Quick roundup of activity so far

Firstly, for those of you who read our first post, here’s the next instalment.

For those who didn’t, stop reading and go and find it…

Now….

Go on…

So, all up to speed with progress in setting up a wedding candle making business so far…??? Good – I’ll continue…

Quick recap – we had found Google. I mean really found Google at a deep, spiritual level. It could answer any and all questions we could throw at it with apparant ease.

Additionally, with the progress we were making we’d be millionaires within the year – we could at least match the competition for candles in glasses and were confident we could nail ‘em for decorative candles.  (BTW – take a look at where we are now with our wedding candle business and I think you’ll agree – Alesia’s designs really are top quality – however, that was all yet to come).

All we had to do was get pictures of the babies onto the front page of Google and we’d be off to the races??

Sounds simple, but clearly not the case. If it was there’d be a lot of Search Engine consultants out of work, not to mention Google’s AdWords being totally surplus to requirements.

A business strategy – whatever that is, we need one?

So, business meeting time. Obviously I say that in the loosest sense of the word. As with all of our business meetings it followed the same basic format…

Barry – ‘What ya looking at…??’

Alesia – ‘Ebay…’

Barry – ‘I can see that but what are you looking for??’

Alesia – ‘Nothing…’

????????

It was often said some years ago (or I heard it often said anyway – probably shows the kind of circles I mix in?!?) that 5 minutes after man has invented a new media he invents a way of distributing porn across it.  The whole story though is that 30 seconds after that (i.e. once his wife has caught him) he goes on to invent ways of shopping across it!!

Anyway, back on subject (and before the hand/book/toaster comes my way again…), it was about this time that we decided upon a business strategy. It was very simple really. The basic problem we had was that as a start-up, and with no capital to talk of, we needed a strategy that wouldn’t involve external professional resources – i.e. cheap. However, we also needed to make our products visible to the market.

Therefore, of the niches that were available we set upon wedding candles as being a good target.

Firstly, when we find a prospective customer they already clearly know if they’re in the market or not so that took one point of conversion out of the loop – i.e. trying to convince a prospect that they should even be looking at what we were selling, let alone looking at us for it.

Clearly, if they didn’t know they wanted at least something like we were selling then they didn’t.

Anyway, this meant that when (if?) we found a prospect looking for wedding stuff we only really had to convince them to buy from us as opposed to someone who does something really quite similar.

Secondly it meant that we could attack an existing local market and attempt to ‘piggy-back’ on other suppliers in our local wedding market – not competitors but local companies that, and this was the nub of the strategy, we could do the good old fashioned foot pounding thing. Ok, no overnight prizes for entrepreneur of the year, but it was tried and tested and best of all it met our principle requirements test – cheap! The most expensive part was likely to be in the cost of shoes/phone bill/ice to cool a burning ear from having a phone pressed up against it all day. Oh yes, this really was going to be old school – nowimping out with fancy headsets for us!!

So, we had made some candles which weren’t the final product, but we’d used Google to our full advantage to read every ‘How to make a candle’ lesson we possible could along with several YouTube videos and we knew exactly what to do to perfect them. 

Our first perfect wedding candles – or so we thought!

So, onto the first candle effort. The wax was melted in a big pot on the hob in the kitchen (oh yes, we had all the gear – several pots and a couple of thermometers!!) to the temperatures specified on the websites we’d found. Next the fragrance was added to the wax in the pot at the percentages we’d found found on various websites. Finally we allowed the resultant steaming fluid to cool to the appropriate temperature (you’ve guessed it – as found via our friend and yours – Google). Then, we poured it.

BTW – just in case you’re wondering, by ‘we’ read ‘Alesia’ – this thing involved measurements and more importantly the stove. It was therefore clearly well outside of my remit. Or as Alesia put it – you’ll only make a mess that I have to clear up later?? I obviously feigned hurt feelings by this wholly unnecessary slight on my character and went off to make a mess somewhere else…

Anyway, the babies had been poured and it was simply a matter of leaving them for a couple of days and then reaping the rewards that were so clearly due to us for having been so clever?

