Still Shipping in Time for Christmas!

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My boyfriend works at our local post office, so he was able to give me the skinny on shipping things out in time for the holidays. According to USPS, we should be able to continue shipping US orders in time for Christmas until Monday, December 19th.

Lucky you, this means you still have about 5 days to pick up some gifts at Candles By Nature! ;)

My only disclaimer: My current shipping estimates on Etsy are based on Parcel Post shipping to offer you the best rates. For some locations in the US, Priority shipping may be required in order for your package to arrive in time for Christmas. Once your order is placed, I can get a more exact shipping estimate based on your zip code and will let you know.

Shipping Conundrum

So, I'm hoping you guys can give me some advice on determining shipping rates. It's easy enough for me to come up with a fair shipping rate for single item orders, but apparently the USPS rates get all wonky once the weight goes above a certain point. You would think that shipping two candles would simply be double the cost of shipping one, right? Nope...because that would just make way too much sense for USPS. Instead, it costs me about $2.75 to ship one candle within the US and $8 to ship two candles. What the heck?!?

This makes it a real pain in the butt to come up with shipping costs for my customers on Etsy. How do I explain to them that shipping is only $2.75 if you buy one candle, but a whopping $4 per candle if you buy two? It's normally the other way around...if you buy multiples, I should be able to offer even lower shipping per item.

Ah and I also forgot to mention the ridiculous rates for flat-rate boxes. My candles won't fit in flat-rate envelopes, so those are out of the question. They also won't fit in the small flat-rate box which is $4 and the medium box shoots up to $10! So...flat-rate shipping unfortunately is of no help in my situation.

As you can tell, this is really infuriating. I hate that I need to charge such insane shipping rates for my customers and I hate it even more that I'll need to charge them MORE in shipping per item if they buy multiples--it would certainly deter me from buying multiple items if I were a customer.

I know many of you also have shops on Etsy so I'm hoping you have some wisdom that you can impart? Pretty please? I really just want to make my shipping as fair as possible for my customers but the dang USPS is making that really hard to do. Anyway, thanks in advance for your help!

Burn, Baby, Burn

So I recently decided to try out a new company for my supplies because the one I was using charged insane shipping fees. When it got to the point where the shipping was costing more than the items themselves, I figured it’s time to explore some new options. After much research I found a new company that has reasonable prices and much nicer shipping costs.

Now the hard part is to find the right wick from this new company. If you’ve made candles before, you can attest to the fact that finding the perfect wick can easily drive anyone insane. To be honest, it’s my least favorite aspect of making candles because it inevitably involves some failure when you try out a bunch of wicks and some of them just don’t seem to burn perfectly. On the other hand, when I do find the right wick, the crazy perfectionist in me is VERY happy and I do a little dance (much to my boyfriend’s embarrassment).

Okay, returning from my tangent, I’m now testing various wicks from this new company. Rather than burn a bunch of candles in my living room while I watch back-to-back Buffy episodes on Netflix, I realized that I might as well burn them at work and make the office smell nice. We’re just sitting at our desks all day anyway, right? At this moment myself, my boss and my co-worker are burning awesome lavender candles made with essential oils, so they truly do smell like the real thing. I’ve periodically been poking my head into their offices like a worried mother to see how they’re burning. After about 2 hours, it’s looking like I finally found my match, but I’m going to let them continue burning for awhile longer to be doubly sure.

I gotta say, this was a great idea of mine—not only do I get to be super efficient and test out wicks while I’m at work, but I also get to share this amazing lavender scent at the office, too. I think I’ll go ahead and give myself a pat on the back  ;)