CANDLE MAKING volume 2

Give an outlet to your creative faculties by making beautiful candles at home and turn it into a profitable business by opening a home made candle store. Making candles at home is very very easy if you have free time available and you can make use of your skills.

It can lead to a profitable business and the trends are changing now and people now prefer giving gifts that touch the heart with their beautiful designs and heart touching fragrances.

You don’t even need lots of equipment to start a home made candle store. With only the basic things like wax, burner and wicks, you can start candle making at home, and as you make progress, you can buy advanced equipment and molds for better and beautiful products.

This article will help you decide the best strategy for a good business and how to turn it into a successful enterprise.

With their distinguished and sweet fragrances, candles, these days, are considered as one of the easiest ways to express one’s emotions. So, if you know how to make candles and have a creative side to your nature, its time to start a home made candle store and establish a business of your own.

Things to consider before starting
Starting a business not only requires a certain amount of capital, it also requires careful planning and preparation. Planning and preparing before actually starting a business are important as they provide an insight into what is needed to establish and run a successful business. While a home made candle store business does not require a big capital and heavy investment, it needs some planning and consideration on how to successfully launch it.

Anyone who enjoys candle making and knows the art of molding wax into different shapes and sizes with beautiful fragrances can get into this business. However, there are some important things to be considered before you start a home made candle store. Just making great smelling and beautiful looking candles at home is not the only thing important to start a candle store.

Some important things to be considered before home made candle making is turned into a full fledged candle store business are:

• Make sure your candles are unique and offer that distinctive touch which no other home made candle manufacturer offers. This will be one thing that will attract more customers as there is bound to be one home made candle shop in every area.

•Candle making process is not a complicated one, but it requires time and attention to detail for safety reasons as well as product quality. Thus, you need to really focus on both the candle making as well as the quality control aspect when starting this business. You cannot expect to churn out the low quality or substandard products and expect them to sell like hot cakes.

•Decorate your candles well enough to make them look good and offer them as a gift pack. People love buying home made candles that not only look and smell good but are also very presentable as gifts.

•Candle making is a highly versatile craft; it encompasses unlimited opportunities for creativity. Candles can be dipped, moulded, rolled, fused, layered, sculptured or experimented with any combination of processes from dyeing to paint or tinted. They can be scented or can have embedded materials such as beads or shells, coated or whipped to make them more beautiful and attractive for sale.

•You should have enough capital to start a home made candle store. While candle making supplies and scents do not cost much, running a shop can be expensive. You have to consider the shop rent, utility bills and other expenses till the profits start pouring in. For this, you need to have a good business plan that will give you an idea of what to expect when starting a home made candle store business.

It is recommended that you give serious thought to all these things that are needed before starting a home made candle store business for a successful business venture. Their demand in homes, restaurant, churches as well as gifts makes them a good business choice. Careful planning and complete information about operating things and managing them can help a lot in establishing and running a successful candle making store.

The first thing to start a successful home made candle store is to find a cost effective supplier who can provide you candle making equipment and supplies at low cost. While a craft store is a good place to go when starting out and learning, as a businessperson, you will need to purchase from a wholesale operation in order to keep the business profitable and expenses low.

Make enough candles for a beginning stock in various designs, colors and scents as samples. As you are just starting the business, minimize the costs by creating candles to order, but you will need enough ready-made candles to demonstrate all the types you can make in order to get more business.

Determine the prices of candles very carefully. Assess the costs of your materials and your labor per candle and compare prices of similar products from other craft candle makers. Don’t charge too much as overpricing can discourage them from buying if they can get the same type of candles at much affordable rates from somewhere else.

Create printed promotional materials of your candle store and play on the line that they are all home made to sooth the customers and light their lives. You will need high-quality photographs of candles and attractive business cards to promote your store. Consider hiring a photographer and graphic designer if you cannot do these things on your own.

You can use these pictures on brochures and leaflets for advertising. This will all help in promoting your home made candles store and make it more successful. Promote your business among friends and family by giving them candles in gifts and ask them to spread the word about your store.

Another way to make your home made candles store more successful is by selling candles at craft fairs and small stalls in markets. They can really help you make good sales as people in such places are on the lookout for small but nice things to buy.

You can also sell to other local shops apart from selling at your own candle store. Talk to other handicraft and arts suppliers such as salons, stationery, among others if they are willing to display your candles for a small percentage of the sales amount.

Raw Materials
All the raw materials needed for candle production are cheaply available in Nigeria. They include paraffin wax, wick/thread, pigment, and stearic acid. Stearic acid is a solid saturated fatty acid from vegetable and animal fats and oil. A small quantity is required to blend the paraffin wax. Stearic acid is available at the various vegetable oil making companies across the country.

Machinery/Equipment
The necessary machinery for candle production are in different sizes depending on the number of candle sticks required. They include:

(i)    molding machines
(ii)    paraffin  wax boiler
(iii)   cooling system
(iv)    industrial gas cylinder
(v)    water tank.

All the machines can be locally fabricated. The molding machines are in different sizes and the costs vary from one fabricator to another. The different sizes are:

       24 sticks of candle making machine
       50 sticks of candle making machine
      100 sticks of candle making machine
      200 sticks of candle making machine.

All the machines can be operated manually.

