sockmonkey

If she's already picked the scents, it seems a little late now to tell her she can't have them. Since you are the one making them, and I assume you already have experience selling candles, it probably would have been in your best interest as well as hers, to limit her to fall scents. How will you go about telling her that she can only have a limited number of scent choices now? With all of the scents you listed, how were you planning on filling her orders? One at a time or were all orders supposed to be turned in at once? I can't imagine the hassle of making one green apple candle, two pumpkin pies, six banana nut breads, one april fresh downy, etc. I'm guessing she probably picked out all of the scents that appealed to her personally without considering what might be good sellers. I agree that you should always have a vanilla candle as well as one floral option. With that in mind, I would trim her selection down as follows and possibly add the vanilla and floral options as well: baked apple pie banana nut breat sugar cookie candy corn cinnamon surprise pumpkin pie

I would hold off on the chargeback threat too. I don't think you will instantly get your money back until the credit card company completes their investigation. They would need to contact the vendor about the dispute, and by the time it's all over you will probably already have replacements in your hands. Take a picture of everything before you ship it back to them. Even if you send it back to them in their messed up box, you still need to take care with it and make sure that it's properly sealed so that nothing will fall out, should it go through another rough round like it did on it's way to you. If your box shows up to them with something missing they would be within their rights not to give you credit for it. Try to remain positive about the situation. As far as I know, Candlewic doesn't have a bad reputation, so they will probably do the right thing.

I have a Life of the Party Soap Kettle that I use and it has a glass lid that keeps the skin from forming on top--but it requires using more than 2lbs of m&p in it. When I make smaller batches I just use the microwave. I use a giant glass measuring cup and melt it in about 2 minute increments to keep it from over heating. As it cools it will clump on your spoon and container, but you can scrape it all off and remelt it. I typically don't have a problem with clumping within the base. Maybe you're not getting it hot enough to thoroughly melt it. Are you cutting it into smaller pieces before you melt it?

The names are probably too exotic for them. You could probably take the same scents, call them Jitterbug, Charleston, or New Deal, and they'd probably take a sniff.

I was flipping through a Lucky magazine when I ran across a page that had a picture of an $85 candle by D.L. & Co, and thought it was worth checking out. It's another example of knowing your market and what prices it can bear. http://www.barneys.com/b/browse/product.s?productId=301775&source=category&index=42&prodIndex=42&listSize=75&categoryId=486950

Google "certifed appraisal through godaddy" and you will find some information. I found this bit you might find interesting: http://www.lexdon.com/article/GoDaddy.com®_Offers_New_Domain_Appraisal/14731.html

How did you get an order for candles when you don't know how much you're charging for wholesale? You should be more concerned about how you can lower your manufacturing costs than worrying about how much your customer will have to retail her candles for. At $13 per jar wholesale, you're charging more than Yankee (and they're 22 oz jars). If she's willing to pay you $13 per jar, more power to you. And if she can sell them for $26, I don't see a problem.

If you need Instant Karma, I think I have 8 oz I'll be happy to part with.

Maybe they could spend less time posting on The Dish and more time packing orders and responding to emails to keep their customers happy.

People here referred me to the Candle Maker's Store and I will do the same for you. I used WSP prior to candlemaker's and found it to be sticky. With Candlemaker's that isn't an issue. Also, if you sign up for their email they send you email only specials and sometimes have it on sale.

I don't think any school can prevent you from using their colors, but the logo could be a different story. I would contact the high school or the board of education regarding its use. Some schools contract with select companies to permit the legal use of their name and logo in manufacturing jerseys, notebooks, etc., which they use as their own fundraiser. You're wise to double check on this.

I use cotton balls and let them dry uncovered with much better results than using q-tips. No need for a baggie. You should easily be able to smell the fragrance just by waving it under your nose once it's dried.

Unless you are using a textured paper, if your picture quality is poor, I doubt changing papers is going to help the problem. Are your pictures pixilated? My guess is the resolution of your pictures is too long to create a clear picture. Things can often look great on your monitor, but when you print they will look pixilated (jagged or blurry) if the resolution is to low. Using an inket on glossy paper can create it's own problems, namely smudging, especially if you print on both sides.

