60+ Ways to Sell Candles

#053 We lay out a practical selling roadmap for candle makers who feel confident making products but unsure how to find customers. We break 60+ sales ideas into 12 categories so we can choose the right channel for our time, margins, and goals. 
• building online and direct sales through Shopify, Etsy, Amazon, Facebook and Instagram shops, and TikTok Shop 
• positioning Etsy listings for gift buyers and using the Etsy Seller Handbook as a guide 
• expanding through wholesale with line sheets, catalogs, and pricing that can sustain 50% of retail 
• starting local with boutiques, gift shops, decor stores, florists, garden centers, and specialty grocery programs 
• using Faire for exposure and letting big accounts find us 
• growing revenue with private label for boutiques, bands, podcasters, realtors, breweries, distilleries, and wineries 
• creating events and experiences through pop-ups, markets, pouring parties, and Airbnb Experiences 
• landing corporate and B2B gifting orders for onboarding kits and client holiday boxes 
• building recurring revenue via monthly or quarterly subscriptions and VIP memberships 
• driving seasonal sales with gift guides, PR outreach, and Black Friday and Cyber Monday planning 
• multiplying reach with collaborations, bundles, and limited edition artist partnerships 
• using fundraising and cause campaigns to build community and volume 
• selling custom and personalized candles for weddings, memorials, retirements, birthdays, and milestones 
• pitching hospitality partners like boutique hotels, spas, salons, vacation rentals, and upscale restaurants 
If you have other ways that you are selling your candles, I would love for you to drop those in the comments below. Also, if you find this episode helpful, I would love it if you would like and subscribe.

Grab the free 60+ Ways to Sell Candles Worksheet here: https://www.candlebusinesspro.com/60ways

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Transcript

From Perfect Product To Sales

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Oftentimes when we start making candles, we get so wrapped up in making sure we have the perfect product to put out there into the world that once it's time to actually sell that candle, we're completely lost. We have no idea how we're going to sell these candles. Today we're going to talk about over 60 different ways for you to start selling your candles. And it's not going to necessarily take a ton more work because what I'm going to do is break down these 60 ways into 12 different categories. So if you're already selling in one of these 12 categories, hopefully these will be more ideas to inspire you to keep looking for ways of selling. Or if you do have the time and energy, you may want to dive into a new category. Let's get into it. So category number one is going to be probably the most common way that we assume we're going to sell our candles. And that's going to be online and direct sales. So let me give you five different ways that you can sell your candles online. Of course, through your own Shopify store. Opening a Shopify store, even if you don't have the customer base to support that expense, I would definitely recommend doing it as early as possible because you have to get traction. You have to build the store out. You have to be able to have a place to send your customers to to find your products. And once people start finding your products, whether it's out of the market through social media, through friends and family, once your candles are around the world, people are going to see it and they're going to want

