How I Started My Candle Business, And 7 Things I Wish I'd Known...

How I started my candle business - now if you’re thinking this is going to be a post about business plans and cash flow forecasts, nope, there’s none of that…

It all started in 2020 with a knowing that I should be doing SOMETHING, but not being able to put my finger on what that thing was. I’d been running our wedding venue business with my husband for 7 years when the global pandemic hit and to say that it was devastating to our industry would be an understatement. Seemingly overnight, a whole year’s worth of weddings were cancelled or rescheduled (repeatedly in many cases), and the business baby we’d grown from scratch was struggling to breathe. We soon realised we had all our eggs in one basket and my husband was lucky enough to get involved in another business to supplement our non-existent income. I KNEW I needed and wanted to do something, but what???

The lightbulb moment! 

Despite having little spare money at this time, I would buy occasional luxuries, including candles from a company in the North of England. They were handmade and I loved them and would reorder when they had run out, until the lady who made them went back to work and stopped making them. I was gutted but this got me thinking, could I have a go at making my own? It couldn’t be that hard, could it?! That was it, I was going to start a candle business! 

Now you might think I got straight to it but no, with repeated lockdowns and 3 children to homeschool, I sat on the idea until 2022, when I finally stopped procrastinating and started doing some research. I was horrified to learn that most candles on the market are made from paraffin was, a by-product of the petroleum industry. I’ve always been a bit of an eco-warrior and decided that was that; I would make candles that were free from toxins and safe to burn in people’s homes.

All of the procrastinating...

You might then think I learnt how to make candles and perfect them? Erm no. I’ve done a bit of branding in the past and so dove straight in to creating my brand name and logo, along with a tagline (Luxury Candles with a Conscience). I came up with my brand colours, designed business cards, bought my domain name, the lot. I now know that this was another form of procrastination and eventually, I realised I would need to learn how to make candles.

So in September 2022 I finally purchased a candle course from The Candle Academy. This was invaluable, particularly because it included details on where to buy wholesale candle supplies. I printed off wick charts and temperature guides and read everything at least 4 times. I was nothing if not a conscientious student! I then decided that one course wasn’t enough, and purchased another from Candle Shack. This was again really useful but really just reiterated what I already knew.

 Getting down to business (finally!)

Little did I know that the biggest learning would come from actually making the candles, should I ever get around to it! I finally started in October 2022, turning my kitchen into a science lab as I tried different recipes, fragrance ratios and wick combinations. My first attempts were fairly pitiful but I persevered, and for Christmas 2023, everyone I knew received one of my ‘experiments’, complete with very rudimentary labelling  - a piece of card tied on with some twine. I got some really good feedback and so decided that I would build a website and launch my business.

In May 2023, I finally launched Whimsy & Wist Candles, about 3 years after I’d initially had the idea. It was very much a soft launch because I hadn’t thought that it might be useful to build an audience beforehand., so I ‘launched’ to about 20 followers on Instagram. Insert eye-roll here and also bless my naïve heart. Unsurprisingly, sales were slow, but undeterred, I launched product after product and eventually started to get some traction, although mostly with people I know.

Christmas 2023 marked a turning point. I booked lots of fairs, all of which were much more successful than I had hoped, to the point I was constantly making stock. This was when I realised that my little business might actually have legs, and I loved meeting people and talking to them about my products. It’s a saturated market for sure, but I think if you can find your people, there’s definitely room for all of us. I still didn’t make any money in my first year, (supplies are expensive and my prices were too low) but The Christmas period certainly made the gap smaller.

Fast forward to Summer 2024 and things are very different. I have a workshop in my garden which I call my 'Whimsy Workshop', some wholesale customers, a solid base of loyal customers and my email list and social media are growing all the time. I wouldn't say I'm 'there' but I'm certainly on my way! 

7 Things I Wish I Had Known Before Starting Out

1. Don’t wait until you have a fully formed business before you start making social media content and building an audience. I made this mistake and have really regretted it. Start from Day 1. It really doesn’t matter how amateur it all feels, people are really interested in the journey and want to see all of the behind the scenes stuff. It will help them to build a connection with you.
2. Along the same lines, but find a way to tell your business story in a concise way and tell it often. All the time. Until you’re sick of it. Then keep telling it.
3. Stay in your own lane. You should absolutely research what your competitors are doing when starting out, but ultimately you need to find your own groove. Comparison is the thief of joy and all that, plus appearances are not what they seem. High follow counts don’t necessarily equal sales – remember that most social media metrics are vanity.
4. Start an email list and find ways to grow it (a pop up on your website, a link in Instagram stories, a QR code at face to face events are just some ideas). Your Instagram/Facebook/TikTok account could get hacked/closed down tomorrow and you’d lose all those followers. Your email list is yours, and it’s full of people who are interested in your products, so concentrate on growing your subscriber number.
5. Once you’ve mastered candle making, make a few in each scent in your range then stop making. Spend the time marketing instead. Social media, newsletters to your subscribers, blog posts for your website, make sure your SEO is up to date (check out this guide by Tyler Talks Business– It’s brilliant), list elsewhere, i.e. Etsy, Tiktok shop, or start a website if you don’t have one – you can easily do this yourself. Check out You Tube for guides, I use Shopify and would recommend it for product based businesses – I used this video to build my site.
6. Get out and do in person events such as markets and craft fairs. This is an excellent way to get people to know about your brand and can lead to other things – I’ve had wholesale and bespoke orders from people who have seen me at events!
7. Don’t feel like you have to release new products all the time. Once you start making candles, you want to make everything, plus people will assume it’s easy to make any scent at all and will ask you to make specific scents. The problem is that fragrance and essential oils are expensive and it can really add up, particularly if you’re not making lots of sales. Not to mention labelling them all. Stick with a few, or literally release one at a time.

 I like to think I've gotten pretty good at making candles since starting out, but you can decide for yourself here.

If you’re thinking about starting a candle business of your own, I hope this helps somewhat. At the very least, you’ve hopefully learnt what not to do!