When we started Garsnett Beacon Candle Co. at our kitchen table during the pandemic, I thought getting into stores would be the hardest part of the whole thing. Turns out it was one of the most learnable. Today we have more than 160 wholesale accounts and a couple of brick and mortar stores here in Holland, Michigan, and almost all of that started with a few nervous emails and one boutique owner who said yes. If you are figuring out how to start a candle business and you want your candles on real shelves, this is the exact playbook we use.

Why wholesale is worth the effort

Retail is fun, but it is one sale at a time. Wholesale is different. One good account can reorder every month for years. When a store buys 24 candles from you, that is 24 candles sold in a single email, no market booth, no ad spend, no packing 24 separate shipments. The tradeoff is margin. You are selling at roughly half of your retail price, so your numbers have to work before you ever pitch. That is the part most new makers skip, and it is the part that sinks them.

Before you email a single shop, run your real cost of goods. If you have never done this, our free candle pricing calculators will get you there fast, and the supply checklist helps you track what each component actually costs.

Get your wholesale pricing right first

Here is the simple math we live by. Most retail shops use keystone pricing, which means they double your wholesale price to get their retail price. So if you sell a candle to a store for 12 dollars, they put it on the shelf for 24 dollars. That means your wholesale price needs to be about half of what you charge on your own website, and it still has to leave you a healthy profit.

Work backward. If your cost of goods on a candle is 5 dollars and your retail price is 24 dollars, your wholesale price of 12 dollars still leaves you 7 dollars of profit per unit. If your cost of goods is 9 dollars, that same 12 dollar wholesale price only leaves 3 dollars, and you are working too hard for too little. When the math does not work, the answer is almost never to lower your wholesale price. It is to lower your cost of goods or raise your retail price. We break the full approach down in our Wholesale 101 guide.

Build a line sheet before you pitch

A line sheet is a one page or two page document that tells a store everything they need to buy from you without a phone call. Shop owners are busy. If they have to email you three times to figure out your prices, they will move on. Your line sheet should include:

• Clear product photos on a clean background, one per scent.
• Wholesale price and suggested retail price for each item.
• Your minimum opening order, which is the smallest first order you will accept. We started ours at 150 dollars.
• Case packs, meaning how candles are grouped, for example sold in sixes.
• Lead time, so they know how long from order to delivery. We tell stores 7 to 14 days.
• Your contact info and reorder instructions.

Good photos carry a line sheet, so if yours are not there yet, spend an afternoon fixing them. You do not need a studio. A phone by a window and a clean surface will beat most of what I see from new makers.

How we actually land accounts

This is where people freeze up, so let me make it simple. We use three approaches, and they all still work.

Walk in with a sample. This is how we got our very first account. I walked into a local boutique with two candles, handed them over, and said the owner could keep them. No pitch, no pressure. She lit one at the register, customers asked about it that same week, and she emailed me to order. Free samples are not a cost, they are your best salesperson.

Send a short, specific email. Not a mass blast. Look at the store, notice what they carry, and mention it. Something like: I make small batch candles here in Michigan, I noticed you carry a lot of local makers, and I think my Lake Breeze scent would fit your shop. I attached my line sheet and would be glad to drop off samples. Short, human, and specific beats a long template every time.

Use a wholesale marketplace. Platforms like Faire let stores discover you and order without you knowing them first. It is not a replacement for real relationships, but it fills your account list while you are out doing the in person work.

Stay organized once orders come in

Landing accounts is step one. Keeping them is what builds a real business. The makers who lose wholesale accounts almost always lose them to sloppy follow through: late shipments, wrong scents, no reorder reminder. We run our production and inventory through Makers Manager so nothing slips, and I set a simple reminder to check in with every account about every 30 days. A two line email asking if they need a reorder has probably added more revenue to our business than any ad we ever ran.

Track your numbers too. Know your best selling scents per account, your average order size, and how often each store reorders. That is how you decide who to nurture and who to gently let go.

Start smaller than you think

You do not need 160 accounts. You need one. Then you learn what that store needs, you tighten your line sheet, and you go get the next one. We did not build our wholesale side in a weekend. We built it one boutique at a time, and most of them are still with us years later.

If you want to see how this fits into the bigger picture of how to start a candle business, our full 10 step guide walks through every stage, and we go deeper on wholesale and everything else over on our YouTube channel. You can also come ask questions in our free Facebook group, where thousands of candle makers are trading exactly what is working right now. And if you want to see how we present our own line to stores, take a look at Garsnett Beacon.

Your candles are good enough to be in stores. The only thing between you and that first shelf is the ask. Go make it.