Online Stores And Social Shops

SPEAKER_00 1:40

to go and buy it. Hopefully for themselves, they're going to need to have a website. So I always recommend starting with a Shopify store to put your products on. But besides Shopify, let's look at other ways. Etsy. Etsy is a fantastic way of getting products out there. Now, Etsy is a gift marketplace. The majority of purchases on Etsy are for other people. So you have to have a gift buyer in mind when you are putting your listings out there. To be successful on Etsy, you have to be unique. For instance, my number one selling candle on my website is my sugar lemon candle. I don't even sell this on Etsy. Nobody has bought this candle from me on Etsy because people aren't looking for a sugared lemon candle. They are looking for gift for mom, gift for dad, housewarming gift, teacher gift, um, anniversary gift, birthday gifts, right? So you have to make sure that you position your product and that it fits for the type of shopper. To get the best results from Etsy, you need to thoroughly read the Etsy seller's handbook. It's right there on their website. They tell you what they want you to do. And here's a tip for you. Any of you that are using any of the AI models out there to help your business a little bit, what you can do is download from Etsy the Etsy Seller handbook, put it into whichever AI platform you're using, and ask it to create the listings for you so that you can copy and paste it in Etsy based on the products that you have. So give it the product description you have, tell it to give it to you in the format that Etsy wants it in. It'll help you out. I dive into this really deep inside of the inner circle of how you can be successful on Etsy based on using AI and the Etsy seller handbook. But let's keep going to the other ways that we can sell. The next one would be Amazon. Amazon's online as well. If you already have a Shopify store, you already have Etsy setup. If you're already capable of all of that, that means you have your product titles, your descriptions, you have a way of making your product. Why not throw them on Amazon? Amazon Handmade is going away. It's just the main Amazon now. And we've done quite a bit of business on there every single year that we've been on there. So I'd recommend checking that out if you're set up for it. You do have to have tight turnaround times. You can decide if you're going to have Amazon fulfill those for you or you're going to do what's called FBM, which is fulfilled by merchant. Meaning you don't have to give Amazon your product. You just need to be ready to get it out the door once someone places an order on your store. So you have to look at the different ways of handling Amazon. If you want to do FBA, which is fulfilled by Amazon, or FBM fulfilled by merchant. So look at those avenues and see if one of those might fit for you. Now, their fees are going to be high. So you got to make sure that you have your margins if you're going to deal with Amazon. If you have questions about it, reach out to me. I've been doing it for several years now. We average $10,000 to $15,000 in sales a year on Amazon. Not a lot. And they also do take a decent amount of that within fees, but being out on the platform allows us to get exposure. And then we hope that people will then buy from us directly in the future. So an option there for you as well. The next one inside of the same category is going to be just making sure that you have Facebook and Instagram shops set up so that when you are posting on either of those platforms about your product, any social media post that you're doing, you can tag your product so people can easily shop your products without leaving the platform. And they incentivize you to do that. They will put your posts in front of a lot more people if you are giving them an option to buy on their platform versus using your website and sending them off of those platforms because that's what they don't want to do. So keep that in mind. A new way of selling online, or at least is becoming more popular, is going to be TikTok shops. TikTok shops, TikTok shops, uh that's a tongue twister, are becoming very, very popular, especially in this day and age now that there's apps like Whatnot, where you can sell anything at any time of day. You just have to do it live. That is a medium that people are really taking advantage of and doing really, really pretty well. We're contemplating it, tempted to do it. We just don't know if we have the time, energy, and resources, honestly, to do it. Because if we're taking on something else like that, that means that we're pulling that time away from something else. So this is the first category. Category number one is online and direct sales. Let's move on to category number two, and that's going to be wholesale and retail placement. So this is getting your products into someone else's location and having them sell your product to their customer. So this is easy to get into. You just have to put a lot of work into it. We have a mastering wholesale course that many people have been very successful when they've gone through that. If you stick to the plan, stick to doing the outreach of getting customers. You have to have your line sheet and your catalog ready to go. Um, you have to be flexible to doing large orders because when they're doing wholesale, you're going to be selling 36,

