Looks like we sold out of the candle (thank you!!!). We’re doing a GIVEAWAY in our next newsletter :D Link here to subscribe if you’re not already: answerinprogress.com/newsletter - Melissa
We've been here before, haven't we? With the olive oil? If I had a nickel, yada yada, two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.
Seriously, that's where I go to SPLURGE on candles. get the good ones that burn clean all the way down, give off a white smoke at the end instead of a bunch of black smoke, and have an nice scent I don't get sick of.
I realised that when she said that thinking of the functionality was thinking of making your room smell nice. For me it's lighting the room when there is a power cut.
What timing. I bought a candle at a street fair last week for $26USD and I thought, "Wow, that was mildly expensive for a candle. Why do these cost so much?" Melissa heard me.
@@merry_christmas Depends on the size of the candle, but even a tiny candle from a luxury brand would cost way more than that. I hear you, though, I don't think I've ever spent more than $15 USD on a candle... even a huge one. Just can't bring myself to do it.
One of my favourite kinds of video is the 'I wanted to find out more about my niche interest but later realized the dark history and business behind it' type
While restoring old electronics, I realized I enjoyed the scents of old electronics. I also realized a lot of the components I was replacing were wax capacitors. Accordingly, I melted down a pile of capacitors and mixed the result with beeswax and made some custom candles.
@@vincenttt8289 That's a thought. Old fashioned solder would presumably smell mostly like the flux, which was pine rosin, lightly scorched during the soldering process. That seems doable.
Just a note: the rose essential oil you showed on screen was from an mlm, which has increaed mark ups due to the business model. Mlms also are just not ethical business models.
@@hoppingrabbit9849yes. When people sign up to work at a retail store they know what they will be paid per hour. An MLM gets free salespeople who cost nothing if they sell nothing, and takes the lions share of the profits of what they do sell. Also MLM people have to buy the products they sell and 97% never make their money back. When they don’t, they are shamed for not hustling enough. MLM and retail are night and day differences in how ethical they are.
When you started talking about the scent companies but before you named them I went “wait are these the flavor companies too??” And I definitely remember seeing all those company names on little labels on sample flavors when I was a lab tech for Gatorade R & D! So not only an oligopoly but one that is oligopolizing (if monopolizing is a word that should be too) *two* of our major senses!!!!
if you look into them deep enough, you'll probably find they are even making weapons too. Large American companies almost always end up in the arms trade
I think in his most recent video he was in a different room which also had some paint swatches, but they were also blue 😂 he's about to be living like bear in the big blue house
I’ve been making candles for about 2.5 years, I’ve tested thousands of wax/oil/wick combinations, paraffin sooting in commercial candles is usually because commercial cheaper candles “over wick” their candles in order to basically force a good hot throw. Every single wax can soot if it’s over wicked, the largest study ever conducted on waxes found no noticeable difference in emissions between paraffin and other waxes. I settled on a custom blend of Rapeseed (canola in USA), Coconut and about 15-20% paraffin depending on the oil I’m using, it burns flawlessly and leaves behind no sooting at all. Great video! It can be really expensive to make good quality candles that rival big brands.
If you're doing candles in the tens of thousands, cloth bags and labels should be single-digit cent items, I believe. Pots and Wax will also be way cheaper. That's how you get big chain stores selling potted candles for a couple bucks and making a profit. This doesn't change the fact that the scent oils will throw the rest of the calculus out of whack, though, if you're forced to buy from that oligopoly.
there was an article about fragrances used by big companies using child labor that came out maybe a week ago? i feel like the problem isn't only in the prices and cartel behavior of the fragrance distributors, it's also on the production side
My brother ran his own small candle making business. Keeping costs down was pretty hard. He managed to sell his candles for around $20, but didn't make a huge amount. Man, those candles smelled so good.
I'm starting my own candle business soon, and am going to have to charge about 20 as well. It seems kind of expensive after growing up getting candles from the grocery store and TJ Maxx, but supplies (and the cost of shipping said supplies) are so expensive I can't price them lower.
Melissa! We are like candle soulmates. The candle you made has all my favorite scents! I would love to buy your candle but I definitely don't have $43 or more to do so. But I love all content by AIP and I wish you all the best of luck with selling those candles!
