We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Janine Hipple a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Janine, appreciate you joining us today. How do you feel about asking friends and family to support your business? What’s appropriate, what’s not? Where do you draw the line?

I feel like this can be a sensitive topic when having a business that solely profits from direct sales. If customers are not buying your products, then essentially you are not making money. In my opinion, there is nothing more uncomfortable than asking people for money even if you are providing them with a service or product, especially with the economy in the state that it is in. For most people, candles are a luxury and not a necessity so spending money on a candle this week could result in not having enough money for groceries or gas next week. However, I have been extremely lucky to have such a supportive family. Not only do they buy my products, but they also help find events for me to vendor, share my posts on social media, recommend me to their friends, show up to the events and offer to help set up and break down my tables, and so much more. The very first craft fair that I attended, my dad showed up with his truck to help transport all of my supplies, totes, and tables and stayed at the event for the full 8 hours. Throughout the day, I had immediate and extended family show up as well as many coworkers and friends that I had in high school that I had not seen in years. I could not believe how many people were in my corner. Not every event is like that, people don’t need candles every week so I totally understand, but there is ATLEAST one family member or friend who shows up to my events to show their support. Both my mom and dad tell me all the time how proud of me they are which is always great to hear. I am in several different groups for candle makers on Facebook and there are many posts from others about how they don’t receive the support that they thought they would from family members and friends. In retrospect, there definitely are friends that I thought would have supported me through this journey that have been nowhere to be found, not to listen to me vent or talk, they don’t ask how things are going, nothing. I think my advice on this would be to just keep your expectations low when starting out. This may make me sound negative but if you keep your expectations of family and friends low then you won’t be disappointed if they don’t support you in the ways that you want them to. They may feel like they are supporting you in their own way. Something else that is difficult for me with having family and friends supporting me is I always feel like I should be giving them a discount because they are family and friends. This can get tricky because I already price my products as low as I possibly can so giving discounts means that I either don’t make money or I am not making enough money to cover the time that I spent making my candles and other products. My thoughts are just all over the place so one last thing I want to add is that your products or your business may not be for everyone. You can’t look to just family and friends for support. Find your niche and your clients/customers will follow. They will be the support you need when your family and friends can’t.

Janine, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Janine and I am the owner of Big Wick Energy Candles LLC located in Bucks County, Pennsylvania (right outside of Philadelphia). I started Big Wick Energy Candles almost 2 years ago in my kitchen. I have always been very crafty and I have self-diagnosed “crafting-ADHD,” which means I get into a craft/project, buy all the supplies, do it for a short time, get bored of it and move on to the next thing that piques my interest. I have always been a “candle girly,” but to be completely transparent, I decided to get into candle making while browsing through Amazon looking for candles to light in case I lost power during a storm we were predicted to get. While scrolling through the lists of very plain, unscented pillar candles, I thought, “I could make these myself.” Every crafter’s famous last words (haha). Little did I know, there is a lot more that goes into candle making than just pouring some wax. Candle making is literally a science and there are many different types of candles to make. You need to decide on a type of wax, what type of wicks you want to use, what type of jar or vessel or molds if you decide on pillar candles, fragrances, and so much more. And don’t even get me started on the different candle suppliers, there are so many great candle supply companies to choose from! Then you need to test each and every candle to make sure you have the right size and type of wick that will work well with the wax, fragrances, and vessels you decide to use. But I fell in love with candle making after my first candle (even though it was AWFUL and barely stayed lit haha.)

This small little project that I started just for myself had become very overwhelming very quickly. My first ten or more candles were TERRIBLE! But that is part of the learning process. I joined several different groups on Facebook specifically for candle makers and have learned many different techniques, tips, and tricks that I would have never known otherwise. If you are a crafter of any sort, I highly suggest looking for groups on Facebook. Even if you don’t need advice, these groups are great for connecting with other like-minded people. Once I started producing quality candles, I started giving some to family members and coworkers to test. I started receiving great feedback on the products I was producing so my boyfriend had suggested that I look into selling my candles locally. To me, the business aspect has been more difficult to learn than the actual craft itself. So, what started as just a little “hobby” quickly turned into an all-consuming small business. I was working at an urgent care facility when I started my small business but I was laid off a few months ago due to down-sizing and site closures and decided to put more focus and attention into my business while looking for another full-time job. Looking back, I don’t know how I managed both jobs.

