From Hobby To Hustle: Jordan From declutterd
In March of 2022, Jordan jumped straight into candle making & founded declutterd, by investing a few thousand dollars to get him started. With the determination to make it work, he has since created a loyal customer base, as well as private label & wholesale clients.
I have a customer that's bought like 17 times & spent over $2,000 with us which is insane! We've only launched 2 years ago!"
how it started
"I had already gone through & failed on a couple of products on Amazon and various Shopify stores…but kept the entrepreneurial dream alive and wanted to build my own beautiful brand of premium product.
Candles drew me in because you get to build a loyal fanbase if they like your stuff, and because it’s a consumable, you get repeat purchases from this fanbase if your candles are good."
on building a business
"I just jumped straight in and skipped the hobby phase. I wanted to go fast, so I invested a few thousand dollars to get started. I tried a candle making kit once and thought “I can do this well” so that’s when I decided to go all in.
I started with 10 scents at launch back in March 2022 and now we have over 30 scents as of January 2024."
marketplace milestones
"I posted a long post on a facebook group and immediately got a flood of sales. I just spoke like myself, and didn’t try to sell too hard and people wanted to support. That happened in the second month of the business and we were really excited.
In August of 2023, we sold 90 candles at a market & I was over the moon about it! When this happened, I knew this could work for the long run!”
on taking the leap
"Honestly I just jumped right in without a safety net. It was super risky but I was determined to make it work. I had a bit of savings, took out some loans, and went to work.
Through trial and error, we quickly found which sales channels started working, and which channels needed more time to develop.
Before launching other sales channels like wholesale, we wanted to make sure that our online store had top notch branding, merchandising, and conversion rate. We spent our entire first year building out the site and email marketing funnels so that we could monetize the traffic that was coming in. We knew we were going to go hard on social media, and so we didn’t want to waste the traffic by driving them into a mediocre storefront.
As a result, a pivotal moment I remember very clearly was making $1000 revenue in a single day from our Shopify store. We didn’t run many ads that day too so it was incredibly profitable. Since then, we didn’t look back and continued working at it!"
on standing out
"Our packaging is beautiful, luxe, and our products are extremely detailed in terms of optimizing the unboxing and burning experience. (wicks perfectly centered, candles clean, wrapped nicely, luxe packaging, never tunnels)."
on making mistakes...or not
"I made so many mistakes it’s hard to even recount them, because I don’t know where to start!
A mistake I made was buying a certain wax that had candles sweating problem. While this wax was good in a lot of different ways and we loved how it burned, it did not fair well with the heat during the summer and sometimes customers got an oily shipment.
I turned that into an opportunity by first taking care of our customers (replacements, discounts, etc) as well as use the data we have to optimize our wax and source a new one. We took everything we liked about the current wax and kept all of it while eliminating the candle sweating issue by switching to a new wax."
This is only possible because we had high standards for our product and won't accept anything less than excellent in our ingredients."
on getting advice
"I watch a lot of YouTube, so Alex Hormozi is a big one as well as other creators on there. I also have a few personal mentors that I talk to occasionally to shoot questions to."
on where to invest
"Branding and supplies are the two areas we invest in the most monthly because we believe in building a solid foundation with clean materials and a clear brand message so the consumer can build trust in our product. We want to ensure that the product we create is acceptable enough for us to purchase (and we are quite critical)."
on finding inspiration
"I’ve really bought into the idea of running my own life and schedule, having that time freedom. I also like the idea that you only make as much money as your level of skill in business and that’s something that makes the whole thing more fulfilling when I reach milestones. It gives me more meaning in my work so I’m more motivated when I work on stuff that’s fulfilling to me!"
advice for new makers
"If someone wants to start a candle company, I will tell them these things:
Don’t quit your day job. Candles is very competitive and it takes time to research, test, and create a brand that sticks out. It took me 6 months of buying every fragrance sample on websites we liked and trying ALL of them. Our testing took 6 months and lots of money in buying the materials.
Scaling profit is hard because there are so many options there. But I will say a positive thing which is candles is a VERY GOOD MODEL in terms of recurring revenue. So over time, I believe we can build a very big business as a result. The strength of a good candle brand, as I know it in my young career, is the repeat purchases from customers. I have a customer that’s bought like 17 times and spent over $2000 with us which is insane! We’ve only launched 2 years ago!
We support new candlemakers too and we’re actually launching a digital product called Candle Brand Mastery which teaches you how to test, create, and launch a profitable candle brand in 2024. Feel free to download our free guide “6 Essential Candle Sales Channels Scorecard & Analysis”