Don’t let the cartel catch your guys' scents. Thanks for the deep dive. I was just thinking about this! I just wanna make my house smell nice for an affordable price!
My two SCENTS: It really blow my mind how good of a designer/artist Sabrina is, and is not even her "main" discipline. You guys are a lovely channel, is always a good day when you release something new :)
As a candle maker - thanks for showing why buying small-batch candles from makers (like me) is worth every penny! Prices are higher than box stores, but theres a reason... its better! ..... I I blend frequences for every one of my candles.. its a long process but I love it!
My favorite word in competition law: monopsony. A monopoly has market dominance as a seller. A monopsony has market dominance as a buyer. Walmart was a monopsony for a long time. Now Amazon is one. Amazon control the buyers much more than the sellers.
@@Sam_on_TH-cam I get angry when I see a product I like on Amazon, take the time to look it up on the manufacturer's website and realize that they're selling it for more on their own store than it costs on Amazon - despite not having to pay Amazon a cut of the proceeds.
The government is a good example of a Monopsony. If you think about military equipment, there is really only one buyer, with many suppliers. Or other things that only the government has the resources to procure. There is no one else that is looking to do public work projects as another example.
@@alohadave That's true. And most governments take advantage of that to negotiate. With many things, like military equipment and medication, there are very few companies capable of supplying what they need, so they have a strong bargaining position. But the government can negotiate with their buying power. The US government rarely takes advantage of that, allowing their suppliers who give large campaign contributions (AKA bribed) to set the price a lot of the time.
I just wanted to add that the labour that went into making should have but wasn't accounted for! I think this is really important and shouldn't be forgotten! There was a lot of expertise and time that went into this and all that costs money too!
Bought one! Thank you for deep diving into my favorite place, the fragrance world! Been wanting someone to expose the IFRA and their corruption for ages.
😆"I asked Taha to do my homework for me and prepare a presentation" Great video in an of itself, but also always fun to see the collaboration and teamwork y'all bring to the channel. Love it!😄
do you know what i like the most about this video? it teaches you how to do a thing almost tutorial/ introduction like (candle) while explaining san underlying news worthy problem. i feel like I double learned
4:20 This is called olfactory fatigue. Your nose shuts down the scent receptors due to overstimulation. Some smells trigger this faster than others, but it happens eventually. If you are just starting out in fragrances, you won't be able to smell more than a handful of different scents before you stop smelling their complexities. For beginners, it might not be until the next day or two that you can fully smell the scent again. It can be trained to happen slower and to recover quicker, but it takes a good deal of practice. This is one of many reasons artisinal perfuming is so insanely expensive. It stretches out the time it takes to complete a scent design. And if that isn't bad enough, the mixture will continue to change every day in a process called "marrying." It takes an insane amount of practice and experience to know how different molecules will interact in the long run. Most of fragrance training is mixing molecules to emulate various scents (roses, musk gland, FDA banned precursor material, etc.)
I'm just popping in to randomly say that home-grown tomatoes are actually very fragrant (13:20). Even the plant itself is fragrant; I love smelling the "suckers" after pruning them. Most home-grown fruits have much stronger tastes and smells than their mass-produced grocery store counterparts. My understanding is that it's because farms pick fruit before it ripens (and then use ethylene gas to ripen the fruit) and crop cultivar traits nowadays are have stronger selective pressures than taste, such as color, size, yield, and durability. The now terrible Red Delicious apple is an iconic example.
Same goes for perfume, which isn't an easy art to begin with, but made so much less accessible and learnable due to the costs, primarily buying the oils.
I love everything about this video. The experimentation, the investigation, the information. Love cameos from the rest of AIP, love a slideshow. Fantastic editing, sound choices, cadence. This is such a perfect video, I hope you're all proud of it! Also thnx for making me feel less conned for having so many expensive candles in my house 😅
I was actually in the scented candle hyperfixation phase, and reallllyyy wanted to find my own favorite scent. But was so discouraged with the pricing of the candles, as I can't just go out and try and buy different scents without being even more broke college student. The idea that certain scents and notes should be artificially limited to luxury items only and that these scents shouldn't be present to the common public market makes me so angry and frustrated. Bro we peasants also have a nose, and we want to have my room feel like a cozy little home where I can concentrate on my desk!! Hope whatever investigation is going on will break this industry and scorch it down so that these individuals don't artificially drive the prices up just becos they wanted to.
