily Pride post that we got three years ago. Three years ago, Oprah Daily did an article on us, like this big. I say article, I guess if it was a whole page, it was like this big. We we were uh listed as one of the brands that give back to the community, and so they we were this much on like a list of like 10 people. They had a picture of our candle and they had uh uh some information, and that sent a lot of traffic to us, and it also just it's something that you can use for proof of concept. So now when people go onto my website, I can be legit and honest when it shows we were featured in Oprah Daily, Parade Magazine, all these different things, right? So um, and that article is like lives out there on the internet, right? And so someone's searching for certain things is gonna find that article. It's not just when a magazine comes out, it's not like the old days where we actually printed magazines. These uh these articles live out here forever. So depending on what someone's searching for, they'll find that article, they click on a website, possibly convert into a sale. So hopefully that helps there a little bit. Long-winded answer for you, Audi, on where that is. But you can go in and grab all of those. Um there. So all right, let me take a look and see if there's any questions um in the chat here.
Surviving Slow Markets With Add Ons
SPEAKER_00Uh Cindy said, I need cheering up, had a terrible show this weekend, sold two candles, three wax melts, a candle coaster, and a sage bundle over two days. I'm sorry, that's horrible. Um, let's, you know, I don't want to say horrible, um, but that's super disappointing that it didn't um exceed or meet your expectations. On the positive side, to cheer you up, it only takes one of those sales for that customer to become a super fan of Cindy and Cindy's brand and to go and follow you, like your brand, be on your email list. And if they become a super fan of yours, they will hopefully buy from you going forward and going forward. Um, we have about 23, 23 to 25 people still on our candle of the month subscription box that we met from markets. Um, that number keeps going down because um we we aren't doing many markets anymore. Um our subscription boxes are going up just because we we promote it and we we sell our subscription box, but from our markets, because that's who joined our box, uh, our subscription right away, or the people that we met at markets because those were the majority of our customers uh first starting. And so that's dwindling down. But selling 20 candles on the first of the month every single month, all from people that we met out of markets over a couple of years, that made up some of our disappointing markets, is knowing, hey, you know what? I sold a product to someone that fell in love with my product, and now everything I put out, they're gonna buy. So, over the course of time, it's worth still doing markets. You don't want to do every market, you got to be super picky about markets. We learn to be picky about markets. I won't do a market if it hasn't been done before because I don't want that disappointment. I don't want to go and set up and not know and not be able to trust that event coordinator that is putting the market on. I've attended, like I love to attend at shop markets. It's just what are we gonna do on this Saturday? We have nothing going on. Oh, let's just go to these markets that I see promoted. Let's go to this. We've gone to some markets that I felt bad for the people. Like I felt bad to where I bought something because I felt bad for people because they because the attendance was really low. And that's because they're not promoted very well. There can be other things like weather and things like that, but the best markets are the markets that are hard to get into. In our first year, it was hard for us to get into most of the markets because the good markets, they already have people that want to come back to them again year after year. So they didn't have a lot of open availability. But reach out to all of them, you know, send them photos of your products, let them know, you know, that you, you know, you're you're dependable, they can rely on you, uh, that people love your products, uh, and ask them to put you on their waiting list if they have one. Um, you want it you want it to be hard to get into, right? Um, because if it was easy, why is it easy? Um, you know, oh, the markets that we like to attend, the people that are doing those markets have been doing it year after year after year. So uh when it comes to markets, I want to make sure that I go to the ones that are or apply for the ones that have been established. Uh, and if I'm not sure, what I do is I go to their social media uh of the event coordinator, I go back a year, or on Facebook, you can go to their events page on their Facebook page and go to past events and see, like, okay, how many hundreds of people are SVP that they were going to that. If there wasn't very many, then that means maybe it's not being promoted as well. There's some event organizers that are gonna rely on the actual vendors to bring the crowd. I I don't do those because you know, sort of my my following might go and see us, but my following also knows that they can buy from me anytime. I'm looking for new customers, I'm looking to put my products in front of new people. So um, I'm sorry, Cindy, that you had a rough market. Um, but uh, you know, keep going, keep keep going with it. Uh, you know not to do that one anymore. Uh, if it was just you know poorly coordinated, poorly promoted, you uh you know to to you know that's one that we can say, hey, we're not gonna ever do that again. Um so but just you gotta keep going.
SPEAKER_04Thank you.
SPEAKER_00You're welcome, Cindy.
SPEAKER_04Um, the thing with this one is it is well known.
SPEAKER_00Was it well attended though, or no?
