If you are an aspiring entrepreneur who would like to burn the midnight oil and create a business venture out of it, we have a great business idea for you. How about you start making homemade candles?
If you build a product that is feasible and in trend, it is sure to sell well as long as you promote it well. Making homemade candles is a DIY that is useful to even the unskilled ones. It is a skill that is easy to learn and also easy to commercialize.
If you like the idea and are curious to learn how to make candles, keep reading this article until the end. Let’s get you started with a candle business and see you making money online!
Why You Should Start a Candle Making Business?
Making candle at home has become a trending product. According to MarketWatch, candles as home decor form an industry expected to be worth $5 billion by 2026. Over the past few years, candles are being seen for commercial use more than for personal use. They are used in spas, massage centers, restaurants and cafes, and a few other places to create an aromatic ambiance for customers.
Many people still like to buy candles as a focal point in their home decor. They also use candles in their homes for aromatherapy, stress reduction, and body relaxation.
If we examine the Google Trends for making candle at home, we can see that the global interest in this DIY has been quite consistent. Furthermore, most of the searches for candles come from North American, Australia, and the UK. This is a great insight into the statistics for those who plan to start a candle making business.
Google Trends also demonstrate a lot of interest in some specific types of candles. Some people like scented candles, while others prefer soy candles. The interest of shoppers is not only strong but also reveals variety.
Thus if you are an eager entrepreneur and are thinking about what kind of a business to start, this information can be very helpful for you to decide to start a candle business. Besides the popularity of this business, you can enjoy several other benefits with your candle making business.
Benefits of Starting a Candle Making Business
Here are a few concrete benefits of starting a candle business.
1. Low-Cost Entry
Although some homemade types of candles require pricy materials, starting a candle making business does not cost much. Candlemakers can prepare their wares with a minimum amount of cash at hand.
2. Easy to Sell
Candles are easy to sell. They are used for multiple purposes by customers and thus have a big market. If you know how to start a candle business successfully, you will definitely get your first 100 customers quickly. Plus, you can sell candles both online and offline. You can find customers for your candle business everywhere.
3. Scalable Craft to Learn
The base recipe for making candle at home is easy to learn and follow. Whether you are crafting candles as a newbie or a DIY master in this field, you will see that the formula to make candles is simple.
4. Easy to Customize
Candles are easy to customize and personalize according to your customer’s needs. The more customization you offer, the more you will be able to differentiate yourself from your competitors.
If you look at the candle making business as a DIY business and get determined to learn how to make candles, you can really turn it into a sustainable income stream.
How to Start a Candle Business?
Here are the steps you can take to start a candle business.
1. Do Market Research
Before you officially start the business, you need to do your market research. Conduct competitor analysis and see who else is selling candles to the customers in your vicinity. See how you can differentiate your candles from theirs. Observe the market trends and find out the types of candles people like the most. Check out the pricing strategies of the other players in the market.
You need to gather all this information before preparing your candles to sell. Those who skip this step and step into business without thorough research find it hard to keep their business going after their product is launched.
2. Build Your Brand
The next step for starting a candle business is to develop your brand. Create your brand visuals, such as your brand logo, your overall color theme, and any other marketing items that you want to use for your brand promotion.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
A brand helps you influence your marketing campaigns, build an audience, and make it easier for you to make better products for your customers.
Having a good brand image is critical for a candle-making business in particular. The candles industry has grown so much in the past few years that it might be hard to penetrate the market initially.
3. Make the Candles
There are plenty of candle types that you can make in your kitchen. Take these steps to prepare your candles to sell.
- Gather the materials.
- Prep the wax and container.
- Customize the candle mixture.
- Prep your pour.
- Do the finishing touches to your candle.
If you want to know more details about how to make candles, you can find them in another article dedicated to that. Here we will discuss how to start a candle business, so we have mentioned the steps to make candles precisely.
4. Develop an Online Store
The next step is to build your brand website in the form of an online store, from where you can directly sell your candles online to your customers.
Use Strikingly to build your site, as it is by far the most convenient, cost-effective, and simple to understand website building platform for all such small business owners.
Image taken from Strikingly
We offer a lot of ready-to-use website templates that you can use as your web design. If you select one of our online store templates, you will get the whole theme ready and just need to upload your product photos and details.
Image taken from Strikingly
Here are the steps you need to take to build your online store on Strikingly.
- Signup for an account.
- Select a suitable website template.
- Upload your product photos, set their prices, and write a catchy product description for each.
- Choose the payment methods to use.
Image taken from Strikingly
Do not forget to key in your contact details on your online store. Even if you have a live chat feature on the site, some customers would still prefer getting in touch with you through a phone call or email.
Once you complete the steps described above, you will be all set to start selling your candles online.
5. Promote Your Website
It is important to work on your website’s search engine optimization, and promote it to everyone in your network to drive traffic. Once you have site visitors coming in, you can expect to start making sales as well.
There are a few ways to promote your site.
- Make guest posts about your business on other people’s blogs, and insert links in them to direct the readers to your online store.
- Tell everyone in your personal and professional network about your new candle business.
- Spread the word through social media, and ask your friends to share your social media posts further.
- Consider running Google Ads to boost your website traffic, at least until you start making your first few sales.
- Keep updating your online store with new product photos to keep your site visitors excited.
6. Discover Wholesale Opportunities
Once your business hits off the ground, you might be ready to scale it further. Maybe you would want to explore B2B opportunities to enhance your sales volumes. That will be the time to look for wholesalers who can partner with you and distribute your candles.
Events, where you can find wholesale buyers and distributors include markets and fairs. Join such events and establish a foundation to build such connections for growing your business.
Remember, when you are running a business online, the most important element is your website. That’s because the website will be the one-stop platform for you to make sales. You can make tons of sales online if your website is functioning smoothly, and you are constantly using different marketing strategies to attract visitors to your site.
The smooth flow of your site’s shipping cart options and checkout page will also matter a lot. At Strikingly, we usually resolve our users’ issues very quickly. Our customer support staff is available through our live chat feature, where you can contact us at any hour of the day.
Successful business owners integrate their website with social media and keep posting brand updates on all the platforms. This helps increase your brand awareness and get traffic back and forth from all your marketing channels. Doing this properly will help you start making sales very soon. Since candles are among the trending products nowadays, it should not take long before your orders queue up and you start generating enough revenue to look into expansion opportunities.