This was really interesting, especially the cartel part haha. Tho I think you should've mentioned the costs of labour cause it seems a lot of ppl are missing that! Anyway, seeing the prices I'm glad I'm oversensitive to smells and also that i have a cat who would 100% use that candle to set the house on fire 😂
Yeah, the amount of time Melissa spent on this would have been hella expensive, and I don't see that in her maths! Labour is something else that would be cheaper at scale, obviously, but then I start to wonder about shady employment practices.
I'm a 39 year old man that has a very minimal interest in candles for my living environment, but I was thoroughly entranced with everything about this video. Nicely done!!
Okay, the paraffin candle danger hasn't really sold me. When people say, "a candle emits X amount of pollutants!" they often forget that we live in a world of pollutants and pollen and just stuff in the air. How big a risk is burning a candle for 30 minutes a day when we also experience traffic? What is the PROPORTIONAL risk?
This kind of video is why I enjoy your channel so much. It teaches me about something I never really thought about but is still deeply interesting and the journey almost never ends where we expect it. Keep up the great work :)
I genuinely dont see a difference between EU and US sovereignty, but I also dont know the way EU governance functions very well so of course I dont. But its a collection of member states who do largely set their own economy and policy, have their own cultures and such, but also belong to a collective system of member states with a shared currency and foreign economic agreements. I guess the big thing is that you dont have a "leader" within the EU that governs all of the member states/nations, so I suppose that means each member has more autonomy than a US State does?
@@Nazuiko 7 out of the 27 countries in the EU don't use the Euro as their currency. Our laws can also differ greatly, much more so than state laws in the US. And lastly that's just not how EU citizens see each other - even the most pro-EU Europeans wouldn't call us one nation.
@@Nazuiko The EU is not a sovereign state like the US is. It's a union of countries, also called Member States (ME). Maybe the confusion comes from the fact that there isn't another example of a union of sovereign states as intricate as the EU. The closest in North America would be NAFTA. But the EU is not a federation of states, ME are still independent on several areas which the EU does not have any saying, like national budget, defense, foreign affairs, fiscal policy, welfare. On the other side, monetary policy is overseen by the EU institutions for ME that use the Euro as currency, e.g the interest rate is set by the European Central Bank, not the National Banks of the ME that adhered to the Euro.
Bought a candle 😎 Usually don't go for expensive things, but it's nice having a thing with a backstory. Especially seeing the packing process, holy hell that looked tedious.
And if a candle costs $40 for the candle company to make, you can be sure they'll sell it for at least $80, if not more, as they need enough mark-up to pay all their staff and other costs, and make a decent profit on top...
These kinds of videos are always so interesting and I feel like I always learn so much, and leave me wanting to go off into the world and learn more. Love your channel
If the problem lays with the fragrance oil, find another supplier for it that's not part of the 60% group or, maybe, make your own oil. Of course, I am talking about an "economy of scale" situation, not a small 144 candles experimental batch but a 100 thousand pieces deal or something like that.
Yes, buuuut also consider that Shopify legit helps small businesses scale and I think ('local') small businesses are much more preferable than megacorps. You're right that it's ironic, but there's another layer to it.
this is a really cool video, the whole idea of mixing your own fragrance appeals to me and this got me started in my fragrance journey i started off by just making iso e super and ambroxan(molecule 01 and 02) and now I'm moving on to actually making my own fragrances
Notice how labor was not counted in the 42 dollars price tag. As said at the end, many hours were put in making those candles, elaborating the sent, etc, etc, etc.
@@mikey9373 My phrasing was a bit off there, what I'm getting at is that 2 dollars seems very small to cover the cost of her labor, and that's even before adding in transaction overhead. I guess it's an indicator that the candles aren't intended as actual merch, but still, she could have easily justified 60 bucks when you add in the additional costs that weren't specifically accounted for
@@bosstowndynamics5488 I think the idea must be that the cost of labor is covered by the revenue of this video, along with its sponsor and the traffic it brings to their patreon and newsletter and such.
