Pricing homemade candles to sell at a craft show?
Categories: Candle Making Home Business, Kids Candle Making Projects
Creating, Making, Pricing and Selling your homemade candles.
Selling candles is a lovely hobby or business to be involved with – it is arty, full of color and candle fragrances and the whole feeling is one of joy and relaxation.
What more could you ask for? You want to make some money – Yes?
Pricing your candles and in fact anything that you make at home to sell is a matter of hitting the right price point.
First and foremost
If you are going to set up a homebased business selling candles then do yourself a favor and make sure that the quality of your product is extra good. If you do not have a good quality you are going to have to reduce the price to make them sell and then if you work it out you will be hardly making any money for the time that you have put into the business. So all up, it is better to perfect your skills before you start selling.
Pricing your homemade candles to sell
Pricing is not a ‘maybe this price or maybe that price’ sort of thing (although that would be much easier) but you need to carefully calculate the price of your product and here is what needs to be taken into consideration.
Manufacturing cost
- the cost of the materials – wax, color, scent, wick,
- cost of production – gas, or electricity, paper towels, gloves,
- cost of replacing items – molds, pots, jugs, glue gun, etc
- allow a little for overheads of electricity, gas, petrol etc.
- most importantly work out how long it takes to make one candle – if it takes an hour to make a batch of12 then each candle would have taken 5 minutes – and divide that into how much you want to make an hour
If you list these costs down the side of a spread sheet then list each candle across the top you will be able to allocate your costs accordingly for each candle design and therefore come up with a price point.
It is often difficult to price your products until you have been in business for a while and you know how many items of a particular product you are going to sell and what your average week sales will be because you may need to adjust your very popular items up a little and reduce your not so strong selling items down a little. This is pricing to demand.
Calculating the retail price
At this point you need to add in extra costs so that you can come up with a retail price. This is where it is a little difficult initially because you can only work on estimated expenses in some cases. You can price your packaging, stall costs and the like, but costs like petrol, telephone and advertising are costs will continually fluctuate. But you can adjust your prices as you go if necessary.
- cost of marketing – petrol, vehicle expenses, telephone, advertising, packaging, labels, raffia, web costs, stall costs, display costs and anything else you may use for the business
- allow a small amount to recoup some of your set up costs
Remember it is easier to bring prices down rather than take them up.
Once you have decided on a price, do your homework and look around the area and find out how your price compares. You may need to adjust it a little to be competitive.
Look at these amazing candles in ‘Hot Wax’ and read about how to make your price your friend:
- Hot Wax: 13 Cool Candles To Light Your Fire (weburbanist.com)
- Learn to Love Your Price (frontofficebox.com)