SPEAKER_04Uh not this year, but the other vendor said it wasn't very slow compared to the other year. And that was the reason why I picked this one because I didn't do this last year. Um it's an hour away. And so I figured with the attention here, I'm going to only pick the R the Right. And that is I mean that's been going on for 40 years. Um that's really cool. Okay, I mean to go. Now that I know that it's been around, and then I'm not totally discouraged. It was just a big disappointment because I I would sure it was gonna be a big yeah, it's it's a gut check, right?
SPEAKER_00It's it's a gut check of like, oh gosh, like did why didn't people buy? And if if people are picking up your products and then putting them back down, then we might have a product problem. If people are picking up our products, smelling our products, asking you how much they are, and then you tell them, and then they put the products back down, then we probably have a pricing issue. But if people pick up your products, smell your products, ask you how much they are, and then buy your product, then then we we have a match there. We have we have we have a product that's worthy of selling. And even if only five people pick it up, if if you're getting someone to convert, then we don't have a product issue or a pricing issue. We have a lack of customers, we have a lack of um attendance, we don't have enough people buying, right? Some some of these markets now, like there's people there and they're out and about, but they're not like going into the booths, right? I the the thing that we um that's what it was.
SPEAKER_04They want you someone into the booth, yeah.
SPEAKER_00There is there is out with and I get it, like there's there's days I have no money, right? There's there and but I want to get out of the house. It's a beautiful summer day, it's 65 degrees finally. I want to get out, but I have zero money to spend on anything, but I just want to get out of the house. So we're gonna get out of the house. Maybe we can buy a coffee, maybe we can buy something, like you know what I'm saying? I'm just I'm just talking from the point of view of a lot of families out there, right? Getting out and walking around and just trying to enjoy life still, but maybe I can't afford that $26 candle right now. I understand. Um, you know, whether it's economical, whatever it is. So we got to figure out ways that we can still benefit from those markets. Um, and also one of the things that I'm cautious of is that I've noticed with a couple of our show organizers here locally um that I'm not a part of, uh, I'm not on their circuit, but like their marketing is way down. They're not spending as much on ads. I'm not hearing them on the local radio like they used to be, right? So they're trying to, you know, hoard their spending, right? So if a uh one of our best friends is a market coordinator, right? And she makes about $15,000 a show because it's $250 a person, and then however many boosts it is, right? So she brings in, I should say the revenue is like $15,000, is what she brings in. But to make it a well-attended market, she's putting $7,500 of that into marketing. So she walks away with $7,500 and half of it is goes to her promoting, and that's going through like podcast ads. Um, she prints off these nice flyers, she's doing Facebook ads all over the the area, and so you can kind of see who's those organizers are that are promoting, then all of a sudden, do you stop seeing their ads? You know, are they are they promoting less? So um it's it's tough. So I'm sorry that you had a rough market. You know, if you're going to, I don't want to encourage this amongst anyone, but if I'm doing a market now and markets is a way that I need to bring in revenue for my business, and it is one of the main ways for me to bring in revenue. I would get down into the hustle mode when it comes to like the economy right now, and I would I pay for a booth. My candles at $26 aren't going over very well with people at markets right now. People aren't spending the $26 on the candle or whatever the price point is, right? What else can I include in my booth that might not be on brand? It might be kind of tacky, but is there something else that I can sell that I can generate revenue for? So in my seasonal shop, uh store three uh Sogatuck, our location there, we sold $14,000 in four dollar stickers last year. And that's like May 1st to October. $14,000 in stickers. Um, it's insane. We talked about during office hours before. So, like the the we sell for four bucks a piece, right? So that that's it, they're not like a dollar sticker. They cost us like 50 cents. Uh, we buy all these fun ones, we can get them off at Etsy, and uh we stock them. If I was doing markets right now, I would have four dollar stickers out there because if I can sell 50 stickers out there or 25 stickers out there, like 25 stickers, that's another 100 bucks, right? Um, and it's so easy to buy a sticker these days. That kind of gives us that dopamine that hey, I just I bought something, so I'm gonna stick it in my water bottle or on my laptop or whatever.
SPEAKER_02Somebody almost says no to us. I'm not hey Madison, you're uh you're uh Hey Sebastian, but you're muted.