I used to work in the cosmetics industry, and yes, the scent oils are the top cost. You named 2 of the companies that we worked with. Also for perfumes and such the other top cost is the fixative you have to include so that the perfume scent can stay for longer in your skin. Really good video. Just saw you in From the Workshop Floor with the Sorry Girls, and you mentioned this video.
As a chemistry student, I can say that you will need A LOT of a plant to extract its Essencial Oil, so I think a really tiny jar of 50 mL (like 2 Fl Oz) with a price of 10 dollars is actually really cheap, you can find Oregano Oil at that price. BUT, we are talking about FRAGANCE oils, If you are gonna make a perfume or a candle, I'm 98% sure you will need to dilute the Essenecial Oil or your Raw product to not kill someone's nose, so you can actually just use a few drops and a lot of of your solvent and it will smell good. When I extract Oregano Oil in the lab I'm pretty sure that I only had like a militer with also water impurities cuz my destilation was not that great, I put my nose near that thing to make sure it was Oregano Oil and that was the most intense smell I've experence. So, In conclusion, Essential oils (even the ones that not came from big companies) should be expensive, but fragance oils are just a scam. Sorry for my bad English :)
Properly browned onions and garlic smell divine. Greasy smelly, not so much. Maybe you need to collab with Helen Rennie. 🙂 I love when my house smells like caramelized onions, OMG. I'd hate to mix that smell with those candles as they'd likely collide badly. I like the candles to remove that "moldy" smell we have when the air is a bit wet or when neighbors are feeding their plants. 💩💩
Bath and body work candles are my jam 😂❤ if I’m paying that much for a luxury candle, it better not tunnel, have great throw and not have too much soot
Though this video is about pleasing the sense of smell, I can't get over how pleasing to my ears Melissa's voice is. I'd love a playlist of just videos where she is the main narrator.
HOld up the Yankee Candle IS the expensive candle, the cheap candle is the Walmart candle aka the one I can afford. I saw a candle at Target the other day that was like $20 or $30 and I was like "WHO do you guys THINK you ARE??!!!" 😂
I think the most expensive candle I've ever owned was like 25 bucks and even then it was a Christmas gift, every time I went to Walmart I had to stop in the candle isle to smell that candle so my mom surprised me with it
Nooooo, please make a part 2! I just did some research, and you should use fragrance BASES, NOT oils!!! I found a site where every base is only 4 bucks! Graaaaanted, idk HOW to do this. I just did 10 minute research, and I got other things to do. But I'd happily watch/listen to a nicely edited video about it.
I can literally see another video brewing up titled "why does manual labor feel good?" (just kidding xD). But it's fascinating how a tedious/laborous process can end up being so satisfying if you are really invested into the nitty-gritty of it. brilliant video as always!
Now add your own time to produce one candle at a decent hourly rate and break down your R&D costs to a per-candle-cost and you know where the difference comes from. Also, don't forget to add that one ingredient to the price tag that you mentioned: experience.
My favourite candle I ever had I knew was pricy- but I remember finding the candle again in a shop and seeing it was $80. I was surprised I had ever paid that much for a candle. But I am so sensitive to scents and like so few, I think it will be worth it to buy it again. Plus it comes in a very nice vessel.
But you didn’t factor in labour costs! I understand that technically this video pays for the time you took to make all of the things but if we’re comparing prices your single handed labour cost would make this much more expensive. What would your time x minimum wage / 144 be? And I would assume that this is not going to qualify as minimum wage work… at least not the fragrance choosing bit.
I always love the dedication put into the research, the editing, the research, the story, the research, and all that hard work AIP puts into their videos.
Can't wait for the follow-up video where you go over the process of patenting the scent so more candles or the fragrance blend can be produced in bulk and available for purchase to the large part of the audience who is disappointed it sold out so quickly.
