How to sell your wax melts and candles wholesale

You've spent a lot of time and effort creating your candles and wax melts, and you're selling to lots of customers. Now you're looking to take your business to the next level and sell wholesale into shops.

This is a very exciting time, but it can be very confusing. It's important not to rush into it, you need to plan, look professional and ensure you protect your brand.

Pricing your wax melts and candles for wholesale

The unwritten rule is your wholesale cost is 50% of your retail cost, and is also double your production cost.

So if your wax melt costs £1 to make, you sell this wholesale for £2 and it retails for £4. This gives you and the retailer plenty of margin.

However, this is the minimum guideline, so you'll want to increase this as much as you can. It really depends on your brand and pricing structure.

Retail price should be AT LEAST 4x your production cost, your wholesale price should be AT LEAST 2x your productions cost.

You need good margin in your products at retail price in order to offer a wholesale service. It allows you to make a profit so you can reinvest into your business on marketing and growth.

Margin is everything.

Prepare a document detailing your terms and products

In order to be prepared when speaking with potential wholesale customers, you would ideally have prepared a document which details your full terms and list of candles and wax melts with their available scents.

This is a document you can prepare just once and use for all wholesale customers, so it's important to spend time developing it to ensure you are fully satisfied that it covers everything.

Things you should include are:

• Your minimum order value, if you have one.
• Minimum order quantity per product/scent, if you have one.
• Your shipping costs and delivery times.
• A free shipping cut-off if you have one (e.g free on orders over £150 ex VAT). This is a good idea as delivery fees just eat into the margin your customers will make, so they will look to meet this where possible.
• Your pricing terms. Are you happy for the customer to sell your products at a discounted rate, or do you want them to speak with you before doing this?
• A list of all your wax melts and candles, available scents and prices.

This will look professional and will protect your brand.

Payment terms

If you are just starting in wholesale then you want to insist on payment upfront at all times. You need cashflow and profit, especially in the early days and the best way to do this is to get payment upfront.

When you've established a working relationship and are 4 or 5 orders down the line then you can start discussing credit and other favourable terms for the retailer, such as:

• 30 day credit, where you ship the good to the customer and they pay you in full after 30 days.
• Sale or return, you ship the products to the customer, then after an agreed period of time they can return and products they haven't sold either for a refund or to be exchanged for other products.

These tips will help you start your wax melts and candles wholesale business with a good solid service which protects your brand and ensures you're profitable.

Thank you all for reading, if you have any questions please leave a comment and I'll get back to you asap.