Are you looking for the best tips and strategies to sell candles wholesale? If YES, here are 10 tips and strategies to sell candles wholesale. If you are into the manufacturing of candles or you are a candle distributor or merchant, then your major concern with the business will be how to get your candle across to retailers or heavy users who usually buy the product at wholesale prices.
The candle wholesale business is indeed a thriving business because candles are one of those consumer products that never go out of style — they make a good gift, are a unique addition to every sort of home décor, and provide a matchless ambiance. This can explain why the global scented candles market size was estimated at USD 533.5 million in 2020 and is expected to reach USD 543.6 million. According to reports, the growth of the market is induced by a rise in the number of hotels, restaurants, wellness facilities, and religious institutions.
Having said that, here are 10 tips and strategies on how to sell candles wholesale.
Tips and Strategies to Sell Candles Wholesale
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Understudy a Successful Wholesale Candle Business of Your Choice
The first step you should take if you want to start a candle wholesale business is to understudy successful candle wholesale businesses. There are several candle wholesale businesses you can understudy. The fact that you have internet access means that you have unlimited access to understudy any candle wholesale business of your choice.
Understudying a candle wholesale business will help you avoid some mistakes you may likely make when launching your own business. It will expose you to the ins and outs of running the business. You will be able to know how profitable the business is before you get started.
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Send Free Samples of Your Candles to Influencers
If indeed you want to break into a new market as a wholesale distributor, then you have to work with influencers in your target market location. Working with social media influencers is no doubt, one of the successful strategies you can use if you want to start selling candles wholesale. Interestingly, social media platforms are packed with influential bloggers, journalists, entrepreneurs, and vloggers from a wide range of industries and niches. You just need to locate the right ones that will suit your candle wholesale business.
Trust me, if you work with the right influencer, you will experience a spike in traffic and social media followers and this will increase the acceptance of your candles.
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Leverage on Affiliate Marketing
When it comes to selling products these days, trust me, it can be pretty difficult trying to distribute your products on a wholesale level alone which is why you must look for platforms to leverage to get your products to more retailers and consumers. Hence the need for affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is when you let other people market your products and send you website traffic. In return, you pay them a percentage of any sales that originate from their efforts. Track their marketing efforts by providing a unique hyperlink or coupon code.
For example, a website owner may post your affiliate link for your candles on their website. If one of his website visitors clicks the link and then buys the candles wholesale, you will have made a sale, and as an affiliate, the website owner will be entitled to a percentage of that sale. The great thing about this selling strategy is that you only pay if you make a sale.
Please note that the success of an affiliate marketing strategy depends heavily on the types of products that is, the brand of candles you sell and the commission percentage you reward affiliate partners.
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Join the Right Distribution Network
Another important tip you need when it comes to selling candles wholesale is to join the right distribution network. With the right distribution network, you can easily get guidance and support. When you launch a candle wholesale business, people in your distribution network will most likely give you the platform to distribute your candles to their already existing market, especially if they are retailers.
The truth is that some independent wholesale distributors can try distributing your product for you especially if they know that there is an existing market for your products and if they will get a good commission from you.
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Provide as Many Payment Options as Possible
Another very important strategy you must leverage if you want to start selling candles is to make sure you provide as many payment options as possible. This will make it easy for you to accommodate different customers with different payment preferences.
Today, retailers and even online buyers have more payment choices than ever before in terms of how they pay for goods and services, and not everyone prefers to use American Express. By offering more payment options, including newer services that are becoming increasingly popular on mobile, you are making it easier for prospects to pay when they order your candles. Sure, it can be a hassle to optimize your site and checkout process to include all these options, but doing so is a great way to increase the online wholesale of your candles, particularly if your site has strong mobile traffic.
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Invest in Quality Product Images
Another strategy and tip you need, if you want to start selling candles wholesale, is to make sure you invest in quality product images – the picture of your candles must be appealing and the story behind it must be compelling. The truth is that there is strong evidence that well-presented products in terms of pictures always attract more buyers. Given how important appearance is in the way we perceive things (including other people), it goes a long way to show that investing in quality product photography will have a similar effect on visitors to your website or brick-and-mortar shop.
Please note that irrespective of what you sell, include high-quality images of your products – no tiny thumbnails or poorly lit shots taken in your stock room. Also, be sure to include a wide range of images. It might seem overkill to include shots of your products from every conceivable angle, but try it out.
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Automate Your Orders
Another very important strategy you should employ if you want to start selling candles wholesale is to stop writing and managing orders manually; you should automate your orders.
A recent survey conducted as regards wholesale business shows that order writing inefficiencies were cited as the number one order writing challenge among wholesale distributors. Too many wholesale distributors are still taking orders down on antiquated clipboards and paper order forms. Some have taken a half-step towards using technology with PDF order forms and Excel spreadsheets, but these methods are equally (if not more) cumbersome than paper.
With the advent of mobile technology in our lives today, many successful wholesale distribution businesses are taking advantage of mobile order writing technology, giving sales reps access to customer information, product catalogs, and an order writing interface right on their smartphone or tablet.
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Offer Top-Notch Customer Services
Another important tip and strategy you need, if you want to start selling candles wholesale, is to offer top-notch customer services. Offering top-notch customer service will help you minimize customer friction which is the number one factor in determining whether you are successful in selling or distributing your product.
Please make sure you do everything you can to ensure your customers get the best experience possible beginning with the information they need in a bid to place an order, like robust product description with the right positioning, pictures, video to customer testimonials and reviews, to details on taxes, shipping, and delivery.
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Empower and Equip Your Distributors
If you are into wholesaling candles, then you must make sure you hire the right distributors. You should not just hire distributors and send them into the field to start selling; you must make sure you train them. Forward-thinking wholesalers, manufacturers, and distributors know that to make sales in this day and age, sales reps need to add value to their sales conversations, not just go through the motions of writing down a reorder.
So, in essence, you should work towards empowering and equipping your distributors with key information, like customer order history, most ordered items, and stock levels for each product.
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Be Prompt With Your Order Fulfillment
A recent survey conducted, shows that 68 percent of respondents can get orders from the field to the back office in less than 24 hours. 30 percent could do it in less than one hour. When it came to shipping, 47 percent of respondents reported that orders were shipped within 24 hours, setting a clear benchmark for the rest of the industry to follow.
So, as a wholesaler of candles, for you to succeed, you must digitize the order writing and submission process to increase efficiency. For example, if you are distributing your candles through multiple channels, like field sales and a B2B eCommerce portal, you should make sure you consolidate those orders to achieve faster order fulfillment.
In Conclusion;
In as much as candle wholesale businesses are profitable, it is possible to start this type of business and struggle to make profits if due diligence was not carried out before launching the business. So, what you need to do before launching your own business is to carry out a feasibility study cum market survey.
Part of what you should look out for is to know if people who live in your community are willing to buy your products. The truth is that if you set up a candle wholesale business in a location where people hardly make use of candles, you are likely going to struggle to make headway in the business.