Oligopolies are more common than you think. Here in Australia, the two main supermarket companies, Coles and Woolworths, have a large control of the market and extort food prices during a cost of living crisis (bars)
Hi! Candle shop owner here, and not in a hobbyist way. It’s my only job, I have employees, and we sell in over 20 stores across the us. I would love to know how you got your fragrance oils to be $45 a candle. You show off makesy in your video and they are on the expensive side of oils. Most candle makers do not even buy from them because of how expensive they are. They’re at $80 a pound. You have a 7 oz candle which means at most you should be using .9 oz of oil. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and say 1 oz. But that’s $8 for the most expensive oils. Most big named and expensive candles are expensive because of just the brand they are and not the oils. On top of that we also get MAJOR discounts for buying in bulk. I buy 25 lbs at a time which takes my cost of fragrance oil down 30% usually than what it is at just a pound. We also are able to go directly to those manufacturers and buy straight from them. One of the biggest is AFI. AFI will dupe any oil they don’t have if you send it to them as well. So even if these expensive candle companies are spending more on oils, they’re getting cost saving because 1. They’re going straight to the manufacturer and 2. They’re buying in bulk.
Well those didn’t stick around long. I hope you will make another batch available, I’d love to try it. Love the content you guys put out. Always incredibly informative.
Perfume is affected by this too. Fragrance oils are ridiculously expensive. Some aren't even difficult to make, but would require a lab (meaning it's cheap to create for the cartel, not cheap for an average person) Some have some legitimacy in being very expensive, because of distillation and how expensive flowers are (which could also probably be a cartel for all we know. There are so so many things that are oligopolies or outright monopolies. Concert tickets, glasses, food) vs how many you need to actually get scent out of it, but generally speaking, even with wanting to make a profit, very few things are at reasonable cost. Also, the idea that exclusivity is a positive thing can shove that idea where the sun don't shine. It's that kind of backwards argument that encourages the burning of precious gems and metals in order to keep rarity, when both of those could be used in useful applications as well as fashion statements. Supply and demand is fine. Influencing supply to be less and fortifying demand is not.
Looks like we sold out of the candle (thank you!!!). We’re doing a GIVEAWAY in our next newsletter :D Link here to subscribe if you’re not already: answerinprogress.com/newsletter
- Melissa
Noooo!! I started this video like 15 minutes ago and opened the tab as I reached for my wallet😭
I never wanted to smell something so bad 😞
Dang, was hoping to get a candle since it was only 2 hours after the post :(
That was fast! 🎉
Wow congrats on selling out!! :D Same boat as the rest of yall I was going to the cite to order one too T.T So curious to know what the smell is!
from innocently making candles to uncovering a secret international fragrance cartel lol
lmao they don't even need to be secret at this point, because they have an army of lawyers to sue anyone who accuses them
@@upsilonalpha3982 maybe they should partner with better help
We've been here before, haven't we? With the olive oil?
If I had a nickel, yada yada, two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.
So m😊@@deirenne
Sounds like a Brenan Lee Mulligan dnd campaign
When she pulled out the Yankee candle as the cheap one, I realised
a) how poor I am and
b) how little I knew about candles
@@ForgivingCrossgood bot
youtube's got its own haikubot !
it's shit, but still a haiku bot!
@@shaheenbekk is gone :((((((
Seriously, that's where I go to SPLURGE on candles. get the good ones that burn clean all the way down, give off a white smoke at the end instead of a bunch of black smoke, and have an nice scent I don't get sick of.
I realised that when she said that thinking of the functionality was thinking of making your room smell nice. For me it's lighting the room when there is a power cut.
What timing. I bought a candle at a street fair last week for $26USD and I thought, "Wow, that was mildly expensive for a candle. Why do these cost so much?" Melissa heard me.
The answer was in progress
@@Lukehmcc For real! They were basically like, "Well, boy howdy, do I have the answers you are looking for!"
Candles in Canada are $40-60 CAD baseline it’s crazy
MILDLY??? I thought 18€ was a luxury candle 😂
@@merry_christmas Depends on the size of the candle, but even a tiny candle from a luxury brand would cost way more than that. I hear you, though, I don't think I've ever spent more than $15 USD on a candle... even a huge one. Just can't bring myself to do it.
