before I start this video I just wanted to make two announcements so the first one is that we are celebrating four years in business here at memory box candle Co so March 30th of 2020 we launched for business and I can't believe that it's been four years so we are celebrating that it's really exciting and then I also just want to let you know that I am at the tail end of finishing up my candle business ebook so it is a how to start a candle business from home ebook and it's going to include basically
all of my knowledge that I've compiled over the past four years in business it's not available yet but I do have a wait list so I will have that down in the pinned comment below and if you're seeing this at a later date then it may be available and if so I will change the link to uh have it be the actual link available for purchase so I just want to make those couple announcements before we got into today's video hello and welcome back to my channel if you're new here my name is Erica with
memory box candle Co and I make videos all about the Journey of starting a candle business and today I'm going to be talk about how to start a candle business in 10 steps so let's go ahead and get right into it step number one determine if you are going to make the candles or if you're going to hire a manufacturer to make the candles for you this is a big decision because making the candles yourself requires a lot more storage space working space a lot lot more physical labor there's a lot more involved that comes
into the actual process of making the candles not to mention you must enjoy the process of making candles if you're going to start a candle business and you want to be your own manufacturer you do have to enjoy to some extent actually making the candles yourself you do have to go through the testing process testing materials there's a lot that goes into it it is a very rewarding process especially when you get a final result that you are pretty happy with but if you are somebody who is wanting to start a candle business but you
care more about the business side of things and know that you would enjoy more of the marketing and branding and that side of things over actually making your candles then you may want to hire somebody to make the candles for you step number two is figure out what your brand story is and who your target market is going to be this is something that I really wish that I would have done in the beginning when I was getting started with my candle business I more or less made the product and then tried to find the
customer base but really in a traditional setting when you are trying to validate the market with your product idea you want to solve a problem so you're trying to find your customer base before you actually make your product but since candles don't necessarily solve a problem we're still able to kind of tailor our product to a specific niche market a specific kind of customer and you really want to look into what kind of customer would be wanting to purchase your candle and this kind of goes hand inand with your brand story now your brand story
is essentially just how you communicate with your customer on the overall messaging uh what matters to you the most in your business and just how you communicate yourself with your customer so it's a form of Storytelling in your business and it's something that handmade business owners has have a leg up over any other Big Box store out there because we're really able to connect one-on-one with our customer and as I talked about in my interview with Diana from Tara if you want to check that out I will have it linked above but we talked a
lot about branding and marketing in that video and how important your brand story is so Brand Story and target market can kind of go hand in hand because you're really trying to develop a brand that's going to be recognizable and something that you are going to know that you are communicating to the Right audience and you don't know that if you don't know who you're selling to so make sure that you really sit down and figure out what matters to you in your business why you're creating your candle business what's the overall message theme you
know Niche whatever it is that you are creating around this candle business and make sure you know who you're actually going to be selling your candles too step number three secure your brand name this is going to be in the form of getting your domain Instagram handle Gmail account you want to make sure that you were securing all of these and also making sure that your brand name is not taken and one of the ways that I do recommend to check this is by getting your Gmail domain and Instagram handle that doesn't necessarily mean that
it's not already taken or registered but it's a pretty good indication of it specifically because of the fact that most people that are registering for businesses they will utilize and take these names so they're available it may be a higher probability that they are an available business name and something like a domain you're going to want to get right away once you realize that yes this is the brand name that I want to go with you should go on to something like godaddy.com and purchase a domain name you don't actually have to have a website
yet in order to purchase a domain name you can have it available for you for when you have your own website and you're able to just easily get it transferred over and be able to use it at a later date step number four is your legal setup so you want to make sure that you are legally sound as you are getting started with this business so whether or not you're going to want to get started as just a soulle proprietor you're going to want to get a DBA so that you're legally allowed to sell your
candles under a different name than your birth name you may also want to look into Gideon LLC a little bit later on if that's something that you're going to want to do and actually form that business entity and then you also want to make sure that you are keeping track of things for taxes so the two softwares that I utilize for that is QuickBooks so QuickBooks is for bookkeeping this is going to keep track of your income coming in and then also your business expenses this is going to be very necessary as you are growing
in your business especially since taxes can be just you know kind of something that is very intimidating for a lot of people and then when you throw in the business side of it it just kind of makes things a little bit more complicated I've been using QuickBook since the beginning and I really like it it's helped me stay very organized with my bookkeeping and then also inventur for inventory management so this is not only just so you can actually visually see what you have and what you're getting low on but you also need to make