TikTok has made many different crafts popular and candle making is not immune. There are so many different and unique candle makers out there and I have come across many different great chandlers at craft markets. I have yet to run into a candle maker who is not super nice and supportive though. One of my good craft fair buddies also makes candles herself and we vend several of the same events together (quick shout out to Bright Candle.) Needless to say, it can be very difficult to make a name for yourself in a market that is over saturated. I think that having a “clever” business name that people will remember helps me to stand out as well as producing quality products. If I am not 100% in love with a candle regardless of how much time and money is spent on said candle, I will not sell it. I think what also sets me apart from other candle companies is offering more than just candles. I have extended my line to include soy wax melts, room sprays, and car freshies/diffusers. Right now, the car freshies are my biggest seller since the product itself has gone viral on TikTok. I also dabble a little in making my own candle vessels out of cement/concrete. The vessels turn out beautifully, but it takes a lot of time and effort to make them, therefore I have to price them a little higher. Sometimes, there just isn’t the right market for these higher priced items and that’s okay. You have to know your audience to gauge if your product will be successful, so while I enjoy making them, I don’t make them as often as I would like right now. I also like to mix some of my fragrance oils to make specialty blends that you wouldn’t necessarily find somewhere else, and sometimes I like to give them funny, unique, or quirky names to make people laugh. I also offer custom candles which tends to be a big hit for gifts, especially for birthdays, weddings, or holidays.

I am so proud of how far I have come in the short time I have been on this journey. I have made so many good friends within the crafting community and have received so much support. One of the goals I had set for myself when I first started was being able to offer my candles as a fundraiser for schools/sports teams. This past Winter 2023, I was able to make that dream a reality. My daughter plays 12U travel softball with Philadelphia Spirit and they will be heading to Nationals in Myrtle Beach, SC in July of 2024. I reached out to the coaches with the fundraiser idea, and they were nothing but supportive of a holiday candle fundraiser. It was slightly hectic at times, especially being around the holidays, but oh so rewarding handing off boxes and boxes of candles to be distributed. The team had sold somewhere around 65 candles I believe. It had exceeded my expectations by so much. And knowing that I helped alleviate some of the cost to the parents of the players is just an indescribable feeling. I am already looking forward to doing it again next year!

One of the biggest goals I would like to achieve is to be profitable enough to donate a portion of my sales to certain causes depending on the month. For example, July is Cleft and Craniofacial Awareness and Prevention month. My niece, Kennedy, was born with a cleft lip and cleft palate and has undergone several major surgeries to have them both repaired. I would love to be able to be able to be successful enough to donate a portion of proceeds to this specific cause during the month of July. There is also not a lot of funding for childhood cancer, so again, for the month of September (Pediatric Cancer Awareness Month) a portion of sales would be donated to that cause. The same would go for Breast Cancer Awareness in October, and so on. I feel like I am headed in the right direction in building my business and customer base to make this dream a reality. Why can’t I do this right now, you ask? My products are currently priced as low as possible to cover the cost of goods and the time it takes me to make said products. Inflation has its reach into the candle supply industry as well and the cost of wax is always fluctuating so I need to leave a little wiggle room in my price points for when wax is more costly. However, I think about it all the time and can’t wait to be able to make these donations!

Most of my business is conducted through direct sales, aka face to face at markets. I try and apply to as many vendor events, craft fairs/shows, food truck festivals as possible without running myself into the ground. Some of these events are hard to get into as I feel like most of them are “first come first serve” or they offer the vendor spaces to those crafters who have been with them longer. It gets a little easier once you get into an event or are on their vendor lists. There are several shows that I would love to be a vendor at but have been wait listed season after season. It can be discouraging but you just need to learn to push through and keep trying. I do have a website but I’m not the best Millennial and I have a hard time updating my website as frequently as it should be done. I also have an Instagram and FB account but I don’t generate many sales through either of them. Again, bad Millennial, but I definitely don’t post as much as I probably should. I’ve always been more of the quiet “Like Button” person so it is hard for me to step out of my comfort zone and post multiple times a day. This past winter, I last minute posted some of my Christmas/Holiday candles and products that I had left on Facebook Marketplace and actually received quite a bit of interest and sales! And of course once the car freshies went viral on TikTok Shop, I started posting some of mine and have made many sales there as well. In fact, this past weekend I had 5 sales in one day! So if you are just starting out your business, think outside of the box in terms of sales. And if you are like me and don’t post on social media often, set reminders to yourself so you will or maybe ask a friend or family member to help you post. My products are not available in any stores (yet) but that would be the ultimate goal.

