you generally only make the cost of the materials back and can't charge much for the labour. Depending on your market about all you can do is pitch the candles as a quality / premium product, A quicker way to make sale candles is to roll them from sheets.
Bought 10 sheets of 9 colours from KBS & Thorne, which worked out at £2.07 for a full sheet candle or £1.03 a half sheet, inc. wick, VAT & delivery. KBS sheets were National, Thorne Lang, so I trimmed the Langs and priced the 20 pencil candles at £1 each.
Took two minutes to roll: cut the wick, blow the heat gun over the wax, eat cake, roll candle, seal the roll with gun, get the roll of wick back from keen kitten, trim wick, drink tea.
Took them to two markets: full sheets @ £5.50 and halves @ £3.50; candle customers were given a strong paper bag (20p) and 12.5% goes to the market. A few were sold for cash which I didn't record, about five came home and one was broken, but by card I took £410 against an outlay of £190. Probably a fiver on bags max, less market money of £51 leaves me at least £164 ahead.
If a 30/30/30 split applied (materials/production/profit) then the large were under-priced and the small over-priced. Main thing is that a row of twenty multi-coloured candles on the front of a stall can be seen forty feet away, and once the customer is there and the card is out, well,
I'll have a Frankincense soap, and two large Dagenham jars, please, and I'll try a propolis for Mary, she's always talking about it.
May have lost a few numbers in those calculations, and my efficient beekeeper sidekick did one market (another 10%, but she barters bees for hours) so I stood for only one of the 4.5-hour events and spent a few hours making and packing candles - unboxing, setting up, clearing up, cutting, chasing kittens, making tea - but still, not a bad return.