sure that you're keeping a tally of your overall inventory value how much leftover inventory is left over at the end of the year because you also need that for tax purpose purposes as well every inventory based business has to keep a tally on their total inventory value to hand over to their tax professional at the end of the year so this part right here you don't have to feel like you need to do everything all at once but as you are getting started with it if you are not wanting to form something like an LLC
or a separate business entity then you do need to look into getting a DBA which is a doing business as so you're able to sell legally under whatever Candle company name that you have chosen for your business and then I also recommend to get a sellers permit and business insurance so those three things you definitely want to do as you are getting started step number three determine your prices now pricing is something that is very unique and individual to every business but what I recommend that you do when you are trying to figure out how
much to charge for your candles is take your cost of goods price so cost of goods sold is how much it actually cost you to make one of your candles and then multiply that number by four and add on anywhere from 10 to 20% I'm not somebody who's going to sit there and try to calculate exactly how much labor is and all that kind of stuff exactly adding on every single fee that the web H hosting platform is going to to take I just keep it very simple do cost of goods times 4 and then
add on 10 to 20% and that to me accounts for my labor and also gives me a little bit of wiggle room when it comes to actually running sales and discounts and all that kind of stuff on my products and pricing is something that is super important because you want to make sure that you are pricing for profit so you want to make sure that you're getting a pretty good gross profit margin of about $75 % gross profit margin or higher to make sure that this business is actually going to be worth it for you
and you're going to be able to grow at a good rate and get a good rate of return coming in with your business and if you have no idea how to calculate your own cost of goods because there is a bit of math involved with that inventor actually does that automatically for you so I recommend inventor for multiple different reasons but specifically that definitely is a very big bonus step number six decide where you want to sell your candles so you can sell your candles on a Marketplace like Etsy you can go on your own
website uh through a web hosting platform like Shopify which is what we do actually we did move back to Etsy as well so we sell on both of them but you can just choose one or the other when you're getting started and then there's also the option of not doing anything online and you can sell just at local markets so you really have to determine what is going to work for you what makes the most sense for you in your business and of course every business is going to be different on what is going to
be the best path for you so if you know that you have weekends free and you would love to just go and spend a couple weekends a month out at local markets meeting people I think word of mouth and doing it that way is a great way to get started and it kind of allows you to have a little bit of space in what can seem like a sea of competition ition when you're online so I do think that getting started locally is a really really good idea but also I do recommend that even if
you do get started locally to have a website of some kind or at least an Instagram because you want to make sure that these local clients and customers are able to find you repurchase from you so make sure you have business cards with your email Instagram and preferably a website even if it is just an Etsy shop because Etsy is easier to get started with than Shopify um it's much easier to get your shop up and running than it is an actual website design but just make sure you have something even if you're just choosing
the local option you want to make sure that you have a way for these customers to contact you and want to order from you again step number seven know how you're going to ship out your candles before you list them for sale so this is something that I know is a very intimidating part of the business if you've never shipped out something before or you've never shipped out something breakable it can be very intimidating so just take the time to learn and figure out exactly how you are going to ship out your candles I have
an entire playlist when it comes to shipping candles I also have an entire course if you want a more indepth kind of take your hand and walk you through step by step um to make sure that you are not wasting money and you know exactly how to charge for shipping boxes shipping labels all that kind of stuff um but this is something that's really important with when you are getting started because you don't want to make the mistake of either having no idea how to ship your product so you're listing things for sale you get
a sale and then you're scrambling thinking I don't even know how to ship this I don't know if I charge the right amount and then you could be losing money in the long run because you're not able to choose the best shipping option charge the customer accurately and then know yourself how to actually get the cheapest best shipping and keep keep the candle intact as it gets to the customer so make sure that you know how you're going to be shipping your products before you actually list them for sale step number eight product photography this
may be the most crucial part of actually getting your first sale online you have to really capture the beauty of your product and you can't do that with poor lighting um and just kind of snapping a photo real fast on your phone and putting it up on your website I promise you you have to really invest the time to either learn product photography yourself or invest the money to hire somebody for you it is worth a few hundred I really highly recommend that if you are somebody who either doesn't have a you know nice camera
or you have no idea even where to start with product photography go onto your local Facebook group and post some pictures of your products that you take with your phone and say hey I'm looking for a local product photographer um to help you know take some pictures for me and have a budget in mind so let's say your budget is $200 and let them know hey my budget's $200 what am I able to get um I have even had somebody offer to do it for free because they wanted to build up their portfolio I still