Wholesale Placement That Actually Works

SPEAKER_00 6:49

48, 72 candles minimum per order. So you just have to be able to be set up to do that. And then you also have to make sure that your pricing is right because with wholesale, they're generally going to always want to buy the product from you at 50% of what your retail price is. So this is my $26 candle. To sell this retail, I need to sell it for $13. So based on what it costs me to make this product, we'll tell you if it's sustainable for you to do or not. So if you are set up, if you are capable of handling wholesale orders, then here's a few ways for you to do that. You're first going to want to just start with your local boutiques and your gift shops. Local is the easiest because you can sell to them your products with the knowledge of these are locally made, right? These are locally made. People love to carry locally made products inside of their stores. Inside of my retail stores, I love to carry locally made items. Our customers love it. Tourism uh tourists love buying those products as well. People like to uh buy and support locally made. So you're gonna have an easier time reaching out to local establishments versus the ones across the country somewhere. Then after you sell to your local establishments, you just start reaching out. So you go from your city to your county to your region of your state, and then you go statewide because even within my whole state, I can say, hey, this is made in Michigan. This is made in Michigan, uh, and people will be happy to carry that almost as much as wanting to it to be made right in their city. So keep that in mind. Start local with this. So you have your local boutiques and your gift shops, and then also think about your home goods and your decor stores. So stores that aren't just selling uh gifts, but also just selling all kinds of decor. Reach out to those locations. Uh, florists and garden centers. This is a great opportunity to get your products into those locations. Candles go along with smell and home fragrance. They fit really easily into a forest. Now, they're not gonna sell as many of your candles as, say, a women's boutique that sells clothing and home goods, but they will still sell uh your candles, and it's all about getting your products into more locations when we're first starting out with wholesale. Other places for you to think of that's in the same category is gonna be specialty, grocery, and co-op. Think about um Whole Foods. Whole Foods loves to carry locally made items that fit their values and their ethics as far as sustainability, um, organic, things like that. That that whole uh Whole Foods and other specialty grocery retailers, what they who their customer is and what they like, right? So if you can get your candles into say a Whole Foods, that would be fantastic. Another opportunity here locally, um and regionally, I guess, is like Meyer grocery store. Um there's also like Foodline on the East Coast. There's also Kroger here in the Midwest. They all have sections of their grocery store, even though they're national chains, they have sections in their grocery store that are all locally made products. So reaching out to them, and you can reach out to their local store and say, hey, I just want to inquire how I can find out more information about getting into your locally made product program. And they will actually help you with getting your products ready to go. Because if you just try to go to, say, Meyer or Kroger into all of their stores nationally, you're fighting against every other product to get into their store. But if you can get into one of their local programs, that would be fantastic because they don't charge you the fees like they do to just anyone that has a product for sale, right? And so keep that in mind. They have programs to fill their stores with locally made items. So try to take advantage of that. One of the things you may want to do, go and shop in those stores. Go to your Whole Foods and see, say, if you're if you're a candlemaker, go and look at the soaps that they're carrying. They are carrying a local soap maker in their store right now. I promise you that. Go and look and see who is that local soap maker. We actually carry the local soap maker from our Whole Foods in my store as our soap maker, because we don't make soaps. Go into Whole Foods, see the local brands they're already carrying, and reach out to them. If they're not in your category, they're not going to feel threatened by you reaching out to them. Say, hey, I'm Sebastian with the Gardens and Beacon Candle Company. I saw that you're selling soaps in the whatever city you are, Whole Foods, or whatever the co-op grocery store that you may have there is. Uh, Fresh Time is another one that uh is in the Midwest I know of um that you could reach out to and say, hey, I would love to know how did you get into that store? They'll probably have an email uh or contact information or a catalog or something with that program into it. So that could really help to get you into those locations. The other way of doing wholesale is going to be through an online platform like Fair. Um, Fair, their fees are really high. I'm on Fair. I don't promote that, I don't do a lot on there. I'm on there because I want the exposure. And I've gotten a couple really, really big accounts on Fair that didn't come through Fair. For instance, we got into the international airports and we're several and we're in several airports now. Um, and the person that buys for those airports found us on FAIR when they were shirt searching for products to put into the their location. But then they reached out to us directly because they can't purchase through FAIR because they have to do PO numbers and they have to have a net 60 where they have to have received the product, just got to sit for 60 days before they're gonna start paying us out. So they reached out to us directly. Another big company that we're with that we got into 45 locations, they reached out to us directly through Fair or directly after uh seeing us on FAIR. So we're not violating any terms of fare because they didn't reach out to us through Fair. They reached out to us directly, and then we had uh we worked out the arrangements uh from there. So again, this is category number two. If you're thinking about getting into wholesale, that's at least five different options for you to do that. Category number three is gonna be private label. So this is similar to wholesale, but with private label, you are actually putting that company's brand that's buying your products on the products themselves. So you can do this for all kinds of different local locations. So you can do this for boutiques. So you can go into clothing boutiques, you can go into houseware boutiques, all kinds of different boutiques, not just locally, but all across the country. You could be selling these candles to different boutiques and saying, hey, we can make these custom just for your brand. So that is a way that we've done a lot of our wholesale, is technically private label because it doesn't have our branding on it besides on the warning sticker on the bottom. Everything else