SPEAKER_00Sorry about that. I was actually trying to mute someone else that was uh talking and I must have uh have uh done that wrong. I apologize there. Uh what I was saying is so it might seem kind of tacky to like include something else, like stickers in your booth. But if you can sell 50 stickers at four bucks a pop on that day that you're not selling any candles, you just made an extra $200, right? Um, and me as a shopper, if I don't have money to spend on a $26 candle or something, hey, let me just look at these few stickers here. Maybe I can buy something that gives me the satisfaction that I was able to buy something today. I can stick it in my water bottle, I can stick it on my laptop. Uh, another thing that is that we sell like crazy in our stores, and I would absolutely take them to markets if I was doing markets to bring in all my revenue and I just need to sell something is 3D printed stuff. 3D printed stuff is like it's it's crazy. And right now, the things and we I just had a conversation with our ops manager this morning because it's so annoying that I almost don't want to carry to my store. Um, but there's these, let me see if I can find one on Amazon or something. We have a local uh couple that makes these for us, uh, they're 3D printed. And um, so they have booths and they they sell tons of the stuff.
SPEAKER_03And uh, there are these keyboard we we do have a 3D printer. Do you so Cindy?
SPEAKER_00That's how you do.
SPEAKER_03We talked about that. We have I we have about four or five of them.
SPEAKER_00I would throw some of that stuff just in in your booth. Like if we're in hustle mode, if we're trying to pay bills, we are trying to keep our business afloat. I am not above selling stickers inside of my candle booth. I'm not above selling a different type of product in front of my candle booth. It's not ideal, it's not getting people to come back to my brand in the future, but it's paying for my booth fee today, it is paying for my supplies so I can make candles tomorrow and keep growing my candle brand, right? At some point, like we all want to get to this fairy tale of like, I just have this brand that just does well. And so I just focus on growing it and I don't need anything else. But there is that time from we're starting from scratch, and we are we're just we're just getting started before we have that established brand that we know people are gonna keep coming back to, right? And that's when we're in hustle mode, and I don't want to stay in hustle mode forever because I want to be really focused uh with intention on my brand. But for a while there, we just got to make sales, and that's why we bring in wick trimmers and lighters and we try all these different things, right? That those go with our brand. But if I have a booth and I can sell whatever I want really in that booth, um, I'm bringing in some stickers, I'm bringing in 3D printed stuff, and um that that's what I would do. So, yeah, Cindy, I would bring in some of that stuff.
SPEAKER_03Perfect, yeah, because this weekend it was mainly what what we saw being sold was the 3D printed stuff, which the booth was right behind us. And um, our granddaughter, I think, was their best customer. And and uh the people across from us, they had all sorts of you know, kid uh finger toys. So I may just do a basket of little bitty 3D printed animals and let the kids pick out what they want. You know, it's it was more of a kids thing, kids' stuff was being sold this weekend.
SPEAKER_00You know, in market season, you got a lot of families out there when the economy is tough. Who are the majority of parents buying for? Are they buying for themselves that candle or are they buying something for their kids? Right. So this is something to think about. And so, hey, if I can cater towards that, listen, these little quickers, I'm trying to show you.
SPEAKER_03Um, you you have just given me an awesome idea. So my my head is just spinning on what we can what we can print now.
SPEAKER_00Oh, good, good. There are these. I'm trying to find wait, 3D printer keyboard. They're like these here. So let me show you all what these things are. Um, these are terrible photos here on here. Let me show you these things. This uh so our 3D printer person, um these are queer, right? So these aren't in colors, but the ones that that we have are in colors. I can't believe that these are only $8.99 though. Because we're we're selling them for $13. Now they're not just a single clicker like that. Uh the keychain is ten dollars that we sell. This keychain, we sell it for $10. Um, but it's like black with uh like oh, here's one. Well, wait, where was that image at? Like the the the colored ones like that. These little 3D clicker things um are so popular right now. We've only had them in our store for two weeks, and I I don't know, we saw 25, 30 of them in our store. They're annoying is all get out. So I work in the store this past weekend, right? I did a couple like little videos and stuff on Instagram from the stop from the shop. I I will do a video uh this weekend um in the shop of this damn clicker because they just go, quick, click, click, click, click, click, click, and kids gravitate towards them and they're clicking them, and then adults gravitate towards them, and like they just annoy the hell out of me. But I'm selling them for 13 bucks a pop or whatever they're they're $13 for the actual thing or $10 for the keychain. We make 40% because they're on consignment with us. Something like that I would have out of the market where it's easy to sell, easy for someone to pick up and want to buy it. And gosh, if I can buy 36 of these for $9 and turn around and sell them for $10 a pop, um, I could turn $9 into $360. We're just selling them for five bucks each. You could sell a ton of them. Or of course, you know, Cindy, you can make them. That's fantastic. But um, anyways, I would just look at markets as how else can I do markets? Yeah, yeah, you're you're