gave them money I still tipped them for it but it was a really good tradeoff and um they were able to practice on product photography have some you know photos for their portfolio and then I was able to get some beautiful pictures so it can kind of be a win-win in your community but do not have this be something that's an afterthought this has to be a very very important part to you because it truly is a matter of getting a sale and not getting a sale step number nine is Market your business now I
know Marketing in and of itself just like shipping candles can seem very intimidating when you've never done it before and especially with marketing because marketing and kind of the corporate world has kind of meshed together so you think that marketing has to be something really structured and really rigid but really it's kind of this creative freedom everything that you do when you're talking about your business is a form of marketing so make sure you're creating content behind the scenes creating videos talking about your products maybe you're opening up the lid of your candles and smelling
it and describing what you're smelling maybe you're talking about your brand story the story so that they don't forget about you because the main thing is you don't want people to forget about you you want to tell as many people I mean word of mouth has always been such a huge huge part of every business and word travels fast and this person tells this person who tells this person and before you know it you have three four five 10 new customers that you technically didn't have to acquire those customers it was just word of mouth
so there's so many different ways to go about Marketing Online yes you can run ads but you can also Al just focus on you know just sharing as much content as possible whether or not you want to be the face of the brand or not um that is completely up to you but marketing can be as simple as just posting about you know you picked up an order from your local Candle supply store or you're pouring a candle or you know you're sharing the reasoning on why you're making candles people want to learn and know
more about the maker and know more about the person behind the brand and even if you're not the one making the candles you can still add in content of you know the story behind the scent names the reason why you chose the kind of jars that you're using or even just opening up your candle smelling it and being able to describe how it smells how it makes you feel all these things that you can utilize to connect with your audience marketing is a huge part and something that I think can be an afterthought for a
lot of people starting businesses and that was an afterthought for me so that's why I'm letting you know because you know all these things are something that you should be thinking about as you are getting started with your business because again like I said earlier it really can be a make or break between you just kind of sitting around waiting for sales to happen versus you being diligent taking action and doing the things that are actually going to create those sales and step number 10 is set goals so you've launched your business you're kind of
gaining momentum with with it you're creating Instagram content maybe you're working on a Shopify website while you have an Etsy shop or you've done a few local markets and you're really kind of getting the hang of this whole business thing you really need to kind of look at the big picture of everything and think to yourself okay where do I actually want to take this is this just a part-time thing I'm wanting to make some extra money am I wanting to replace my full-time job am I wanting to create this into like a multi-million dollar
company all of these different things will require different action and different time energy and money into it so once you've kind of gotten into it and you may have already thought about this from the beginning you know thinking to yourself I just really want it to be just some extra money I'm going to have some fun with it and do some markets and that's totally fine that's a lot of fun and you may change your mind and think to yourself okay well if I've done markets then maybe I could do a trade show and really
get into wholesale there's different Avenues within the candle industry and being a candle business owner and there's so much opportunity out there that you can really you know as Diana had said from the interview if you really are determined enough then you can make space in this industry it's just a matter of knowing your business knowing your brand and knowing your goals and really taking action if I could give you any advice in this video it's take action on your ideas take action on all of these thoughts that are in your head take action on
these goals because you're never going to actually see any of this come to life if you don't take action on it and there's going to be obstacles and things that are frustrating and unknown that are in your way that seem like you don't want to go over it it's not a hurdle that you actually want to climb over because it just seems too big and too complicated and I don't understand any of it but I promise that 99.9% of business owners have been where you are I definitely have felt that way that there have been
times and things that have been kind of in my path that seemed like well I don't even know if I want to do this because it's hard and there's math involved and I don't know anything about licensing and the taxes and it can seem very overwhelming so just take one thing at a time and really start chipping away at making this dream come true because if you're passionate about it enough then you will be able to overcome any of these things that seem really frustrating and daunting and I promise the other side is filled with
nothing but confidence and I know that you can do it so um I really hope that this video helped you out I'm so excited to be celebrating four years in business today it has just been the craziest roller coaster but I think that becoming a mom and 7 months of that have been a little crazier I'm not going to lie but definitely the past four years in business have been just I can't believe how much has changed and grown since four years ago so I really hope you enjoyed today's video if you have any questions
feel free to leave them down in the comment section below also don't forget to subscribe to the channel if you haven't already and I will see you in my next [Music] video [Music] [Music]