Private Label For Brands And Realtors

SPEAKER_00 13:49

is catered to that business and they love that. And they can also charge a premium to their customers for that. So we actually can charge them a premium over what our wholesale prices are. So something to keep in mind there. Also, keep in mind that I would recommend charging a setup fee for going back and forth on trying to find that right scent that matches the vibe of that location. And you can charge a setup fee for that. Uh, so besides just boutiques, um, you can also look at music artists and bands. Reach out to some of your favorite small indie bands or reach out to some of the larger ones through their merch company's website. Say, hey, I'm a candle maker. I noticed you don't sell any candles in this merch store. Would you be interested in looking at my products? I think they might be a great fit for X artist or band, right? So that's one way that we have done it. And we've done Cassius Clay, an RB artist. We do his candles. We also do candles for a rock band called Canons. Uh, and we've done a few other ones that have been really cool projects to work on. Another one is going to be podcasters or just content creators in general. We have done candles for several different podcasters. They always have a merch store and they do a big drop around it, and they can sell out a lot of candles pretty quick when they have that kind of cult following. So that's another one that I would recommend checking out. Look at the merch store, see if they have uh candles already. If not, figure out a way of getting in that door. You can reach out to their merch company if they are big enough to whether they're not handling it uh internally. Or if you are inside of the inner circle, our community, we teach you several ways that we've actually reached out to these and landed some pretty nice accounts. So that might be something if you're wanting to take advantage of the inner circle. It's just one of the many workshops that we do inside of there. Another way of doing private label that's relatively easy, small lift, is for realtors. Realtor closing gifts, thank you gifts for when they do a transaction. That's a pretty easy sell. So start reaching out to realtors. There are so many realtors. If you just go to your local, free Max, C321, Caldwell, Caldwell Banker, all those real estate websites just locally in your city, you're gonna see a list of a ton of realtors and their email addresses on those websites. Just start emailing them. I would go ahead and create a candle and throw some type of home suite home housewarming gift label on there and reach out to all of these different realtors uh saying, hey, I can make these for you. Would you be interested? Here's the thing about with private label that I mentioned a while ago about the boutiques. You don't give them wholesale pricing. So if this is a $26 candle, when I reach out to these realtors, if they want to buy one to 25 candles, they're spending 26 bucks a piece because they're not turning around and selling these. So we're not giving them a discount so that they can mark them up. They're not trying to make money on this. We are giving them a custom branded product that they can use instead of buying someone else's. Because if they're gonna buy my $26 candle from me to turn around and gift to their client, if I can make it with their packaging on there, their branding on there, it's a win-win. Don't discount your private label when you are not uh selling it to someone that's gonna turn around and sell it to someone else. Now, if they buy in bulk, you can start working at a discount. But that discount for us never would get to that 50% where our wholesale prices would. Another uh private label opportunity for you would be reach out to your local breweries, distilleries, wineries. Those types of places, they have clientele that spends money. And the clientele that's spending money there also loves to buy their swag. They love to buy their t-shirts, they love to buy their custom uh bottle openers, their custom uh beer can openers, all kinds of bottle openers. They love all of that. Make candles for them. They will sell it. You can actually, we we do candles for a brewery out of Florida, and they are in the can style vessels. And we made, we replicated the scent of their craft beer. So just another opportunity for you there. You can also, there's plenty of wine uh fragrance oils, scents that you can get from multiple suppliers. You can do an entire line for a winery as well. And that's an opportunity for you to make some pretty good money. Uh, and they love that kind of stuff. So that was category number three, private label. Now on to category number four, and that's gonna be events and experiences. We'll go through this one kind of quick. This is gonna be your farmers markets and craft fairs. Of course, those are the ones that we were we know about, right? But do something like a pop-up shop inside of another store. Reach out to a women's clothing boutique and say, hey, I'm Sebastian with Carson Peak and Candle. Could I come and do a pop-up in your store where I just have a small station? It's a win-win because their customers get something fresh. You can get them to promote it on their social media. And then you are exposing your products to new customers without having to sell wholesale to that brand. You can just sell, do the transaction right there inside of their shop. Usually, this is something people ask me, well, how much do I give the store for allowing me to do this? The answer is zero. You do

