How to make $100,000 from a candle business?
Hundred thousand dollars a year is alluring, candles have a high-profit margin, people love buying candles — 75% of the household purchase candle at least once a year and spend $25 on average. It is a mammoth $5 billion industry! The represented data is from candles.org and other well-reputed publishers. But let me be honest I don’t know how accurate these numbers are (it all depends on sample size, duration of the survey, sample quality…..data can be manipulated to reach whatever conclusion you want to). Still, from my experience, there is one thing I know for sure — a lot and a large percentage of candle businesses fail within two years.
This post is targeted at home-based candle makers, artists’! I work in the fragrance industry — branding and storytelling. I graduated with an accounting degree and grew up in a family business — thankfully, we have a flourishing hotel business. I am writing this post because I am disturbed that companies with a larger marketing/branding budget can demand $65 for a 6 oz. Candle by simply slapping their brand label. While small authentic candle makers/artists are failing to continue business beyond two years.
I want to uplift the way small candle makers sell their products. At a low cost, I want to help them convey their story better. If 95% of the small candle businesses fail within 2 years, I want to lower this number to 80% — there is a hefty 100 oz. Candle burning inside me.
I can’t teach you to make candles. I can help you sell candles. I will assume that you already make raving candles with a large hot throw, even-burn, no tunneling…. you are a candle connoisseur! Let’s start with why a business fails before telling you how you can make a hundred thousand dollars a year. When I say fail, the business dies down — they will stop making candles because their customers (mostly, friends & family) have stopped buying. When small businesses start their candle journey, they seek support from loving friends & family who will purchase the candles to boost your morale. Ultimately, you are required to expand your sphere of influence. If you keep relying on your friends and family to give you business each month, the inevitable will come later or sooner — to stop making candles. The whole objective is to find new sales leads, this is my mantra, simple? The questions is where.
Let’s start by identifying sales channels. The Internet has made it easy to reach hundreds of thousands of people to sell anything online, so the first is your e-commerce Website, Amazon, Etsy, Instagram shop…
for any business to succeed, you need customer’s ATTENTION — Why they should listen to what you have to say.
We consume a lot of content online, our attention span is little, and the above channels (E-Commerce website, Amazon, Etsy, Instagram store…) are not the right fit for a small business. These are the channels where the big brand names thrive using visuals- product set staging, brand identity design, UI/UX experience, collaborations, image rendering…. I am sure you would have tried marketing your business online, but most of you have/will find burning cash on Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Google Ads….Some of you might have seen some success with your TikTok videos, your YouTube channels, or blog articles, but you will be required to push content every week. I want you to achieve recurring-predictable business. I am writing this post to help large crowds who might not have an extroverted personality to attract large followers on social media channels, but they make great candles.
E-commerce: you will find it challenging to drive traffic to your website from Google organic search (big businesses spend a lot of money on SEO optimization, so their companies are ranked on the top of the list) if you spend money on Google Ads (you need to master copywriting and spend at least $1000 every month to generate good enough traffic to your website, even after people visit your online shop — they will judge if they should buy your products based on the visuals, social proof, reviews…your online shop will subconsciously be compared to other big brand names and they will compare their experience on such website to judge if your candle will be good, it is heartbreaking that someone judges a candle without smelling it, but this is the reality we have to accept and mold our strategy to make it visually appealing). Suppose you really want your website to succeed. In that case, I hope you have $15,000 ready to invest in product photography, brand identity design, set staging, website design, advertising and still success is not guaranteed.
Amazon: people don’t typically buy candles on amazon. Amazon’s business model is to offer products that are unique, not available in nearby stores, or products on which people don’t want to spend time going to the nearby shops. This means people don’t go to amazon looking to buy a candle, unless it’s an pet odor killing candle (functional candle).
Etsy: people who have established business on Etsy since sometime already have great reviews and good search engine ranking can do decent business. It is challenging for new candle makers to flourish on Etsy.
To summarize simply, don’t start online. You can still do business through your website but not yet, so what’s the first step?
Let’s examine the remaining sales channels. This is going to be offline. Getting attention offline is more easier than online. People cannot ignore you when you approach them face-to-face. As I had mentioned earlier, attention is everything. Once you have customer’s attention, you can tell your story, you can showcase your products, they can smell your product, you can sell your product!
Farmer’s market!! Here it is! This is where your saga starts; this is your opportunity to tell your story — S’well bottle started it’s saga offline through exhibitions, they were successful in convincing everyone not to use one-time use plastic bottles. Some of you are already visiting your nearby farmer’s market each weekend. Some of you might not have tried it. If you are visiting your farmer’s market, I am sure you would have noticed that if you show up, you for sure will do business! It is guaranteed! Now, you might not be sell as many candles as you might have imagined because there are many tricks and strategies to employee to maximize your sales and start building loyal customers, which I will discuss in one of the next posts. Farmer’s market is where you start, you will make money by just showing up, and it only costs $20–25 to book a table.
In business it is very important to know the direction in which you need to focus your energy, this is the reason I wrote the whole blog post describing where not to spend your energy and to focus selling through one channel — farmer’s market. This is where you start and you can grow/expand to other channels later - once you are selling products worth $800 every weekend (Sat & Sun combined).
I will end this post here, it’s been quite some time since I wrote a 7,000-word article and I am tired now! I have promised you that I will help you tell your story better, I will help you increase your sales. I have a set goal for myself to reduce the failure rate from 95% to 80% for small candle businesses, and I hope you make me a millionaire in this process. There are many more articles to come.