welcome. Just some ideas there. David, I see here in the chat, you said bring a cooler with soda and water. Heck yeah. You know, sell that out of the market on a hot day, you know. What's what's the markup on a bottle of water? You know, I don't I don't want us to get all too far from what our brand is, but I don't want people to think that we just went from like thinking about a candle and then like having stores that we sell candles and like there's gonna be some of that hustle and grind in the middle, and we gotta we gotta figure things out. And um, I wouldn't be above above that at all, uh, or think that I'm too good for selling stuff that's not really mine. Uh, the only thing is would be um is you're the market organizer. If they're organized and if they do it really well, like, okay, I only have X amount of candle makers here, I have X amount of jewelry makers here, I have X amount of 3D printer people or X amount of stickers, stationary, whatever. I wouldn't tell them in advance. I would ask for forgiveness. That's this kind of person I would do. I'm gonna do what I want to do and ask for forgiveness. So I'm gonna apply for that show as a candle maker. I'm gonna get in as a candle maker, and then I might sell some stuff that's not candle. If they tell me I got to put it away, I would respect that. I would respect that I can't sell my 3D stuff out there because there might be another 3D printer person that complained or something. It is what it is. Apologize. Say you didn't realize it, put them under the table and be done with it.
SPEAKER_03So um, yeah, our our markets around here are flooded with 3D printed stuff. Uh there's usually three or more at a show. But I'm not opposed to doing little ones for kids, and you know, that'll bring the parents in to look at the candles while the kids are looking at the toys.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely, and vice versa. People, you know, with candles, especially at price point, people like they still want to come and smell them. They may have no intention of buying because of the price. Well, as long as they can bring their kid over, and that kid wants that five dollar thing um or ten dollar thing, they can't buy the candle, but they'll buy that for them. So um, yeah, just just try some different things there. All right, let me see what else I've got here in the chat. I'm glad we've been able to fill up some of the time.
SPEAKER_02Let's see here.
Donations That Actually Pay Off
SPEAKER_00Uh Lyndon says, uh, do you have sample size candles that you donate for goodie bags or events? Or is it not a good community marketing tactic? Okay. So we don't have sample size, we have normal size candles that we donate for causes. And we will donate for causes. We will donate for if they're gonna auction it off, if they are gonna be doing a giveaway for something that's gonna go towards an organization. We do not ever, we've done before the like goody bag giveaway thing. In fact, we've done them at markets before, um, where we could be in the market organizers like goodie bag. Uh, we could put something in there, and then like the first hundred people or 50 people that showed up at the market, they got a tote bag to shop with, right? In theory, that might sound okay. I would put a coupon in there, I would not put product in there. We did that, we gave away like 50 candles. Um, but now they have a candle, they don't need to buy a candle, right? Uh, I also wouldn't do giveaways for things that we don't think is gonna be well enough attended that we're not gonna possibly get all you need is one customer. So I will donate to causes that we care about, but I'm gonna donate, you know, a nice little gift basket uh that they can auction off. I'll make that type of donation. I don't do the small, I don't do the we get we get asked all the time for discount or for donations. I'm talking three or four. Now that we have the storefront, we have people that will physically come in, and then we also get things in the email, and then we also get things in the actual mail. I will only donate to people that I either truly believe in their cause or they are customers of us. If they've never shopped with us before, I'm not giving to so-and-so's fundraiser for this and that, and I know that might come across as like heartless, but we can go out of business by donating to so many things. So I will be very strategic about it. If it's a big community event and they are gonna put our name on social media, and you know, because they think that all of their uh donation or their sponsors, I will do that. I will also, when I get an email saying, hey, um, we have X event coming up. Would you like to be a sponsor? And I have just I just did this with uh so Grand Haven is a little, you know, a small town uh north of us. Uh Grand Haven Pride is next month, right? So that event is uh for in the month of June. And so I get an email saying, Hey, thank you for donating last year. You are an X level sponsor. Uh, can we uh depend on you or rely on you to be that sponsor or more this year, right? It's their annual email that's gonna go out to anyone that's donated before. So, what I did, because I want to be cautious about my spending this year, because last year I just gave a dollar amount. This year I don't want to give a dollar amount. So I said, so when I get those emails, or when I get any of those emails that are similar to this right now, and they say, Hey, can you donate? You know, here's the sponsor package. First sponsor package is a hundred bucks, and you're gonna get recognized in a thank you. The $250 level, you're gonna get your name printed in the um the program. And then at $500, you're gonna get on put on the poster and at a thousand dollars, and it just keeps going up, right? Based on that. So, what I'll do is I'll respond to those emails saying, hey, I would um, you know, we uh like a lot of businesses right now, have to be very cautious about