One of my favourite kinds of video is the 'I wanted to find out more about my niche interest but later realized the dark history and business behind it' type
it's exhilarating!
While restoring old electronics, I realized I enjoyed the scents of old electronics. I also realized a lot of the components I was replacing were wax capacitors. Accordingly, I melted down a pile of capacitors and mixed the result with beeswax and made some custom candles.
This made me think I'd love a solder scented candle
@@vincenttt8289 That's a thought. Old fashioned solder would presumably smell mostly like the flux, which was pine rosin, lightly scorched during the soldering process. That seems doable.
oh!!!!! i think you'd love fat electrician by etat libre d'orange. it's a perfume that smells somewhat like old electronics
that sounds like an excellent way to get cancer
delicious lead and tin
Unfortunately, this all makes too much scents
or rather not enough scents, or else it would be cheaper :(
incredible
😅
👏👏👏
Don't you mean cents? 😉
Just a note: the rose essential oil you showed on screen was from an mlm, which has increaed mark ups due to the business model. Mlms also are just not ethical business models.
A markup of 100 to 200x, specifically.
😂 is traditional retail more ethical?
@@hoppingrabbit9849yes. When people sign up to work at a retail store they know what they will be paid per hour. An MLM gets free salespeople who cost nothing if they sell nothing, and takes the lions share of the profits of what they do sell. Also MLM people have to buy the products they sell and 97% never make their money back. When they don’t, they are shamed for not hustling enough. MLM and retail are night and day differences in how ethical they are.
@@hoppingrabbit9849 yes because the products are the same but the cashiers dont try to convince you to beome rich by joining them selling goods....
@@hoppingrabbit9849 Yes, extremely, and it's not close. You can be sure everyone at a Walmart has made positive money from it.
See now we need someone on the nilered side of things to look into the true costs of making some of these volatiles
Made from something like gloves, urine or lube?
We need this
the perfect orange scent, made from literal blood sweat and tears
@@jonaut5705 NileRed be like: Imma add some skatole
“I made rare fragrance oil from pissed on cardboard”
10:57 $42.69
That's so perfect I can hardly believe it's random.
42.69
The answer to everything is eating out
Ikr?!
Melissa just *blaze it* and go on, and the numbers work for themselves
where the labor costs tho?
@@jungfellow Yeah, none, I guess. Also for what price have she sold them?
When you started talking about the scent companies but before you named them I went “wait are these the flavor companies too??” And I definitely remember seeing all those company names on little labels on sample flavors when I was a lab tech for Gatorade R & D! So not only an oligopoly but one that is oligopolizing (if monopolizing is a word that should be too) *two* of our major senses!!!!
And add Pantone into the mix, monopolizing colors, and there's not much left.
@@Rollermonkey1there’s also music, which is split between live nation(Ticketmaster) and a few big recording labels
if you look into them deep enough, you'll probably find they are even making weapons too.
Large American companies almost always end up in the arms trade
@@Travisrogers87 So the only sense we have un-monopolized is touch?
Glasses are also a near monopoly. There is one company that owns like 80% of all glasses made.
Taha, the blue paint streak on your wall has been bothering me for about a year. Please explain 😭
Maybe this is done for engagement
Paint swatch test
I think in his most recent video he was in a different room which also had some paint swatches, but they were also blue 😂 he's about to be living like bear in the big blue house
It makes my bones want to turn inside out
He could cover it with a poster! They even sell a poster as merch!
I’ve been making candles for about 2.5 years, I’ve tested thousands of wax/oil/wick combinations, paraffin sooting in commercial candles is usually because commercial cheaper candles “over wick” their candles in order to basically force a good hot throw.
Every single wax can soot if it’s over wicked, the largest study ever conducted on waxes found no noticeable difference in emissions between paraffin and other waxes.
I settled on a custom blend of Rapeseed (canola in USA), Coconut and about 15-20% paraffin depending on the oil I’m using, it burns flawlessly and leaves behind no sooting at all.
Great video! It can be really expensive to make good quality candles that rival big brands.