Events That Create Fast Revenue

SPEAKER_00 20:21

not pay that store for the opportunity to sell your candles live in their store because the incentive is their customers have a reason to come and shop with them that day is because you're there. You're the reason that they are now gonna sell more shirts and blouses and pants and dresses and sneakers and whatever else they sell in that store. They're gonna sell more because their regular is coming to see you, but the regular is now back in their store buying other stuff. We do not split ourselves with the store. We are the reason why they are gonna get more business that day, too. So it's a win-win. So do not split your profits there. A thing that you can always do that we started out doing is mobile candle pouring parties. So you're already doing events and experiences. Why don't you look at adding on mobile pouring parties? Fantastic way to make a big sum of revenue in a short amount of time. We do two hours, uh, two and a half hours from setup to teardown generally, sometimes up to three hours. That's what I'd allocate or I would pay our team to do it would be three hours. And we make a minimum of $400 when we do those. That is based on a minimum of eight people and the cost of that being $50. Now we customize our experiences where we can optimize that to make even more revenue, but that is the minimum. And here's a secret tip for you if you get into that space. Do not be responsible for collecting the money from each individual attendee. When we book our experiences like that, where it's a bachelorette party, retirement party, bridal shower, whatever, birthday party, it doesn't matter what the experience is. We bill and collect from the host of that event. Because what'll happen is if they have eight people coming, you're going to show up to do it. Five or six people are going to be there. Not all eight are always going to attend. And if you haven't collected the money yet, you're now automatically short. So that's a pro tip for you. Collect money from the host, and it's the host's responsibility to collect the money from the individual attendees. If they don't show up, well, then that host can figure that out on their own. If the host paid for it, then allow the host to make two or three candles. That's the way to avoid you showing up and not making that amount that you intended to make. Also, when you have a pop-up like that, or excuse me, a pouring like that, make sure that you bring products as well. Because today, when I buy and I pay my host that I'm attending, so I'm just attending a bachelor party, right? And so I paid my friend 50 bucks. I'm going to be there in a month or so for this event, and you're going to be set up to make candles with us. I spent that money today. So out of sight, out of mind, in two months, when that event happens, I come and attend, and the host has other products for sale. I'll likely buy something. We always bring finished products ready to go and sell the night of the event. And I'm not sure when we haven't had someone buy. Also, bring things like Bring USB lighters that are branded for you so that you can sell to the people in attendance. Fantastic way of maximizing that opportunity there. Other events and experiences that you can look at. You can look at doing trade shows. You can look at doing big wholesale vendor events. Those are a couple of things. And the newest, latest trend out, again, this is something that was introduced a few years ago and then they paused it. Now they've brought it back is Airbnb experiences. Go to Airbnb, Airbnb.com and look for their experiences tab and see if it would fit for you to partner with Airbnb, where Airbnb is selling these experiences and you're just showing up and hosting it, or you're hosting it in your space. All right, now we are on to category number five, and that is corporate and business-to-business gifting. And I'll go through this one a little bit quicker here. So this one is going to be uh making candles for employee onboarding. Uh oftentimes big companies they will do these welcome boxes or bags or packages for their new employees. Having our candles in those uh packages is a fantastic way of getting your products out there. And they always, the people that are putting these packages together, they always want something fresh. They want something more than a keychain and a water bottle and a notepad, right? So offering something fresh like a candle is something that we a lot of them would welcome. Uh, let's see here some client holiday gift boxes. So we make candles for a local, um, the business is a local headquartered. Uh, it's a national um car wash company. It's called Quality Car

Corporate Gifting And Bigger Budgets

SPEAKER_00 24:53

Wash or Tommy's Car Wash. You may have one of these in your city or town. They're based out of where we live here. So every year they send out a big box to all of their franchisees because all of their locations are independently owned. They have one of our candles where we worked with them. We recreated that scent when you're going through the car wash, right? When I say we, it was Chad. Chad did the creation of the scent with them. And they buy these from every year. They put them in a box to send out to all of their franchisees. There's also like a bottle of wine in there, and then also like their annual report to saying, you know, the wins and uh challenges of the company that year. And they send it out to all of the people. Not only is it a hit with them, but now they have that candle on display in the shops and the shop, the individual franchise C owners, they are reaching out to us wanting to buy more of that candle for them to have in their stores and give out to their VIP. So that's another idea for you as well. So think big when it comes to corporate gifting. Uh, for instance, there is a company called Hayworth. They make really nice chairs. I'm not sitting in one because they're way too expensive. I don't have the budget for them. But we make their uh room sprays that they give out to their sales team. Also, they have a boutique hotel now that they are carrying our room sprays in and they sell them inside of the gift shop and things, but they also make the hotel smell like that. So lots of opportunities within corporations. So don't just think that you have to sell candles individually to people or to places that are gonna turn around and sell your products. You can sell your candles to companies that are gonna do lots of different things from Christmas gifts to the client onboarding. So other ideas for you within this corporate and B2B gifting space is gonna be law firms, uh, medical offices, uh, different types of professional services. They usually are going to have a larger budget. Next time you go to the dentist, take one of your candles with you and say, hey, I'm a local candle maker. I would love to see if you would want to partner up on buying some of our candles to gift out to your VIP clients here. A lot of times they would love to do that because they're doing the same thing over and over again. They would love to have something fresh. And if you can help put their branding on it, it's a win-win for both of you. All right, now we're moving on to category number six, and that's gonna be subscriptions and membership. So a monthly candle subscription box. That's what we do. We do a candle of the month. It comes out on the first Friday every single month, and we have subscribers that we mail these out to. It's recurring revenue for us. We know exactly what we're gonna get every single month. Uh, so it really helps us for when we are planning on doing a new uh scent release or new drop as well. We already know this many people are going to get it because they are on auto pay to buy the latest candle that we come out with. So that's one of the ways that we do our subscription box. And you could also do a quarterly subscription box. So don't think that you have to, because thinking of coming out with a new candle every single month can be kind of overwhelming. One of the members inside of the inner circle was talking to us about that. I was

