Sabastian Garsnett shares the remarkable journey of transforming a pandemic hobby into Garsnett Beacon Candle Company, a million-dollar business with three storefronts and over 140 wholesale accounts. The challenges of early candle making experiments ultimately led to a simplified approach that became the foundation of their entire business model.
• Starting with the basics is essential – one vessel, one wick, one wax, one fragrance oil • Their most profitable product uses this simple formula rather than complex combinations • Choose suppliers carefully, especially for foundational elements like wax and wicks • Create a brand name and identity that connects with target customers rather than just using your personal name • Understanding your niche market helps determine everything from pricing to packaging • Women's boutiques became their target retail environment, influencing their entire brand design • Share your candle making journey publicly to build an audience before launching • Transparency about struggles and small victories creates invested customers • Their first weekend brought $3,000 in sales from people who followed their development • Different sales channels include Shopify, Etsy, markets, fundraisers, wholesale, and retail stores
Head over to candlebusinesspro.com to explore our free resources, courses and community. We're here to help you go pro.
We didn't set out to build a million dollar candle business. In fact, we were just looking for a creative outlet that we hoped could potentially replace one of our salaries. But what started as a few candle experiments in our kitchen turned into something bigger than we could have ever imagined, and if you've ever wondered if it's possible for you to start from scratch, it is. In this episode, I'm walking you through the exact steps we took to go from burnout to building a brand, one candle at a time. So let's rewind a few years and walk through exactly how it all began the mistakes, the learning curves and the turning points that laid the foundation for everything we've built. So, to get started, I want to introduce myself. I'm Sabastian Garsnett, the co-founder of Garsnett Beacon Candle Company, alongside my husband, Chad, and the founder of Candle Business Pro. So how did we even get into candle making? So let's go back to 2021, 2022, that time of our lives and probably of your lives. That is kind of a blur. We're all living at home full time, not leaving the house for anything, but maybe some groceries here and there, and most of us were also working from home. We were both working from home, doing our nine to five jobs. I was working, actually, for a podcast network in Indianapolis and Chad was working for a title company doing numbers processing things like that. Now you'll get to know Chad as you go through the podcast or if you've seen any of our videos on YouTube or if you're inside of our inner circle. You may know Chad a little bit more and realize that he's not necessarily the one crunching the numbers, doing the marketing and all of that. He's the creative mind behind our brand. He's the one that loves to do the scent blending. He's the one that has a vision for our labeling. That is how his mind works. I like to focus on growing the business. So we do have a benefit that both of us are in the business now, but that's not how it started are in the business now, but that's not how it started.
Sabastian:
This started as a creative outlet for Chad that he needed to stay sane during a time of the world where we didn't know what was going on. So he discovered candle making during that time by buying a simple candle making kit online I'm sure that you have probably seen those. They're less than $100. They're going to come with a pitcher, a candy thermometer, a little bit of wax, a little bit of oil and some very basic instructions of how you're going to use your stove to melt that wax. When you're going to add that oil into that, they're going to give you a few wicks. You're going to make this candle and our assumption is going to be that we are now candle makers. Obviously, that's not how it ends up working out.
Sabastian:
Those first candles were horrible. Those first candles, the testing phase of those, were exhausting. We started doing all kinds of things to try to make it work because we were determined to figure out why our candles did not turn out like those candles that we buy from the store. So when those first candles did not turn out, I think we went down every single rabbit hole possible. We watched every YouTube video. We read every article, every blog. We looked for podcasts, every article, every blog. We looked for podcasts. We were looking for answers of why our candles weren't turning out the way that we imagined they would, and I think we did.
Sabastian:
What many people do was start buying all kinds of different supplies changing your wax, changing your wick, soaking your wick in olive oil I remember was a thing for your wooden wicks using multiple wicks instead of just one and then going back down to one. We tried everything. We were blending our own waxes together. That's how determined we were to figure out what was wrong when in reality the problem was we weren't just sticking to the basics when we first started. That's what I would encourage every maker out there to do is get the basics down and then you can start adding in all the variables. For us and what we teach inside now our Candle Business Pro Candle Making course is the least amount of variables the better. One vessel, one wick, one wax, one oil Make that candle safe. Have a great hot throw and something that you would be proud to sell. Then start adding in those other variables.
Sabastian:
Start getting into the different types of wax. Start blending your own scent creations. Start doing larger two-wick candles or three-wick candles, things like that. Getting into the wooden wicks is another thing that you can start doing then. But when you're first starting out, stick to the basics.
