One of the most overlooked ways to sell a big batch of candles in a single shot is the humble fundraiser. Schools, sports teams, churches, dance studios, booster clubs, and animal rescues all need money, and most of them are stuck selling the same tired catalog junk year after year. When we started ...

When we started Garsnett Beacon Candle Co. at our kitchen table during the pandemic, I had no idea if we were actually making money. Candles were selling and our bank account went up and down. But if you had asked me point blank, "What does it cost to make that candle, and how much of the sale price...

When we started Garsnett Beacon Candle Co. at our kitchen table during the pandemic, I thought pouring a candle was the easy part. Melt the wax, add fragrance, pour it in the jar, done. Then I lined up my first batch the next morning and half of them had lumpy, cratered, frosted tops that looked lik...

I put off short form video for way too long. When we started Garsnett Beacon Candle Co. at our kitchen table during the pandemic, I told myself I was a candle maker, not a video person. I hated hearing my own voice. I felt silly filming myself pouring wax in a tiny apartment kitchen. So I skipped it...

When people ask me how to start a candle business, one of the first things I tell them might surprise you: you do not need a 40 page business plan with charts and a five year revenue forecast. I never wrote one. What I wrote fit on a single page, and I still keep a version of that page taped inside ...

Nobody talks about the money you lose while you are learning. When we started Garsnett Beacon Candle Co. at our kitchen table during the pandemic, I thought the hard part would be making a candle that smelled good. That part came fast. The expensive part was everything I did not know yet: pricing, t...

If you have ever poured a beautiful candle, lit it two hours later, and wondered why it barely smelled like anything, welcome to the club. That was me at my kitchen table back in 2020, staring at a jar that looked perfect and threw almost no scent. I thought I had bought bad fragrance oil. I had not...

When people ask how we grew from a kitchen table operation into a candle brand with 160 plus wholesale accounts, they usually expect a secret. The truth is that a big chunk of those accounts came from putting our candles in front of store owners who were already shopping for products to stock, and t...

The first real complaint I ever got about our candles still lives in my head. We were maybe eight months into Garsnett Beacon, still pouring on the kitchen table, and a customer emailed to say her candle "smelled like nothing" once it was lit. I stared at that email for a full day before I answered ...

One of the first big checks we ever cashed in our candle business did not come from a craft market or our website. It came from a local real estate agent who wanted 50 candles with her logo on the label to give to clients at closing. She found us at a market, asked if we could put her branding on a ...

When we started Garsnett Beacon Candle Co. at our kitchen table during the pandemic, wax melts were an afterthought. We were pouring candles late into the night, and at the end of every batch we had leftover wax and fragrance sitting in the pot. Instead of tossing it, we started pouring it into litt...