For those of you who have checked out my About Me page, you’ll remember that I mentioned our very first business, an agreement with a candle distributor.  While it was the most profitable business we had in terms of amount of net profit (the eBay selling was the best in terms of investment to returns ratio and by far the least labor required), it lasted just a few months because the supplier started throwing stuff at us that was in the fine print, such as a annual processing fee.  While I do see the need for and agree with a start-up processing fee, if I’m making you money, don’t you dare say I need to pay you more just so I can sell your products to make both of us money!  Still irks me to this day…

I guess either Friday or over the weekend my wife got a call from a friend of her’s that she made through the business and who was still working with the distributor.  There was a reorganization at the company and they had rewritten their policies.  Turns out that the two owners of the company, a husband and wife team, were getting a divorce. 

The husband was the president of the company and had been behind the hidden fees; these fees had led to a HUGE amount of turn-over after a new seller’s first year.  The wife, who apparently had majority control, was still working with development and marketing; she was helping create new products, and pushing to expand and recruit new sellers.

Of course I don’t know what happened and why, but from personal experience I know that if you’re busting your butt to recruit new people and someone else in the company is pushing them out as fast as you can bring them in, it will build resentment.

So, the wife is now fully in charge of the company and has done away with the annual processing fee, along with some other changes I’m told.  A huge change has been that the company has reached out to the former partnerships with sellers that left and is offering to bring them back in with no penalty or start-up fee.

My wife loves these candles!  She’s excited about getting back into the business.  I’m alittle more wary, once burned and all that.  Going to have some professionals look at the contacts this time, but it looks right now that we’re getting back into the candle business.

From a business standpoint, they fit in well with our other product lines.  Their scents sell themselves.  As I’m expanding my knowledge into online businesses, I do see a problem.  The major selling point is how great these candles are, how great they smell, and how long they burn.  You can write all you want about that, but how do you translate that into an online, automated business?  You can’t smell these scents over the computer.  For current customers who know the products, it would be great; it would speed up the sales process so they can get their products faster.  But expansion of the customer base would have to take place off-line.  I am toying with an idea that would cost postage only to get some new online customers.  We’ll see how it turns out.

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