Mentioning something to the store owner might open up a can of worms that you will wish would have been kept shut. Sometimes a "good deed" has the potential to backfire. You could find you and your products booted out of the store. The store owner might see you as some kind of whistle blower that is likely to cause trouble for her and her tenant, so the easiest thing to do is get rid of you. Once you open your mouth, it might cause her to become educated and start asking you about your own products, like what kind of insurance you carry, and whether you have your products tested for bacteria, yeast, and mold. I personally wouldn't say anything to anyone, but if you really feel the need to do something, why not contact the tenant directly?

I disagree that 2 weeks is too long to wait--especially, if you tell them up front that's how long it takes. She is a small, independent business owner, not a huge corporation that has vast quantities of inventory sitting in warehouses. In retail it is not unusual to wait for months for certain merchandise to be delivered--and that is for ready made goods, not specialized, custom orders. One supplier at a particular trade show regularly takes orders for merchandise and states that the merchandise will not be in for 2 MONTHS because it gets shipped from China and has to go through Customs. I've had to wait 2 weeks to get Yankees shipped, and you know they don't make them as they go. When you know the delivery time up front, you can deal with it. But if you don't, then you're likely to search for alternatives, just as her customer did. The candle market is over saturated with options. If you can't deliver there will always be another person who can. The key is communication. Who knows, maybe that customer had bare shelves and needed something quickly for a big sale or something. I still wouldn't give up on him just yet.

A couple of suggestions came to mind when I read about your situation. In the future if you could provide specific timeframes involved in creating custom samples or custom orders it should eliminate the worry customers have about where their order is, and therefore unnecessary emails and phone calls about its status. People who don't make candles have no idea what amount of time or testing is involved. Tell them right up front, allow x amount of days for me to receive the materials I am special ordering just for you, plus x amount of days required for testing, and pending results, delivery should be on such and such date. Also, get orders in writing. Even if it's just a sample, which doesn't have to be free of charge. List the specifics involved. If you are required to purchase a new mold, wax, container, oils--anything used in the project list it. If you are creating a custom item then you should be entitled to fees for your time and material. Many places charge for samples, even if they are stock items. As others have said, collecting money up front is always your best option. Things happen for a reason, and this was just a bump in the road to help you get you going in the right direction. You've learned from it and now you'll be much better prepared in the future to deal with situations that will leave you and your customers happy. One last thing, as a way to possibly salvage the situation, you might consider sending that man a sample to show him what he's missing out on and ask if he would consider going ahead with the order now that testing is out of the way.

Maybe it's the lighting. Maybe it's your camera.

Tony's Fragrance Oils has Pumpkin Spice and Sweet Cinnamon Pumpkin that both smell very nice in my opinion, and are also skin safe.

With oatmeal soap, I tend to keep fragrance in the food family just because of the natural aroma of the oats that goes along with it that's kind of hard to camouflage. I've used Maple Sugar FO or Cinnamon FO, or a combination of both with good results. I haven't tried it yet, but apple might be a good option.

I think some people use cocoa rather than cinnamon.

Without knowing what your labels look like, would it be possible to print a smaller label to cover the wrong information with the right information? For example, if you used a 2x4 label, could you use a 2x2 or 1x2 to cover the boo-boo? Could you afford to offer them a discount if they took them "as-is?"

Lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my! The "oh my" was swiped, for your tagline, so what's to keep anyone else from doing likewise?

You won't find much in the way of black business cards because ink won't show up on them unless you go with "thermo" printing (the raised printing you usually see on most business cards). The exception is if you use a matte white cardstock, and do a bleed with black ink for the background and use pink ink for the text. They can easily do this digitally, like Vista Print does, or your local print shop can run them on a press, but it will probably be kind of expensive. Even Kinko's can take your art, print it, and cut them down to business card size for you.

Jm4666, your advice to try printing from the opposite end is very valid. I also encountered problems with Online labels not lining up. I measured and found that the top and bottom margins on the sheet were off by a fraction, which made all the difference in the world when I fed them through the other end first.

It would also be a good idea if you could find out if there would be any competing events on the day you plan to have yours. I learned it is wise to find out as much as you can by checking out event listings such as craftlister.com to see if there are events nearby that could take away from your event.