overspending. Um, would it be acceptable to you for me to give an in-kind donation? Um, and if so, I will do an in-kind donation of a $250 or $100, whatever that might be. What that is, is I'm giving product in um in the place of money. So instead of giving you a check for $100 or $250 or $500, I'm giving you product of that value. And you can you you can get creative with this. If I want to be at, let's say, a $250 in-kind donation, sure, that's all that's almost 10 candles. They might not need 10 candles to then turn around and auction off or do whatever. But what they think we can do is I can give them, I can do it in the form of a certificate. So I can give them 10 certificates for candles that they can give to whomever they decide, whether it's their VIPs of that event, or they're gonna they can auction them off to people, or they can do raffles. How they can decide how to give them away. And if they so now I have $250 sponsorship package, which means now I'm going up on the um presentation, I'm gonna be out at the event on all of the signs that they have there. My brand is being recognized. They're also uh recognizes me on social media as the candle brand that sponsored them. I'm getting a lot out of it, and in all honesty, if I'm giving them certificates that they are going to auction off or raffle off or give out to their VIPs, whatever they want to do, if I give them 10, 10 of those aren't coming back being redeemed. I've done this, I've done this at events where I've bit on something or Chad bit on this coffee package, right? And there's some certificates and stuff in there. They go in that drawer that one day we're gonna redeem. They end up not being redeemed and they expire, right? They expire in a year or whatever it is, and we and we lose them or whatever. So you can get creative with ways of sponsoring events, but I don't just give out candles for like goodie bags or things like that. I also don't at markets, I don't do giveaways for emails. I used to think it was a good idea until I realized I had just collected hundreds of emails over a few markets, and not a single person ever bought from me when I sent an email out because people are just signing up for giveaways left and right. It did no good for my brand. So um, just just some other things to think about there uh as well. Let's take a look and see if there's anything else here that I've missed. Um, Wayne said I sell candles, needle felt sculptures, stickers designed by my daughter, and vintage Halloween in my booth. My whole brand is spooky, so it works. Yeah, absolutely. Having it totally on brand, I like that. That's fantastic.
SPEAKER_02Um let's see here.
SPEAKER_00Uh yeah, question
Wholesale Catalog Without Overbuying
SPEAKER_00here from Caitlin. All right, for wholesale, do you use different vessels specifically just for wholesale, or do you use the same vessels that you use for your store and online? I'm working on doing my wholesale planning and considering doing a smaller vessel. That what I normally use um just as a second second option. I uh use a 16-ounce salsa jar for my everyday candles and for markets and online, but now I'm considering using a nine-ounce salsa jar for a second option. I'd like to have other options as well, but I can't do it right now. But I'm wondering if you do only specifics for wholesale and specifics for your shopping online. Great question. Um, and I'll get to that in just one second. And uh Natalia, you said sorry for your you put your question in the in the QA chat. That's where they're supposed to go. So, just a reminder for everyone if you have a question for me, put it in the QA box. Um, so that way I don't miss it. So I will get to those questions here in just a second. We've kind of been going back and forth, so I want to make sure, uh, but you did put them in the right spot there, Natalia. So no need to apologize there. So uh Caitlin, for your question here. Um, all of our wholesale that we have, we sell those products to our customers to our already. But that's because we already have a robust version, right? We have the nine-ounce version of this, but I also have the five-ounce version of this. I also have the wax melts, I also have the room spray of this, right? So I already have all those covered. If I didn't have the five-ounce candle of this in my stores or online, um, that I wasn't selling out of markets or anything like that, uh, you I would absolutely still put it in my wholesale line sheet if I thought it's going to help me get wholesale accounts. And again, you don't have to make the product until you sell it. So you can make your wholesale catalog as robust as you would like. Uh, for instance, let me just do something here. Let me do a screen share here to show you something. So, even though my wholesale catalog is all stuff that I have on stock, I have on hand. Uh, some of the oils that I sell, I won't have on hand, right? Because they're buying something that might be out of season for me, but they want in their store now. Okay, great, I'll get this stuff together. I don't have to keep that Christmas sent on hand, but it's in my catalog. If someone wants me to make my Christmas candle for them in May, okay, sure. Yeah. So if a wholesale customer wants that, I'll do that. But let me go to I want to show you this here inside of this private label and corporate gifts. On this, so on this here, let me just pull it up, see if I can actually open up my so this is my private label catalog that I have. You can go out to the workshop and grab it here. In here, we have a bunch of different vessel options in here um that we make for something specific. Um, this was one that we had for uh where it says like sprinkle topping option available. This is for a celebrity that we were working on. Um, we have not landed that account yet. Um, but I'm just showing you how we like made it about around a birthday themed candle and we show them the different options for vessels. We didn't have