Before Big Wick Energy, I never, EVER would have thought I could be a small business owner. This has been a wonderful opportunity for me, and I can’t believe how much progress I have made in such a short amount of time. If you are just starting out, don’t give up. There have been so many times where I wanted to throw in the towel but don’t give up on your hard work. You are worth it and you can make it happen!

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

This story is a little touchy for me as it is still relatively fresh, but I think it might be helpful for other people.

I finally decided to start my business in June of 2022. I had a list of several names but finally decided that Big Wick Energy Candles was the perfect fit for me. I did some research, and while there were a couple of Big Wick Energy’s in other states, there were none in Pennsylvania. So, I filed my LLC with the state of Pennsylvania and was approved. I started building up my stock and applying for markets. I had attended about 5 or 6 by December 2022. I felt good about my business and felt that I was building a great customer base. Things were not only looking good, but things just felt good.

On my way home from work one night in early December 2022, my dad had texted me. It was a screen shot that another woman had posted saying she was starting her own new candle company called Big Wick Energy Candles and she was located in Philadelphia. My heart sunk. I felt completely defeated. I didn’t know what I could do in this instance and all the advice on Google was very contradicting. At the time, this person was not operating with an LLC through the state of PA, so I did have that working for me. Other information that I was reading said that since I was in commerce longer, I would have rights to the name as it is confusing to customers. Other information said that without a Trademark, I had no legal grounds to stand on. Since my options were looking bleak without a Trademark, I decided to spend the money to file for my Trademark but otherwise, try let it go for a little bit and hope that this person would either decide not to continue to pursue her small business or would realize that there was someone within MILES of her with the same business name that had been operating longer than her.

That hope was very short lived when a few months later I had received an email from someone that I did not know, calling me by this woman’s name, asking to place an order. A few days later, another email looking for this person. The same thing had started happening on social media, more specifically on Instagram. Clearly having 2 businesses with the same name selling almost the same products was confusing for her customer base so it was probably confusing my customer base as well. I had reached out to this person via Instagram but did not hear back. A short while later, her LLC was approved in PA for “Big Wick Energy” without the word candles. I could not believe that the state of Pennsylvania thought it would be okay to approve an LLC with the exact same name minus ONE WORD. It was the most frustrated I think I have ever been. And yet, there was still nothing I could do until the Trademark was approved. If you don’t know, Trademark approval takes FOREVER.

While doing my “investigating,” I had seen that this woman posted she would be vending at an event in September 2023 that was the same day and location as me. I reached out to the person running the event to make sure that they weren’t confused. She basically assured me that there was no confusion, and I was the Big Wick Energy that would be at the event. A few days before the event, the coordinator sent out a map of vendor both spots and low and behold, there were 2 booths, both Big Wick Energy/Candles. This was almost the final straw for me. I was so defeated, deflated. That was it for me. I was not going to go to the event (because in my mind, how weird and uncomfortable is that, especially when she ignored my DM.) I was going to just let my business go and be done with it. In my mind, I tried and failed. My boyfriend was very supportive of my decision. He wasn’t going to force me to go and seemed to understand how I felt. However, he did end his little supportive speech saying something along the lines of “You can’t let her win.” That was the little push that I needed. I wasn’t giving up the fight. I worked too hard, sacrificed too much to just “let her win.” I was going to the event and I was going to hold my head high and push through. So the next morning, I loaded up my car and headed to the event. And sure enough it was awkward AF, at least for me. There were several people commenting about how they “saw my other booth in the other aisle.” My favorite question was, “Oh is this an MLM company because I saw another booth a few lanes over.” I had to repeat myself and my story time and time again so people would understand that we weren’t the same company and a brief description of the ordeal. I had received so much love and support from the customers that day. Someone had also given me a business card of a local business law attorney once my trademark was approved. It truly helped my deteriorating mental state from the night before.