Subscriptions For Predictable Cash Flow

SPEAKER_00 28:05

like, I don't know if I have the energy to do that every month. Fine, do it every quarter. Every three months, you come out with one. So now it can be really seasonal and based around the time of year. Then you're gonna have a higher success of selling it, even if you don't have enough people on your subscription list to make it valuable or make it worth your your time and your energy. It will be within a season that you can sell that. And then you can sell it for several months afterwards. So that's something to keep in mind there. Uh, for us, we do a VIP. We have a VIP membership. They have early access to getting our products. They also save on every single purchase that they make within our store. So that's an idea for you. And what's great about a subscription is this next one is that is gifting. Come holiday time, come Mother's Day time, come Valentine's Day, come anniversary time. We promote our subscription boxes as gifts. So don't buy it for yourself, buy it for someone else. That hard to buy for person, it's a fantastic thing to do. Gifting a subscription is great. I actually did that for Chad for uh our last anniversary. I was out of ideas. I was like, what can I possibly get him? And so I gifted him not a candle subscription, no, but I gifted him a cheese and wine subscription to a local shop here that uh they import all this fancy cheese in. And so that's what we did. And so that gave him a fresh box every single month for a year. So gifting a subscription, birthdays, anniversaries, Mother's Day, Valentine's, lots of different gifting reasons there. So think about that if you already set up to do subscriptions or memberships. Another one can be a digital membership that pairs your candles with something else. So you can pair your candles with, say, recipes. All right. You can, if your brand is all about, you know, home, cottage, farmhouse, things like that, you can pair your candles with something that's really free to create. Create a recipe book that so every month they're gonna get a candle and it might coincide with these recipes that you're sending them. So in the middle of summer, it might be things like apple pie recipes, cookie recipes, um, spiked lemonade recipes, right? It's something that would maybe go with the season. So it's just taking you time to create that extra content, but it's something that they're getting on top of just a candle. And that might be what makes them want to sign up. We are already halfway through the 12 different categories. Now we are on to category number seven. And this is gonna be your seasonal and your holiday sales. Now, this is gonna be get your products inside of gift guides. This is something we teach inside of our PR workshop inside the inner circle. Getting your products into gift guides. We've been in Oprah Daily, we've been in Primary Magazine, we've been on the local news a half dozen times. We get into the local newspaper often. All of those different things are really, really low lift. It requires you sending an email. Once you've done it a couple of times, it's like clockwork for us. Anytime we have some big idea, we'll fire it off to the local news and they'll want to come out and they'll interview us on it, right? And don't think that you have to have a brick and mortar store to do anything like that. It can be around a festival that you, uh, your town or your uh state hosts. If you are, let's say, in Indiana, they have a covered bridge