No soy wax? Interesting
If you're doing candles in the tens of thousands, cloth bags and labels should be single-digit cent items, I believe. Pots and Wax will also be way cheaper. That's how you get big chain stores selling potted candles for a couple bucks and making a profit.
This doesn't change the fact that the scent oils will throw the rest of the calculus out of whack, though, if you're forced to buy from that oligopoly.
This is why a candle business it totally at the whim of one cartel and why it is a terrible idea to make a living based on that
also, slave labour
As another commenter pointed out, NileRed would be perfect to collab with on this topic. He loves making stinky chemicals
7:27 The way she reacts to her friends “getting” her scent. Truly special, many hours of work recognized with success!
there was an article about fragrances used by big companies using child labor that came out maybe a week ago? i feel like the problem isn't only in the prices and cartel behavior of the fragrance distributors, it's also on the production side
It’s rotten the whole way down!
My brother ran his own small candle making business. Keeping costs down was pretty hard. He managed to sell his candles for around $20, but didn't make a huge amount.
Man, those candles smelled so good.
I'm starting my own candle business soon, and am going to have to charge about 20 as well. It seems kind of expensive after growing up getting candles from the grocery store and TJ Maxx, but supplies (and the cost of shipping said supplies) are so expensive I can't price them lower.
Melissa! We are like candle soulmates. The candle you made has all my favorite scents! I would love to buy your candle but I definitely don't have $43 or more to do so. But I love all content by AIP and I wish you all the best of luck with selling those candles!
I'd have offered to buy you one but they sold out immediately.
@@johnrehwinkel7241 youre too kind. Im so happy for Melissa and the AIP team for that to be the case though!
Don’t let the cartel catch your guys' scents. Thanks for the deep dive. I was just thinking about this! I just wanna make my house smell nice for an affordable price!
My two SCENTS: It really blow my mind how good of a designer/artist Sabrina is, and is not even her "main" discipline.
You guys are a lovely channel, is always a good day when you release something new :)
As a candle maker - thanks for showing why buying small-batch candles from makers (like me) is worth every penny! Prices are higher than box stores, but theres a reason... its better! ..... I I blend frequences for every one of my candles.. its a long process but I love it!
My favorite word in competition law: monopsony. A monopoly has market dominance as a seller. A monopsony has market dominance as a buyer. Walmart was a monopsony for a long time. Now Amazon is one. Amazon control the buyers much more than the sellers.
Sure, it's a fun word, but it's completely irrelevant here because the scent producers are controlling supply, they're the sellers
@@bosstowndynamics5488 I know. I didn't say otherwise. I just like the word.
@@Sam_on_TH-cam I get angry when I see a product I like on Amazon, take the time to look it up on the manufacturer's website and realize that they're selling it for more on their own store than it costs on Amazon - despite not having to pay Amazon a cut of the proceeds.
The government is a good example of a Monopsony. If you think about military equipment, there is really only one buyer, with many suppliers. Or other things that only the government has the resources to procure. There is no one else that is looking to do public work projects as another example.
@@alohadave That's true. And most governments take advantage of that to negotiate. With many things, like military equipment and medication, there are very few companies capable of supplying what they need, so they have a strong bargaining position. But the government can negotiate with their buying power.
The US government rarely takes advantage of that, allowing their suppliers who give large campaign contributions (AKA bribed) to set the price a lot of the time.
I just wanted to add that the labour that went into making should have but wasn't accounted for! I think this is really important and shouldn't be forgotten! There was a lot of expertise and time that went into this and all that costs money too!
Bought one! Thank you for deep diving into my favorite place, the fragrance world! Been wanting someone to expose the IFRA and their corruption for ages.
I went to buy one and it was sold out
I presume that you bought it before even watching the video?
0:11 Dogs sniffing another dog’s butt:
😆"I asked Taha to do my homework for me and prepare a presentation" Great video in an of itself, but also always fun to see the collaboration and teamwork y'all bring to the channel. Love it!😄
I wanted to buy a scented candle this very week and was appalled by the prices! So happy my new fav channel is with me on this!
do you know what i like the most about this video? it teaches you how to do a thing almost tutorial/ introduction like (candle) while explaining san underlying news worthy problem. i feel like I double learned
😄 "Double learned!" Yeah!