Sabastian:
We have made the most money in our candle shop with a candle that is one wax, one wick and one oil. That is what we built our brand on. Chad loves to scent blend, so we do. The majority of our candles are scent blended, not just a repurposed oil out of the bottle. But when you're first starting out, that oil out of the bottle is just fine, smells fantastic from the supplier and your customers do not know that if your supplier blended that, if you blended that, and they don't care. There's no less value in that candle from you not creating your own custom blend. So just keep that in mind. So, when you're first starting out, I highly, highly recommend sticking to the basics and you can build a million dollar business.
Sabastian:
Now, when it comes to choosing a supplier to get the majority of your supplies from, you're gonna have a lot of options. There are so many different candle making suppliers out there. What I would recommend is, when it comes to your oils, certainly you're gonna have a lot more opportunity out there. There are so many small businesses that you can support when it comes to those oils as well. That's fantastic If you find something that you think is going to really work with your customer that you had in mind that you're going to be making these candles for.
Sabastian:
But when it comes to your waxes and your wicks, I would be cautious with buying what I call like designer products, right, like a new product that just came onto the scene and we don't really know much about it, but there's a lot of hype about it. There's a lot of marketing behind this one specific wax or this special new wick, something like that that comes out. I would be a little cautious about that. The reason is is oftentimes businesses just fail and new product lines just fail. That's just the reality of a business and I want to build my brand on at least the foundational things wax and wicks that I know. If this supplier ends up running out or a short supply or they just go out of business altogether, it's not going to stop my business from operating. That I will be able to pivot very quickly.
Sabastian:
When it comes to oils, we're always that with the season, oils are changing right, and so you're going to see oils go out and leave, even from these larger suppliers that may be doing fantastic with that oil now, at some point they're going to cycle through. That's just the reality of it. You can usually find other suppliers that are going to carry something, if not exactly the same, very similar, or you can even work to get that oil that you loved replicated. So that's something that we can do and in fact we actually do that. There is a supplier that we got an oil from that we loved. They stopped carrying that. So we went to a manufacturer of oils and they make that for us, but you're buying that in a larger quantity. I think we have to buy that like 15 pounds of that one oil when you've got hundreds of oils. You know that's not ideal but it is okay and it works for us. Ideal but it is okay and it works for us.
Sabastian:
But if our wax supplier stopped carrying that wax and there was no other wax supplier with that wax, we would have to literally rebuild out our business because our business is based on. We've got that single wax that we're using and then we're adding these other variables to it and it's based on that wax. Because every wax wit combination is going to be different. We will have to go back and retest all of our candles. We are up to 78 candles now in our brain with the different collections that we have. I can't. I don't want to think about the process of going back and retesting every single one of those waxes, of going back and retesting every single one of those waxes.
Sabastian:
What I like to do is have a solid wax that multiple suppliers have. It gives us the confidence that that manufacturer of that wax is going to be around Now. Very well, there are plenty of big businesses in the world that go out and go out of business as well. Where things change, they change formulas and we have to adjust to it. Just think about like Coca-Cola they have made Coca-Cola for I don't know hundreds of years and they've changed the formula over time. That could possibly happen with the wax that we are using, but I hope not. So I would have a higher rate of confidence in a supplier that is carrying a product that you'll be able to get multiple places.
Sabastian:
But when it comes to fragrance oils, have fun, select from different suppliers, support small business. We love supporting small business. So we actually don't limit who we get our oils from. I think we have like seven different suppliers of our oils. In fact, in the show notes you can get a checklist of every single supply that we use, from our vessels to our wax, to our oils, to our wicks, to our scales, our hot gun, all that stuff. We have a free list and you can download it right on our website. So see that in the show notes to link out to that and that actually will have the updated supply list of who we use for our brand, as well as all the tools, and you can get that completely free. So, all right, enough of the supplies.
Sabastian:
Let's talk about the early stages of Garz and Beacon candle company and how it was born. So Garz and it's our last name. Um, me and Chad's last name is Garz and it and Beacon. It was kind of a play on words and we were doing a lot of searching around to find it. So we were in Indianapolis and we were going to be moving up to Michigan, or that was the goal that was. The dream we had was to move up here and live in one of these little coastal towns. So I wanted something that was kind of more Michigan water themed. So the beacon is on the lighthouses. We didn't know that Michigan actually has the most lighthouses of any state in the country. I just would have assumed it would have been on the East coast somewhere, but I would have been wrong to assume that it is. In fact Michigan has the most lighthouses of any state. So with the lighthouse like Garcinet lighthouse, things like that didn't work. But Beacon kind of worked, and it also went along with Chad's desire to make our business a give back business where we are putting giving back to our community at the top of our priorities. And so he liked the idea of being a beacon in the community and being that light in the darkness for some communities. And so that is what we, or how we came up with Garznit Beacon and then Candle Company at the end of it. So that's where we got our name from.