all of these options available, but you can see like we offered, hey, so we offered an eight-ounce aura, we call it a halo, um, and it we offered three different colors of it. We did the same thing with these glam tins that uh Macy had, and we showed what the color options were, right? So you can put together a catalog like this, or you can do it within your um wholesale catalog of options that aren't actually available, like on in stock with you. Um, you can offer all kinds of things. This is my standard uh private label catalog, and I show you, hey, this is my tin. This is my black matte jar. This is a queer jar. Uh, and then we have labeling on there just to show them what it would look like, right? Uh, this is what our 10 ounce jar would be. Here is our uh 10 ounce matte frosted, here is the iridescent that comes in these three different colors. So these are what we have available that we're offering now. And so I could easily put this inside of my wholesale catalog. You can put whatever you want in your wholesale catalog, it just needs to be something that you can buy. And if you only have your candles in one size, but you're thinking, hey, maybe for wholesale, this other size would work, throw it in there. Go ahead and do a mock-up of it. Go ahead and do what the label would look like, and don't invest in it until you actually sell it. Uh, so that's absolutely something to do. So uh for sure. Uh, let me take a look here at the questions we have here in the chat. The other thing about if you are I recommend you know keeping our scent selection really minimal when we're starting our brand. But if you're a person that's going all the into wholesale and not focusing as much on direct to customer with a wholesale brand, you might want to have a super wide, robust amount of oils or scents available, right? Because you might be reaching out to stores that would want to carry 50 different cents, and that would be totally fine if that's the case. Your wholesale catalog, you can list a heck of a lot more scents if you wanted to, right? The way we do wholesale, anything we do wholesale, we sell in our stores. So that's just and that's plenty of a variety for us, but you can also just go completely wide with it and sell unlimited cents, but not actually make that candle until it's popular, right? Until someone places that order. So uh that's one thing to do, like out on fair. You can have lots more options out there that maybe you don't want it to associate with your brand. So you hide it on your website, but out on fair, you have tons more options. So if someone's looking for a candy corn scented candle that they want to wholesale from, yeah, sure. Throw it out on fair if they find it and they buy it, great, but it's not part of like your actual outreach that you're you're you're attempting to do on your own uh to people. So you can put whatever you want in a catalog and wait until it sells to buy it. Because what a lot of us end up doing, and it's something that we erred on when we first started, is we stocked up on all of our products. We stocked up heavy on all of our products because we started getting into wholesale, and then we realized, oh gosh, the majority of our customers are only buying three or four of our products. But now we got all this extra inventory we got to get rid of. So I wouldn't get into the process of making anything until it's actually ordered. When they order it, then we get it out. We we order the supplies, we get the supplies and say two days, three days, and then we get it out to them within a week. And then that's just our routine now. We don't pre-make anything unless it's our classics like this. We have 60, 70 of these made at all times because we'll get resell or repeat uh wholesale orders of you know a couple dozen, maybe. And so we'll keep these at 60 to 70 for our top sellers, but our bottom sellers, we'll keep those at no more than 24 stocked extra. And then when they get down to 12, we make more of them for our stores so that we always have that many and for our online direct-to-consumer orders. Um, but we're we don't have thousands of candles just sitting around here. Um so that's that's that's the process for us.
Shipping Boxes Stamps And Supplies
SPEAKER_00Uh Natalia, your question here is I am thinking about having boxes made with my logo printed on them, but was told it would be better to purchase a stamp and do it myself. Is there a size and vendor you would suggest to start if I wanted to do it myself? It's so funny that you said this. I actually, when I was at the store this morning, um, the reason why I was at that store this morning, and then I got kind of got stuck there, was I was recording a new video on how to ship candles because people are asking often, how do I ship can, you know, how do we ship? Candles. So I was just doing a new YouTube video of how to ship candles. It'll actually come out next Wednesday. Um, that video will um I think that's when it's the case of next Wednesday. So it's funny that you say that because uh this is all top of mind fresh for me because I literally just recorded a video on there that I got to edit now. Um, for us, we do the stamp version. That's exactly what we do because having a custom box made with your logo and stuff on there is gonna be expensive. So we buy our boxes from Uline is where we get our boxes from. And um, God, I wish I had this video already edited up. I could just say, hey, just watch this. But yes, we buy our boxes from U-line, we buy our uh bubble wrap from Staples, we buy our um the bubble wrap that we use is perforated every 12 inches, so they rip right off. And the only time we ever buy them is when they have buy two get one free. Um, you can check inside of their app for that, but that is the best price that we have found because they're bull, they they come in these big rolls, and um let me see if they have it's always on sale. Oh rap. It doesn't look like it's on sale right now.