Production Process
Candle making follows six simple production processes as enumerated below:

Stage 1
A melting pan is filled with paraffin wax, stearic acid and pigment (if colored candle is desired).

Stage 2
Heat the whole mixture to about 120 degrees centigrade and not below 100 degrees centigrade. Too much or too low heat affects the quality and shrinking of the candles. Therefore, it must be ensured that the 120 oc maximum and 100oc minimum are maintained.

Stage 3
Put wick into each candle mold.

Stage4
Drain molten mixture into candle mold.

Stage 5
Allow cooling of the mixture in the mold by passing water through the surface of the mold.

Stage 6
Manually drive a piston plate into mold to bring out the end product.

Market
The end product of the production process is packed in nylon bags according to already predetermined numbers and packaged in cartons ready for the market. Candle is a mass consumption item widely used for lighting and illumination in households, churches and other religious houses, hotels and restaurants. The demand for candles is on the increase in recent times due to incessant power outage across the country. Artistic and decorative candles also have very good market potentials.

Profitability
Great profit abounds in this business as research has shown that a 200 per cent return on investment is achievable in the first year of operation which guarantees short pay back period.
 Interested investors can contact the writer for a cost-benefit analysis of the project.

Investment Cost Estimates       N
 Pre - operational expenses      50,000
Factory Premises                      50,000
Machinery & Equipment         100,000
Working Capital                       40,000
Contingency                             10,000
Total Investment Outlay         250,000

For more information do contact us by dropping your comment below.

CHALK PRODUCTION

 It is no doubt that school chalk production is very lucrative in Nigeria because of the ever increasing number of public and private schools nationwide. This is in accordance with one of the agenda of the present administration which is to make education available and affordable to every citizen.  

This has significantly increased demand of school chalk within the last 10 years. To meet up with this increased demand, individuals and corporate organizations have delved into school chalk production and supply with a bid to balancing the demand and supply chain. 

This has not been successful, as schools keep springing up on daily basis while the demand keeps skyrocketing. This has created a very big investment opportunity especially for individuals who intend to go into small scale chalk production business

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SCHOOL CHALK  PRODUCTION PROCESS

Let me start by saying that school chalk production is a very simple and straight forward process. Anybody can learn how to do it and apply it successfully without supervision. For this reason, school chalk production has been incorporated into the curriculum of almost every skill acquisition center in Nigeria.
 

School chalk production can be done in the comfort of your home. You don’t need to establish a big factory. The major equipment for school chalk production is the Chalk Mold which is primarily used for molding the chalk to give it its characteristic shape, size, and length.

RAW MATERIALS NEEDED FOR SCHOOL CHALK PRODUCTION

1)    The Plaster of Paris or as it is generally called “POP” is the major raw material for school chalk production. Plaster of Paris (POP) is a white powder; scientifically called “Calcium Carbonate” that when mixed with water, forms a quick-hardening paste. It is used in the arts for sculpting and making casts, and in medicine for molding casts around broken limbs. Below is a picture of powdered POP

 2)Lubricants: this is another important raw material for school chalk production. It could be any cooking oil or coconut oil, mixed with Kerosene. It is used for lubricating the chalk mold to prevent the POP from sticking to it.

3)      Clean Water: water is a very important element in school chalk production, because it is used for mixing all the ingredients.

4)       Ultramarine blue (optional) ultramarine blue is used to give the chalk a dark blue or sky blue color depending on its concentration. If you intend to produce only white chalk, then you wouldn’t need to add ultramarine blue.

MACHINERY AND EQUIPMENT NEEDED

1) White Chalk Mold: this is the major equipment used in school chalk production. It is either made of rubber or metal but usually with a wooden frame. But there are some chalk molds that are completely made of metal. The molds defer according to the number of holes or cavities they have. 

Some could have 240 holes or even more. The number of holes or cavities a chalk mold has determines the number of chalk sticks it can produce at a time. Below is a picture of a typical chalk mold for the benefit of those who have never seen one before.

2) Scraper:    This is a flat metal object used for scraping the surface of the chalk mold.

3) Paint Brush:   This is used for applying the lubricant on the mold before filling it up with POP

4) Dryer:     The dryer is primarily used for drying the chalk after it has been removed from the mold. The drier is electrically operated and is mostly used in large scale school chalk production. For small scale school chalk production, sun drying is perfectly okay to save cost.

5) Hand Glove:    This is basically used for protecting the hand during the mixing of the POP and water.

6) Packaging Materials:   These could include nylon bags and branded carton packs.

SCHOOL CHALK PRODUCTION PROCESS

STEP1     Pour some POP into a container, preferably a bucket, and add water. Use your hand to mix the POP with the water until it forms a paste.

STEP2     Using the paint brush, lubricate the surface of the chalk mold properly with a solution of cooking oil + kerosene, to prevent the POP from sticking to the mold.

STEP3     Arrange the mold, then pour the pasty mixture into it and allow it for 15 to 20 minutes to solidify before loosening the mold.

STEP4      When you are sure that the chalk has formed, loose the mold and collect the chalk produced for sun drying or through mechanical dryer.

STEP5     After sun drying for 2 to 3 days, package the chalk in branded carton packs and your school chalk is ready for sale.

You can contact us for more details on how to get this machine or how to source for your raw materials.