Sabastian:
People ask us all the time how we got that and if we recommend other people using their names. It's really tough for me to say this because we use our name in our brand, but I wouldn't just create a brand that's, you know, sebastian's candle company or even just Garznick candle company. I wouldn't have done that. There's nothing relatable to it to someone that doesn't know us or doesn't know our story, right. So if my candles are just on the line, someone discovers it and it was like Sebastian's candle company they're not going to know me. Do they want my name in their house? Like it's too personal, I think, when it comes to um trying to expand your business. So I wouldn't want to do like Sebastian and Chad's crafts or I wouldn't want to do anything that, um, no one can understand. With Garcinet beacon, our logo is a lighthouse with that beacon shining, so that really plays into it.
Sabastian:
So naming of your candle brand is going to be something that you're going to want to really think about and think about who your customer is. And that really ties into my next point here about your branding. When you start your candle business, it's going to be crucial to your brand making it that you really understand who you're making candles for. Now, while we're just at home testing and just trying to figure out the basics, we're just trying to figure out if we can get a wick to burn correctly. I understand we're not thinking about our customers necessarily at that point. But once you start getting into branding and coming up with a name for your company and a logo for your company and what kind of vessels that you're going to want to make your candles in long term things like that you really have to have your customer in mind, and it's broken into two different things. You're gonna have a niche and you're gonna have a target audience. So let's think of your niche as the category, the category that your candles are going to fit in.
Sabastian:
So do you wanna make candles that have labels of all different exotic cities in the world that famous people travel to. Is that gonna be your niche? Or do you want them to be hotel inspired and have all of these scents of these different locations that people will stay in whenever they travel to these nice places? Do you want to have your niche theme park right, theme park themed of all these different locations and things that are going to inspire or remind people of those locations? That is what your niche is going to be. Another niche would be your farmhouse cottage, you know. Are you going to have them in mason jars or some twine around the lids and a hang tag? Are you wanting to go with a luxury candle? Are you going to be having elevated ingredients in them at a lot more higher end cost?
Sabastian:
What is your niche? Just making a candle, putting your name on the front of it and just throwing it out there to the world and then just hoping people are going to one located when they're looking for something and then buy it from you? It's going to be tough. You need to have a niche so that you can understand and drive the direction that all of your branding around your candle line is how it's going to be made so from not only your logo, but also in the social media posts that you make, in the graphics that you include, with the emails that you're going to be sending out to people, the communication that your customers expect from you. This is all determined by what your niche is, and so you've got to have that kind of figured out, and what I recommend is just stick with something basic. Stick to something that you're a part of. What are the things that you do that you could easily relate to a customer that would be buying from that? Are you a mother of lots of kids and you are in these mom groups and you get together and you understand their struggles in life, how they just need some time to themselves. Are you a world traveler? That is, you know, jet setting for work all the time. You're staying in hotels every single night. If you understand how that life is, you can make a candle brand around that and you'll understand how to communicate with those people, because you're one of those people. Right?
Sabastian:
We love to shop small in downtown versus going to big box malls stores like that, right? So we understand the kinds of products that are sold in these downtown shopping districts. We understand the price points that are going to be in them. So we understand the candles that are in those type of stores and that's where we want our candles to be. So we built our candle line around those customers.
Sabastian:
So we went and shopped all these different stores, specifically women boutiques, because women do dominate the market when it comes to buying of candles and enjoying candles. So that's, of course, something that we aren't part of. But we wanted to understand more. So we're going into all of these stores, we're picking up candles, we're smelling them where we're seeing what types of scents are really gravitating towards that customer in that niche. We understand the price point for the certain sizes of candles right. So a lot of these women boutiques, they're not going to have a mason jar in there. They're also not going to have a hundred dollar plus candles and they're not going to have candles less than $20.
Sabastian:
When we shopped all of these stores for the kind of the niche that we wanted to be in, we noticed it was 25 to $38 for those candles. They were roughly between eight and 12 ounces. They were in a in a nice, usually pretty simplistic vessel with labeling. What we did to hopefully stand out was a lot of the labeling on these candles in these women's boutiques were all pretty minimalistic. They have the nice script writing on there Um, it's really popular, but we wanted to stick out. So if you check out our website, garzabeaconcom, you'll see all of our candle labels are bright, colorful, but they still fit the rest of that niche, which is going to be the right size and the right price point. So we knew that down the road, when we decided to start reaching out to stores to potentially carry our products, we would know what stores to go after.
