Who doesn’t like to be in a house which feels cozy and filled with a rich aroma?
Candles are a great way to achieve that for your home and it’s something that is trending a lot these days.
Besides being an affordable indulgence, they make great gifts and people just love to buy them for themselves or others.
If you are interested in starting a business, and have a passion for soy blends, wicks, and mastering the perfect fragrance, then starting a candle business could be a great choice for you.
We have created this guide to tell you how to start a candle business in detail and 10 things to keep in mind. Let’s have a look.
1. Understand Your Candle Business Customers
The success of a business depends on its understanding of its customers.
The first step of how to start a candle business is to get to know your customers and determine your buyer’s persona:
Demographics – Knowing the age, sex, geography, etc. of your customers will help you in targeting your audience better for promotions.
Create a fictional representation of your customer and identify the “buyer persona” that is likely to purchase your candles.
Spending Behavior – Whether your customers purchase premium candles or do the love deals?
If they like to shop online and if they like to purchase similar products along, are some of the questions that can help you align your marketing properly.
Attention – What captures the attention of your customers and where do they spend most of their time?
For instance, if your customers are active on Facebook, you can create Facebook ads to target them.
2. Find Your Unique Selling Proposition
The biggest reason why anyone would want to purchase your candles is their unique attributes.
So the next step of how to start a candle business is to identify your Unique Selling Proposition or USP.
Your USP will directly align with your buyer persona because the unique quality that people prefer would be different for different kinds of people.
So your buyer persona will be interested in your USP specifically.
Your USP could be one or more specific characteristics like a variety of colors, a variety of scents, recycled-glass containers, wick and wax that last longer, and so on.
These value traits will be used in creating your ads and presenting them to your target audience.
3. Optimize Busy Season With The Right Scents
Since there are a few particular times when the demand for candles skyrockets, you need to know how to optimize your sales during these periods.
Different kinds of fragrances work well in different kinds of seasons, and you need to find out which one to sell in which season.
A few examples of seasonal scents are apple blossom and lavender in spring, peach and sandalwood in summers, cinnamon and eucalyptus in fall, and pine and maple in winters.
4. Sell Candles In The Lean Seasons
To know how to start a candle business, you will need to identify how to sell candles in the lean seasons.
Don’t let this time demotivate you, but focus on products that sell throughout the year and promote them for various use cases.
Here are a few marketing ideas for the lean season:
- Special discount to your email list
- Small gifts to customers on birthdays
- Gift ideas for graduates or teachers
- Fun promotions on obscure holidays
5. Craft Your Brand’s Voice on Social Media
An important part of how to start a candle business is understanding how to craft your brand’s voice on social media.
Pick Your Social Media Channels – Since, candles are attractive looking objects, you need to pick channels for your promotion where you can post appealing pictures like Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.
Brainstorm Themes and Ideas – Keeping your brand in mind, brainstorm to come up with ideas that align with your audience.
Create A Content Calendar – As we mentioned earlier, different fragrances work well in different seasons, you can even create a content calendar to make sure you promote the right content and product throughout the year.
Design and Write – Design your posts well and write your captions smartly, and post your content.
6. Manage Your Supplies
An important detail about how to start a candle business is to know how to manage your supplies.
You might be able to get your candle supplies from your local craft supply store initially, but as your business grows, you will need to buy in bulk from wholesale suppliers to save money and maintain stock.
Some of the important candle making supplies are:
- Wax such as paraffin, soy, gel, beeswax
- Wicks
- Containers for candles
- Fragrances such as essential oils
- Coloring agents
- Shipping and packaging supplies
7. Reach New Candle Customers With Online Ads
Online platforms depend a lot on selling ad space, and there is plenty enough for everyone to buy.
Google and Facebook provide great opportunities for online ads.
These platforms give the best results in gaining clicks directly to your site, and also in segmenting your audience and showing your ads specifically to them.
And since the cost is dependent on the number of clicks on your ad, it is only as expensive as it is successful.
8. Make The Most Of Email Marketing
Having subscriptions to your email newsletters is a massive indicator of preference towards your brand.
Be it automatic from purchases or voluntary from your business website, you will definitely be accumulating your customer email addresses.
Stay in touch with your subscribers with regular email newsletters, encourage them to purchase more, and increase the frequency of the newsletters if successful.
You can even use email marketing tools like Mailchimp to help you in designing your email newsletters and keeping your customers happy with them.
9. Take Additional Initiatives To Market Your Candle Busines
Here are a few additional ways in which you can market your candle business:
Blogs – Blogs are a great way for people to get to know you. You can use it to educate your audience and involve them with your brand very well.
Forums – Forums are a great place to commune with the audience who truly care about your brand and your industry.
The only difference here is that you will be sharing the space with similar other business owners that would be sharing their own insights.
10. Decide Where To Sell Your Candles
The final question is how to start a candle business is to ask yourself where you are planning to sell them.
Even though candles can be sold at a boutique or at a local farmers market, they have a huge demand in the online business world, and you can grow your business successfully by selling them online.
To sell online, you can launch your own eCommerce store, and you can also sell them on an online marketplace like Amazon.
In fact, even social media platforms like Facebook have their own marketplace now, where you can sell your candles as well.
There are numerous options where you can decide to sell your candles.
Just make sure to look at every aspect of it from buying the stock to marketing the final product, and from selling the final product to getting customer feedback.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, if you are asking how to start a candle business, it means that you already have the drive and passion required for it.
However, if you really want your candle business to flourish, you will need to follow the above-mentioned steps properly.
Every aspect is important in determining the success of your business. Lastly, it’s a creative industry and our final tip would be to be as creative as possible with your candle business.