SPEAKER_02Uh the point here about it. Shockingly, it doesn't look like it is on the sale right now.
SPEAKER_00But it goes so if it's not on sale right now, wait till next week, it'll be on sale. They so we from Staples we will get our bubble wrap from them, and in case of emergency, more packing peanuts from them. The packing peanuts we will reuse from our supplier. Candle Science donates a lot of the packing peanuts that we uh turn around and reuse. But from U-line, and I'll do a screen start just to show you what I buy on U-line. Um, I'm not a fan of the company itself, that's for personal reasons, but uh I have not found another supplier yet. Um, I would like to. I know some people are able to get their stuff off of Amazon, and you might be able to get enough stuff on Amazon, but let me go to Uline here and show you what I what I buy from them, and I'll tell you what our best boxes are and everything. All right, this is Uline's website. Uh, I know I did I just I literally just placed an order uh last week here. So let me go and show you in my purchase history. All right. So last week I bought from them, these are our number one boxes, eight by eight by six. We do the lightweight 32 ECT. It's something about how much pressure it can take before it would break. We used to do the heavyweight, um, we do not do the heavyweight anymore. We because these are cheaper. So these boxes end up being 64 cents um a piece. Now, shipping is gonna be just as much as the box, if not more. So keep that in mind. But let me just show you Uline has every single box possible that you could want. It can be quite overwhelming to go through these. So you see how some of these are gonna say like double wall, you don't need that. Uh, some of them are gonna say heavyweight, you don't need that. These lightweight uh ECTs, these this lightweight 32, that's what we use now. Totally fine. We never have any breakage. Um, when it comes to their boxes, they the corrugated boxes here. Corrugated boxes. Yeah, this is a 200-pound test, and then they've got this uh this heavy-duty one. You don't need any of that, just do the regular 32 ECT lightweight boxes here, and it shows you every single size that they have, so many different sizes here um for you. All right, so what size do we do? Eight by eight by six. So six is the tall. So eight length, eight width, six tall. That is what we use the majority of our orders from. The majority of our orders are gonna be two, three, four candles. This box is gonna be fine for that. Um, the second best is going to be six by six by six. If someone buys just one candle from me, it's going in a six by six by six box. After that, it's going to be the 10 by 10 by 6, which is right here. The 10 by 10 by 6. That's gonna be when someone buys five candles from us or more. It's gonna go in that one. And then big orders that are more than or seven or more candles, we end up you putting them in a 12 by 12 by 12 box because then they can go too high. We can put our candles in there, a layer of packing peanuts, more candles on top of that. Also, if you're selling other things, we use our 12 by 12 by 12 for some of our um wax melters um that we like wax warmers for people. We sell those on our website, the like $25 ones. Uh, we'll sell those that people will buy. And so it's a bigger item. Uh, so we'll use that. So eight by eight by six, 10x10, all right, eight by eight by six, six by six by six, ten by ten by six, and then twelve by twelve by twelve. Those would be the four boxes I would recommend starting with. Um, start with maybe just the top two, the eight by eight by six and the six by six by six. Starting with those, those are gonna be the most popular ones. We get uh a stamp. Um, I think it's under our resources. I believe our stamp is in there. Um for you to see who we get our stamp from uh or on our supply list. You can find out who we get our stamp from. I forget who Chad gets it from. But if if you need to know where to get a stamp from, I'm sure others here in the chat can uh tell you or just post inside the community and tag Chad. Um say, hey, where do you get your stamp from, Chad? And he'll respond with where we get ours from. We just stamped the sides of that box. It's just this brown currugated box. It's nothing fancy about it, but uh it works wonders for us. And then that's where we also get our bulk um packing peanuts from if we were when we run out from there. So hopefully that helps you uh there. Let me see what other questions I have here inside of the chat. Oh, but in that video, uh, it's gonna show you how we package everything up because I use a perforated sheet of bubble wrap, I use one sheet of tissue paper for um, I wrap it up in both of those, and then I put it in the box and I show you exactly how I do it, the spacing and all that. So it'll it'll be out there next Wednesday. Uh, I have an old one from a year ago that's out there. I'm sure nothing's really changed. Uh, I'm just doing a fresh one for YouTube, but uh, you can find one on our YouTube channel if needed. If you want to see me physically pack something up, you can
