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...

Here is a secret nobody tells you when you are figuring out how to start a candle business: the name on the label sells the candle almost as much as the scent inside it. I learned this the slow way. When my wife and I started Garsnett Beacon Candle Co. at our kitchen table in Holland, Michigan durin...

Everybody talks about wax and wicks and scent throw, and all of that matters. But the thing that actually keeps most new makers stuck is quieter than that. It is the fear that nobody will buy. When we started Garsnett Beacon Candle Co. at our kitchen table during the pandemic, I remember pouring a b...

Let me tell you about one of the quietest, most underrated wins we ever had at Garsnett Beacon Candle Co. It was not a viral video. It was not a booth at a packed market. It was a single line in our Google Analytics that showed a stranger typing "soy candles in Holland Michigan" into Google, landing...