How to Start a Candle-Making Business
Candles are highly popular as a decoration, a light source, a part of religious ceremonies and a vehicle for delivering fragrance. For an enterprising crafter, this means that the homemade candle market offers a wide variety of opportunities. But once you've mastered the art of making candles, how do you get started in selling them?
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Instructions
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Design products for success. Homemade candle craft entrepreneurs are fairly common, so providing a more unusual selection of products will be a good key to success. Good niche-market candle products may include all-natural candles that are free of scents, dyes and chemicals, soy candles, multiple-wick candles, floating candles, carved and sculpted candles, black candles (often in high demand and hard to find for Wiccans and other Neopagans) and custom-made candles. Bear in mind that scented candles will be difficult to sell through mail-order, as customers can't find out if they like the smells until after purchasing.
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Find a cost-effective materials supplier. While the craft store is a good place to go when starting out and learning the art, your business will need to purchase from a more wholesale operation in order to be keep itself profitable and well supplied.
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Build enough candles for a beginning stock. As your business is just starting out, you can minimize costs by creating candles to order, but you will need enough pre-made candles to demonstrate all the types you are planning to sell.
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Determine pricing. Assess the costs of your materials and your labor per candle, then compare prices of similar products from other craft candle makers.
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Set up online selling options and create printed promotional materials. You will need high-quality photographs of your candles, a professional-looking website and attractive business cards. Consider hiring a photographer, graphic designer and web designer if you can't make these things on your own. You can either set up a store on your own website, sell through another site (such as Etsy.com) or both.
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Promote your business. Start by giving information to family and friends and asking them to help spread the word, using free advertisement (such as local fliers and Craigslist ads), then branch out into paid advertising. When evaluating potential advertising spaces, remember that it's more important to reach fewer people in your target market than to just reach as many people as possible.
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Sell at craft fairs. You can either set up your own booth or sell at someone else's on consignment. Bear in mind that the best way to find local craft fairs is by word of mouth, so once you've found one, talk to the people staffing booths there. Watch ads and newspaper announcements.
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Sell to local shops. Once you have some samples of your products and some professional-looking printed materials, start approaching local, independently owned shops. Ask anyone you think might be interested in earning a portion of proceeds through consignment; this can include health food stores, book stores and coffee shops.
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