Holiday Drops And Gift Guides

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festival. And it's a big festival that happens for a couple of weeks every fall. If I was in Indiana, I would send the local news an email saying I'm a small business looking to the tourism that comes from the uh Covered Bridge Festival to help grow my business and it it really supports the local economy. They will then want to interview you for that. They learn more about that. It's a fantastic way you can plug your products and get onto local news. But gift guides, every single magazine is gonna have a ton of gift guides every single season. Think of, let's say, Cosmo magazine. Cosmo magazine is gonna have over a hundred different gift guides. It's gonna be gifts for a woman over 60, gifts for new parents, gifts for single college students, right? They're gonna have all these different gift guides out there. Reaching out to these different publications. If you do it the right way, we'll land you in several of these every single year. Again, this is something that we've been doing for a while and it does us wonders. Uh, a couple other ways that you can do uh seasonal and holiday sales is gonna be just your simple Black Friday and Cyber Monday, making sure that you have a plan in place to maximize that. You should have a Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Separate the two of those. They are definitely different, even though they they run into each other. Definitely different strategies should go into both of those. Also, every time you have a seasonal drop, whether it's spring, summer, fall, winter, Christmas, every single season should have its individual seasonal sales drop that you do. It's just another way of promoting your product. And then lastly, of course, doing those Christmas and holiday markets. Those are always fantastic for us when we have the opportunity to do those, because you can sell gifts. Those are just a really, really good market. So if even if you're not wanting to do too many markets, doing the seasonal holiday markets, the shoppers have intent. They're not just out there fighting the crowds at these markets just to look around, like they might in the spring and summer. At the Christmas markets, they're usually paying a little bit of a cover. So they are invested in this market, and they usually are they come ready to spend. So hopefully that helps you out in that seasonal and holiday sales category. Now moving on to category number eight, and that's gonna be collaborations and partnerships. So here's a few ideas for you. A co-branded candle with a local business. You can partner up with, say, hair salons. You can partner up with restaurants, like think of like bakeries, think of coffee shops. Making a co-branded product in those types of locations will definitely get you some sales. Also, think about some influencer collaborations. Now, don't go out and reach these influencers that have millions and millions of followers. Probably not going to get too far with them. But these micro influencers that have five, 10, 15, 20,000 followers, they have diehard followers usually. People that just love them, love what they're putting out there. See if you can't co-brand a product instead of them just being an influencer and trying

Collaborations That Multiply Reach

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to make a commission on it, actually promote that or reach out to them and saying, let's co-create something together. They will love that idea. You can also bundle your products with complimentary products from other brands. So we will do, especially close to the holiday time, we will partner up with a soap maker and a perfume maker to put these gift sets together where we're all three selling the product. So it's not just us having to do the work, it's all three of us. We're all three promoting it in our brick and mortar stores if we have that, or on our websites, um in um on our social medias. And also, I even though I can't do markets anymore, our our our friend that does perfumes, since we partner with them, they will sell these gift sets out at those holiday markets because people love to buy gift sets. So even though a couple of the products in that gift set isn't theirs, it's a win-win for all of us because we're all making more money uh when we do that. And another opportunity is a limited edition collab with local artists. That's a way that you can get your products out into the local community as well. All right, now on to number nine for the categories, and that's gonna be fundraising and community. Fundraising is a way that we got our business off the ground rather quickly. And we were doing fundraisers over and over and over again. It's a fantastic way to get your brand in front of many people without having to invest in buying wholesale from you. You can do fundraisers for all kinds of different activities. It's one of our best watched uh workshops inside of the inner circle. But let me give you some of the ideas. So you can do fundraisers for school and PTA fundraisers. In fact, the very first fundraiser we did was for my mom's, she's a school teacher, for their basketball team because they needed new jerseys and they're a rural Indiana. They don't have a lot of a budget to spend on those types of things in those communities. And so we did a fundraiser where they sold our candles

Fundraisers That Build Community

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and then we gave them a percentage of those sales back. People ask all the time, what is a percentage you give? We always give back at least 25% when we do a fundraiser. Uh, depending on what it's for, we'll raise that up to 30, 35%, maybe even 40% based on what the fundraiser is for and more of uh, you know, some things are more uh, I guess, near and dear to us um than others potentially. Uh, but 25% is the standard for us when we do our fundraisers. Other fundraisers can be for things simply like your church um, you know, camps. So they're gonna have lots of uh summer camps that kids need to go to or want to go to, and they need to raise money for those. Uh look at nonprofit organizations. There are so many different nonprofits out there that can use funding from your Animal Society, Humane Societies, um, to nonprofit live music venues and uh theaters. All types of nonprofit could definitely use a fundraiser. And instead of selling candy and selling pizzas and laundry detergent and trash bags, and I'm trying to think of all the things that we've been sold to during uh with fundraisers lately from nieces and nephews. And having a fundraiser with nonprofits is fantastic. A couple other opportunities would be sports team and booster clubs, as I mentioned. Community organizations and different civic groups could also use a fundraiser and then just awareness campaigns with a custom label for that. We do custom label for people that are going through things. We had someone, in fact, we did uh something like this. My mother just um completed radiation for cancer. And during her uh treatments, we actually did a cancer awareness candle that raised a lot of money that we gave to different organizations. So you can do specific candles around a cause and then get your own community that you've built up or customers that you've built up that will want to support that organization. So it's a win-win. They're getting a custom, they're getting a candle from you that they know they're going to love. And it the money is going towards a good cause. It makes people feel good when they're spending money to a uh raising money for a cause that they uh that they will that they believe in. So category number 10 is going to be custom and personalized. And in this category, think about things such as wedding favors with a custom label or scent. We do lots and lots of wedding favors. We will do small, like two-ounce size candle as wedding favors, but then we'll have larger candles for the wedding party. And we will work with the bride and grooms or whomever is getting married to create that custom scent with them so it commemorates their special day. So we will have the parties that are getting married come to us, or we will send them out candles of recommendations that we believe will work, and we let them choose and we make those candles. And when you can sell the wedding favors to 150, 200 of those, and we're charging between seven and nine dollars each, that's when we're really starting to make some money in that

