Kate who started working with us at the practice recently makes her own candles and sells them.
We had a fascinating and insightful conversation in the kitchen the other day about selling candles (which obviously is the same as selling everything else).
Kate buys a sh*t ton of candle wax from somewhere in bulk and then makes the candles herself, adding scent and final touches and sells them in different places including online and at craft fairs.
And so, I asked her “how do you sell a candle?”.
This would become an exercise in a high level MBA course, in fact, it’s likely to be an end of semester project to write up.
How do you sell a candle on Etsy when everyone else sells a candle on Etsy, how are you differentiating your candles and setting yourself aside?
What’s your unique selling proposition (USP), what’s your cost base?, what’s your margin?, who are you trying to reach and who are you trying to serve?
How do you sell it at a craft fair and why’s that different to Etsy and how does your business deal with the problem that people don’t buy candles when the sun is shining.
Before you go into candle making, ask yourself ‘why candle making?’.
Before you go into candle making ask yourself if there’s any other aspect of candle making which can allow you to make something else which you can also sell for effectively no more or very little extra infrastructure and cost.
If you want to make candles for fun and sell them for free, that’s a hobby, not a candle business.
If you want to make your candles as a hobby, do that. If you want to make candles as a business, do that. If you want to make your hobby into a business, be careful because your hobby will become a business and you might love it less as a business than you did as a hobby.
It’s a little bit like the Wolf of Wall Street ‘sell me this pen’.
Maybe we should teach you to be better sales people or maybe we should teach you to make better products or maybe we should teach you to understand the difference between better products and better sales people.
Just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you can sell it and just because you can sell something doesn’t mean it’s good.
Would you like to buy this candle?
Blog Post Number - 2953
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