We could see the cash rolling in already…

Welcome to this, our first blog post.

First off, a little about who we are and what we do (for fuller info refer to our About Us page or visit our Wedding Candle website). We are a company which makes candles.

Simple right??

Wrong… It’s taken us 2 years to get to this point where we have products tried and tested, to the high quality levels we set ourselves along with the start of a business to go with it (and literally only the start).

So, this, our first post – the trials and tribulations of candle making.

If you’re thinking, like we were 2 years ago, how hard can it be, read on.

It all started with a real throw away comment by Alesia to me one day – “d’you know… I’ve always fancied having a go at making a candle”.

Trust me, if I knew then what I know now I’d have done what I usually do and ignored her (that’s gotta be worth a slap?!?).

Anyway, that was just the start of it.

First move was to get a candle making kit from Hobby Craft. Good fun but we realised even back then that it was a world away from where we wanted to be. Every attempt from that point forward left us generally with more questions than answers.

The first of them was do we really want to create candles from paraffin wax? After all, it’s a derivative of the oil trade and therefore evil – note that this is quite regularly up for debate – it’s a by product of an industry and certainly not the raison d’etre- i.e. the oil trade would still go on even if the paraffin wax sales disappeared completely. However, for us the sustainable argument was really quite compelling on it’s own but if you then add the fact that soy wax (the main ‘opposition’) lasts longer and most importantly burns far, far cleaner (i.e. much less soot) we were sold.

So, we had managed to make a couple of paraffin candles with the wax and moulds supplied in a kit which we didn’t like very much and certainly weren’t saleable. We had also now decided we wanted to steer away from the petrochemicals industry so soy was the way for us to go?

Next up – reading everything we could find even remotely relevant online. That took us weeks on it’s own!! However, after some fairly heavy Googling we thought we had all the answers. We knew all about pillar blends, container blends, single pour waxes, double pouring as a technique. We even knew all about dipping (we also knew we were going nowhere near it!!)

Again, the thought hit us (not for the first time or the last) – how hard can it be?

Wrong again!?!

First problem – getting hold of soy wax. Searching Google will bring up several big suppliers / manufacturers and many, many more hobbyist type suppliers. Wonderful, till we found out that 80% of them were in the US. Not a massive problem but not one we could really deal with on an ongoing basis on the grounds of cost.

However, we eventually narrowed down our search and found suppliers of soy wax in the UK who seemed like they’d still be there next year.

Next up – back to Google. How to make fragranced soy candles??

Again, sounded and looked easy. I bought in a big sample case of fragrances from somewhere and let Alesia’s nose do it’s thing.

Well, it certainly did that – she didn’t like any of ‘em!?! Mind you, I can’t really complain – I adopted the typical male shopping attitude – hoping that if I just say ‘yeah it’s alright’ to everything that the pain might at least be shortlived. I don’t know why we ever think that. Then again I don’t know why women keep asking when they know the answer they’re gonna get before they ask? All part of the wonderful and completely bemusing subject that is gender politics I guess?!?

Anyway, I digress, back to the fragrancy, smelly thing (and just in case you’re wondering – yes I do still get asked – daily!). After ruling out all of the initial fragrances we tried we then went on to buying, I think I can say with some degree of certainty, every fragrance available in the known world?!? Seriously, we’ve had hundreds of samples and blends which all got worked through in the same diligent manner – ‘what d’you think…?’… ‘It’s ok…’.

So, progress update – we’d made a couple of paraffin candles and were the proud owners of a couple of bags of soy wax (one pillar blend and one container blend) along with wicks to go in them and a stash of fragrances in a whole variety of little containers. Oh yeah, we had also invested in some votive sized glass containers and a couple of nice pillar moulds. Most importantly though we also had the knowledge. Google was our friend and we thought we’d be selling to Harrods, not to mention numerous high class boutiques (you know, the sort without the prices on the stuff in the windows), within the week.

We were off to the races – or so we thought…??