What it costs to start

Cheap to try and expensive to do properly, with the gap in a place people do not expect.

Equipment is modest

A melting pot or double boiler, a pouring pitcher, a thermometer, two scales, wick bars, a heat gun.

All of it is a modest outlay, and a first batch can be made for very little.

Materials are not the cost

Wax is cheap by weight. Fragrance is expensive by weight and used at under ten percent.

Together they are usually less than the vessel and lid, which is the thing to internalize: you are buying containers and putting wax in them.

Testing costs candles

This is the line nobody budgets. Three wick candidates per fragrance per vessel, each a full candle that gets burned to nothing.

A six-fragrance range in two sizes is thirty-six test candles minimum, and in practice more, because a failed test means another round.

Those candles cost materials, vessels, wicks and days of attention, and none of them is sold.

The number that surprises people

The vessel minimum order. Packaging suppliers deal in cases and pallets, and a good unit price on vessels means committing to a vessel before your range is settled.

Add lids, labels with their own minimum, and cartons, and the packaging commitment is the real capital requirement in this business.

Which argues for buying small and badly priced until the range has proved itself, and taking the volume discount only on the vessel you are certain about.

References