Why Raffles Hurt Your Email List
SPEAKER_00do that as well. Uh Linda's question here um is do you ever do some type of drawing for an item to draw people to your booth? Uh no, we used to. And the people that um would do the drawing are people that ended up never buying from us ever. Uh, if you want to do it to where they had to buy something from you to be able to enter, um, that would be uh a way, but then they're gambling because then they have to give up something. So they had to make a purchase. So generally that's gonna be illegal in a lot of places without having a license to gamble. I don't know if it's gonna matter um, you know, for you, but um having the like raffle out there where you have a candle and a sign, enter to win, and have a bunch of slips for people to give you their name email address was horrible for us. We collected a couple hundred emails. They never bought us anything. And what does that do? Um, that means that we're sending them emails that they aren't opening, they're just swiping and deleting them, which makes our score through Gmail or whatever email service provider that you're using go down. So now your emails are gonna start going to promotion or spam folder versus going to someone's inbox. Your email list is the most valuable thing to grow your business, and you do not want to flood it with people that are not going to buy from you. So you only want to collect emails from people that actually have visited your website, so they have intent, or from people that make a purchase from you. So when they're in your booth, they make a purchase for you. That's why I'm so extreme about you've got to collect everyone's email address. So as soon as they swipe and they buy from you, don't even say that the transaction was completed. Don't ask them if they want a receipt, none of that. Just say, um, you know, they they tap their card on your reader or whatever it is, or they give you the cash. Just like, okay, great, what's your email address? And just have it roll off your tongue. Don't be uh, oh, would you like to join my email? Would you like to do this or do that? Just say, what's your email address? And it'll rattle off their tongue. Then they'll say, Oh, it's Sebastian at you know garzanabeacon.com. They're gonna say whatever it is. Then you say, Okay, great, and you type it in, okay, great. I just sent you an email receipt. Have a great day, or whatever it is. That's the end of it. Um, that is how you collect emails. You collect emails from people that haven't tent that have bought from you, doing the giveaway thing never turned anything. And I wanted it to because I just wanted to grow email, so I felt good because I'm gonna grow my email list uh at this market. People filling out that stuff but not buying your product from you. Generally, they're just filling out stuff to uh to enter to win, right? We see those raffles like out of the mall. They have a car in the middle of the mall, they got this big massive box that's like enter to win, and then you just start getting flooded with spam emails because what those people are doing is they're turning around and selling your email address to all kinds of places. So I've just never gotten any a good return on that um myself, unfortunately. Uh, what else? Do we have any other questions? I'm just checking the chat to make sure that I don't see anything else that I might have missed or any questions that hit the inbox.
Community Updates And Closing
SPEAKER_00No. Well, good. I'm glad we were able to fill up our time here um together today. So I'm losing my voice. I don't know why I do this during office hours. That just shows you how quiet I usually generally am and I make up for it during this time. Um, so today's Tuesday. So Thursday, we have uh family dinner. So hopefully I will see many of you there. Family dinner, eight o'clock Eastern time this Thursday. Uh, if anything comes up in between now and then, do not hesitate to use the community. Please, please use the community, post stuff, post wins, post struggles, anything. Let's all help each other out um and kind of build on that community aspect there. I know the app has been really kind of glitchy lately. If the app is being glitchy for you when you open it up, unfortunately, I'm not an app developer, I didn't develop this. Um, but if it is glitchy for you uh when you're in there, um sometimes you'll have to, if you're on a community, you'll have to go over here to um library and then go back, you know, um and do that. Um, or just do like the like on my phone, like where I would do the swipe, right? I'd swipe up and get rid of it, and then I'd reopen and just reopen it. So um, you know, it's it's not the best ad. We're trying to find a solution for it um right now, but I really don't want to switch platforms right now. Um, but uh yeah, I just wanted to share that with you on how to kind of get it to work if it's not for you. So that is it. I'm gonna drink some water now. Have a fantastic rest of your day. Do not hesitate to reach out between now and Thursday, or hopefully I'll see you at Bamwood Dinner. Have a great rest of your week. Take care.
