A question we get a lot is how to stop wet spots in coconut wax candles, and the honest short answer is this: pour cooler than the supplier tells you to, keep your space and your cooling as stable as you can, and accept that a soft, low melt point wax will always want to pull away from the glass a l...

If your candle is beading up with little drops of oil on top a day or two after pouring, that is called sweating, and the short answer is that your wax cannot hold all the fragrance oil you put in it, so the extra is migrating to the surface. It is almost always some mix of too much fragrance for th...

Corporate candle orders are one of the most overlooked revenue streams for a small candle brand, and they are one of the easiest to say yes to once you understand how they work. A company wants candles for employee gifts, client thank yous, an event, or a team building night, usually a batch of the ...

Room sprays are one of the easiest and cheapest products you can add to a candle line, and they are a natural upsell because they match scents your customers already love. A question we get a lot is some version of "I want to add room sprays, how do I actually make them and what do I put them in?" T...

I want to tell you about the photo that cost us money. Early on, back when Garsnett Beacon Candle Co. was just my husband Chad and me pouring candles on our kitchen table in Holland, Michigan, we had a beautiful lavender and sage candle that we loved. It sat on our online store for weeks with barely...

When we first started reaching out to stores about carrying our candles, I did everything wrong. I sent long, rambling emails. I attached a few phone photos. I mentioned prices in the body of the message and then contradicted myself two lines later. Looking back, I am amazed anyone said yes at all. ...

When we poured our first candles at our kitchen table in Holland, Michigan during the pandemic, the label was the last thing I thought about. I was obsessed with getting a clean melt pool and a strong scent throw. Then a friend asked me a simple question that stopped me cold: "What happens if someon...

Our very first craft fair was a church basement in Holland, Michigan, and I still remember loading the car at 6 a.m. with a folding table we borrowed from my in-laws and about 40 candles we had poured on our kitchen table the week before. We had no signage, no card reader that worked, and a tableclo...

The very first store that ever carried our candles did not buy a single one. Not up front, anyway. A little gift shop in downtown Holland, Michigan agreed to put a small shelf of Garsnett Beacon candles by their register, and we agreed that they would pay us only after the candles sold. That was our...

The first time we shipped candles in July, half the box arrived as puddles. A customer in Arizona sent me a photo of four soy candles that had softened, leaned, and re-set at an angle inside their jars. The wax was fine once it cooled, but the tops looked like a melted crayon drawer, and that is not...

The first time I poured a wooden wick candle at our kitchen table, I lit it, watched it crackle for about four minutes, and then watched it go out. I relit it. It went out again. Standing in our little Holland, Michigan kitchen, I decided wooden wicks were a scam. Fast forward to today, and wooden w...

I still remember the exact moment I realized our first real holiday season was going to break us. It was the second week of November, I was standing in our kitchen at about 1am with wax cooling on every flat surface we owned, and I looked at the pile of unfulfilled orders and thought, "We cannot mak...