My Trademark was finally approved in November 2023. Almost 11 months from the time I filed. This story is still on-going and there hasn’t been a resolution yet, but I wanted to share this with new small business owners or people who are deciding to start a small business. Please do your research. If this woman had done a simple social media search, she could have come across my business pages and decided to avoid the aggravation and headache. Maybe she did and just decided to use the name anyway, I don’t really know, but if that’s the case, don’t do that to someone else. I don’t care how much you love the name of your business. If someone is already using it, especially in your state, only miles away from where you are, vending at the same events, just pick something else. It’s not fair for the person who has already been in commerce and building their customer base. The “September Event” and customer confusion was also happening while I was about to be laid off from my full-time urgent care job. I was experiencing an overwhelming amount of stress, anxiety, and helplessness, especially because there was nothing I could do while waiting for my Trademark to get approved. Please don’t make another person feel the way that I had to feel.

I would also like to add if you are feeling stress or anxiety regarding anything in your business (not just about someone taking your business’s name) DO NOT GIVE UP. There will always be struggles and tough times, but they don’t last forever. If you can, fight through the battle because it will be so worth it in the end. I do take mental health very seriously so if you ever need to talk about these stressors or vent about the difficulties of being a small business owner, you can always reach out to me.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

I briefly mentioned this earlier, but I do make all of my candles, room sprays, car freshies, wax melts, and concrete vessels. My first teachers were YouTube videos. I can’t even count how many videos I watched before starting what I thought would just be a hobby. Then I found candle making groups on Facebook. That was life changing for me and I highly suggest looking for Facebook groups for your specific craft. There are so many supportive and helpful people in these groups. They will give you advice, constructive criticism, tips/tricks, everything! Also, many of the YouTubers I was learning from ended up being in these groups! It was really cool to have them comment on my posts or respond back to me with specific advice.

When I first started my journey, I was buying my candle supplies from Amazon and CandleWic, a local candle supply company. While CandleWic is wonderful and I still buy a good bit of supplies through them, the Facebook Candle Community opened my eyes to other supply companies I probably wouldn’t have used otherwise. I currently buy my fragrance oils from several different reputable suppliers including CandleWic in Doylestown, PA and Candles and Supplies located in Quakertown, Pa. I also order fragrance oils from Midwest Fragrance Company, The Flaming Candle, and Virginia Candle Supply. I only order my wax through CandleWic or Candles and Supplies to save on high shipping costs as I can just drive to pick up the wax orders.

Learning how to make candles can be very time consuming. Once you the kind of wax you prefer to use, you then need to test each and every fragrance oil and wick you want to use. You also can’t just pour fragrance oil in until your heart desires. Fragrance oils must be weighed out by percentage of wax you are using. Some waxes only hold 6% fragrance, some 10%. From there, you need to decide how much fragrance oil you think works best for your desired outcome. Not every candle needs 10% of fragrance oil and putting 10% fragrance load isn’t always going to make the candle scent stronger. Wicks also come in different sizes and the size you need depends on the diameter of the jar/vessel you plan on using. Most candle supply websites have sections with information regarding different which type of wicks work best with certain waxes and what size wicks to try with certain jar diameters, but it is ultimately up to you to make sure that your wick is the perfect size. It is a lot of trial and error, and in the beginning its more error than anything else.

Making my own concrete vessels has been the most difficult for me. I watched many YouTube videos and again, joined Concrete Vessel specific Facebook groups. The process to make these vessels is more time consuming. Once you find the correct ratio of cement mixture to water for the specific molds you are using, the vessel then has to solidify for several days. I let mine sit in the mold for 2-4 days, then I take them out of the molds and let them sit for another 3-5 days before sealing them with EarthSafe cement sealer. After sealing, the vessel needs to set again for several days. Wax, wick, and fragrance testing then follows. And the process starts again.

Making wax melts, car freshies and rooms sprays has been the easiest for me. I have an “almost” teenager so always having a room spray to test in her room has be the ultimate parent hack (parents of teenagers understand). For me, there is also less anxiety in letting other people test my room sprays and car freshies since they are not being burned like a traditional candle. For example, shortly after releasing my room spray line, I had come across another recipe to help make the room sprays clearer and not cloudy. I made 3 different scented room sprays and took them into work to be tested in the employee bathroom.

I’ve said this before but candle making is truly a science. It’s fun experimenting and oh so rewarding once you find the perfect combinations for your desired result.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.BigWickEnergyCandles.org
• Instagram: instagram.com/BigWickEnergy_Candles
• Facebook: facebook.com/BigWickEnergyCandlesLLC
• Other: TikTok username: BigWickEnergy_Candles