Custom Candles For Life Moments

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category. Some others in this category can be baby showers and gender reveal parties, uh, memorials and celebration of life candles, uh, birthdays and milestones, of course, uh with custom names or custom scents. Think also about retirement parties at work. And people are always looking for ways of celebrating someone's retirement. Creating a specific uh unique custom candle for that. We can definitely sell a lot of those to businesses, right? Uh, another thing would be just bachelorette and bridal party gifts that I just mentioned as well. Let's move on to category number 11. And this is going to be hospitality and vendor partners. So think boutique hotels and bed and breakfasts. Uh, think about Airbnbs and vacation rental uh hosts. Think about spas, salons, wellness studios, wedding venues for in-house gifting for them to gift to the people that are getting married in their venues. But then also think about restaurants and upscale dining experiences. So something for them to give to their VIPs. You know, there's always that super fancy, elevated steakhouse in town that depending on who their VIPs are, they come in, they're going to always get that specific table by the window, right? Or that special booth or something. Offering to make a unique, very elevated candle for them to gift to them would also be a way to try and

Hospitality Accounts With Strong Margins

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get sales. And remember, we're not discounting these down to wholesale prices just because it's another business that's buying these. We can actually sell these at a really good price for us where our margins are gonna be really high. And now on to category number 12, the final one for this episode. As a reminder, there is a worksheet for you with tons of different ways and examples for you to sell in the show notes below, completely free. You can grab that today and go through all of these at your convenience. But number 12, this isn't gonna be press and PR opportunities. Think about local news and magazine features. We didn't touch on this earlier. Think about TV news and morning show segments. There's always that morning show segment that's like eight, uh not 8 a.m., but like 10 a.m. to noon, right? After the today show, after your local today show, there'll usually be a segment where they bring on local businesses and talk through things. And so that would be a great opportunity to get your brand in front of that TV audience. And they're always looking for people to come onto those show. Now, just be cautious because sometimes they try to actually sell those spots.

PR, Product Seeding, And Podcast Guesting

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You're not going to want to go to those stations that are trying to sell those spots. Look for the ones that are actually looking for people to come on so that they can fill time on the air. Other ideas would be online gift guide placements for holidays, different niches, and also just think about just regional publications, right? Uh, product seating to bloggers and journalists. You can reach out to bloggers and journalists and offer your products in exchange for them either being an affiliate to where they're going to get a commission every time that they sell one of the products using a specific code, or you can just give them a product in exchange for an article that they're going to write no matter what, anyway. So think about that two different ways. They might not be planning on writing something, but you can offer them the opportunity to do that, and then they're going to get a commission. Or if they're one of the journalists that updates a blog every single year or a gift guide every single year, trying to get your product in front of them, mailing them the product, and hopefully getting added to their gift guide is a fantastic way of getting your products out there. And then lastly, you can actually just look at becoming a podcast guest, uh, talking about your business. There are so many small business podcasts out there that focus on small businesses and entrepreneurship, also preneurship, which is basically one entrepreneur on their own, which a lot of us have done or are doing currently. Try to get on those types of podcasts where you can sit and talk to the host about your experience of how you started and how you're growing. And in the inner circle, we have what we call hot seats, where I sit down with a member and we just talk about their business, where their struggles are, where they're doing really well. And it really helps the other members to know that there's others that are going on that journey, that they're not the only ones doing it. It really builds up that community a lot. And so you can try to do this approach with different podcasts as well and try to get featured that way. Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you have other ways that you are selling your candles, I would love for you to drop those in the uh comments below. And other makers, we can all learn from each other there. Also, if you find this episode helpful, I would love it if you would like and subscribe. That truly helps get this video a boost and it will get in front of more people and help us grow this channel. Thank you so much for tuning in. Have a fantastic rest of your week.