Sabastian:
Once we had our niche dialed in, we had to figure out more information about who our customers. Who is that person that's going into those stores where we want our candles to be, and how do we communicate with them so that they want to buy our candles? And that's what your branding is all about understanding who they are, their lifestyle, their income brackets. Do they have kids? Do they not have kids? All of those types of things will help you zero in on who your target audience is, and then you build your brand around that target customer. From the communication, from the social media posts to the price point, every single thing that goes into your candle brand, you have to have that customer in mind. What are they spending? You know, can I afford to charge more? Do I have to reduce my prices even though my cost of goods are not moving along with that? All of those things have to come into consideration, but you have to have that end goal in mind of who is going to buy those candles. So that is niche and target audience. We will get much more into that. We actually have an entire branding workshop that we'll definitely be sharing. Some of the tips from that workshop is inside of our inner circle currently, but I'll definitely be pulling from that to share with you here.
Sabastian:
Let's talk about how we first got Garcin and Beacon Candle Company out into the world, the way we did it, and I would highly recommend you all doing this same process. When you know that you are going to make and build a candle brand, start talking about it. Do not be what I call an undercover candle maker. Don't just show up on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok one day and say, hey, friends and family, I have a candle brand, please buy my candles, because you're going to be disappointed in the results. If that's the method that you take. What you're going to want to do is let those potential customers go on the journey with you. So when you know, hey, I'm going to make this into something, okay, great. So now create a Facebook business page or an Instagram page or a TikTok, wherever your customer is. Keep that in mind. You don't have to be on all the platforms at once. Go to where your customer is, start talking about your brand. Let them go on the journey with you. Let them see the struggles, be vulnerable with your followers. Let them see the messes that you make, how imperfect your candle making space is, how you're making it in just this little office, that during the day you're working your nine to five and it's a computer and monitors and a keyboard, and at night it becomes a candle studio. Let them see what it takes so they can go on that journey with you, because then they're part of your story. So in a few months, when you are ready to start selling and you finally have that finished product, you're going to have those people lined up to support you and you're going to have a really successful launch.
Sabastian:
When we launched our candle brand, we had like a $3,000 weekend, and this is friends and family. We didn't know people in the community yet because we had just moved here to Michigan. So these are people that we allow to watch us, for over two months, go on this journey of frustration and small wins and finding you know, whenever we got our logo done, we were able to share that with them, and so we had these people cheering us on so once they could actually buy something from us, a lot of those people did so. That was a fantastic weekend, really a week Like it was. It was so much. I'm sure we'll share photos, but after that initial week when all of those people that have gone on a journey with us have purchased from us and supported us, that's when the real work starts. That's when you now need to shift gears from making your product and figuring all of that out to now selling your product and understanding how to get your product into potential buyers' hands, whether that's going to be through Shopify, etsy, doing markets, doing fundraisers.
Sabastian:
Do you want to open a brick and mortar store? We've done all of those. We now have three brick and mortar stores. We've got 140 plus wholesale accounts. You want to do that yourself with the wholesale route? There's so many different ways to go. We're going to cover all of those on this podcast.
Sabastian:
So just to recap today. Starting a candle business isn't about getting everything perfect. In fact, we're four years into it and we're not even close to perfect. It's all about starting with a purpose. You got to test, simplify and build with your customer in mind. Now, in episode two, we'll talk about how we began selling, from online to markets to wholesale to, eventually, our first storefront. Thank you so much for listening to the Candle Business Pro podcast. If you found this episode helpful, we would love it if you'd leave us a rating and a review. It really helps us reach more makers like you. And if you're ready to take the next step in your candle business journey, head over to candlebusinessprocom to explore our free resources, our courses and our community. We're here to help you go pro. Thank you so much for listening. Have a great day.
Sabastian Garsnett shares the unfiltered story of how he and his husband Chad turned their candle-making hobby into a six-figure business with three storefronts, over 140 wholesale accounts, and a thriving education platform. Learn the biggest lessons they picked up along the way—and why the Candle Business PRO podcast might be the spark you need to grow your business too.
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The Business Blueprint That Turned Our Candles Into A Brand We've sold candles online, at pop-ups, in boutiques, in our own storefronts, and even through school fundraisers. But none of that happened overnight. In this episode, I’m breaking down the exact path we took — the good, the messy, and the unexpectedly successful — so you can start mapping out your own
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Mindset, Marketing, and Making It Last Let me be real with you — candle making is the easy part. Building a business around it? That’s where the real work starts. There will be days you feel like a total imposter. Days you question your prices, your posts, even your purpose. I’ve been there. But I’ve also come out the other side with more clarity, community, and confidence than I ever expected. In this episode, we’re talking about what it actually takes to keep growing without burning out — and how to build something that truly lasts.
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