4:20 This is called olfactory fatigue. Your nose shuts down the scent receptors due to overstimulation. Some smells trigger this faster than others, but it happens eventually. If you are just starting out in fragrances, you won't be able to smell more than a handful of different scents before you stop smelling their complexities. For beginners, it might not be until the next day or two that you can fully smell the scent again. It can be trained to happen slower and to recover quicker, but it takes a good deal of practice. This is one of many reasons artisinal perfuming is so insanely expensive. It stretches out the time it takes to complete a scent design.
And if that isn't bad enough, the mixture will continue to change every day in a process called "marrying." It takes an insane amount of practice and experience to know how different molecules will interact in the long run. Most of fragrance training is mixing molecules to emulate various scents (roses, musk gland, FDA banned precursor material, etc.)
I'm just popping in to randomly say that home-grown tomatoes are actually very fragrant (13:20). Even the plant itself is fragrant; I love smelling the "suckers" after pruning them. Most home-grown fruits have much stronger tastes and smells than their mass-produced grocery store counterparts.
My understanding is that it's because farms pick fruit before it ripens (and then use ethylene gas to ripen the fruit) and crop cultivar traits nowadays are have stronger selective pressures than taste, such as color, size, yield, and durability. The now terrible Red Delicious apple is an iconic example.
As a hobby candle-maker, I am so excited to watch :D
Update: yuuuuuup, it's the oils lol. Nice to know why now though, I'm happy I watched
Same goes for perfume, which isn't an easy art to begin with, but made so much less accessible and learnable due to the costs, primarily buying the oils.
I love everything about this video. The experimentation, the investigation, the information. Love cameos from the rest of AIP, love a slideshow. Fantastic editing, sound choices, cadence. This is such a perfect video, I hope you're all proud of it! Also thnx for making me feel less conned for having so many expensive candles in my house 😅
This channel always gives me the feeling of Vox but for useless yet interesting topics that I somehow care about by the end.
I was actually in the scented candle hyperfixation phase, and reallllyyy wanted to find my own favorite scent. But was so discouraged with the pricing of the candles, as I can't just go out and try and buy different scents without being even more broke college student. The idea that certain scents and notes should be artificially limited to luxury items only and that these scents shouldn't be present to the common public market makes me so angry and frustrated. Bro we peasants also have a nose, and we want to have my room feel like a cozy little home where I can concentrate on my desk!!
Hope whatever investigation is going on will break this industry and scorch it down so that these individuals don't artificially drive the prices up just becos they wanted to.
this is so heart warming and very insightful! i really thank you melissa for making this brilliant video for me to watch!
I love how you lean into each other for their expertise.
10:33 The caption should read "After all, they are hand-poured" (thank you captioner! keep doing your good work!)
This was really interesting, especially the cartel part haha. Tho I think you should've mentioned the costs of labour cause it seems a lot of ppl are missing that! Anyway, seeing the prices I'm glad I'm oversensitive to smells and also that i have a cat who would 100% use that candle to set the house on fire 😂
Yeah, the amount of time Melissa spent on this would have been hella expensive, and I don't see that in her maths! Labour is something else that would be cheaper at scale, obviously, but then I start to wonder about shady employment practices.
yesss i was expecting labour to be mentioned as well
I'm a 39 year old man that has a very minimal interest in candles for my living environment, but I was thoroughly entranced with everything about this video. Nicely done!!
Okay, the paraffin candle danger hasn't really sold me. When people say, "a candle emits X amount of pollutants!" they often forget that we live in a world of pollutants and pollen and just stuff in the air. How big a risk is burning a candle for 30 minutes a day when we also experience traffic? What is the PROPORTIONAL risk?
This kind of video is why I enjoy your channel so much. It teaches me about something I never really thought about but is still deeply interesting and the journey almost never ends where we expect it. Keep up the great work :)
Not gonna lie, when he called the European Union a Nation I died a little inside
I genuinely dont see a difference between EU and US sovereignty, but I also dont know the way EU governance functions very well so of course I dont.
But its a collection of member states who do largely set their own economy and policy, have their own cultures and such, but also belong to a collective system of member states with a shared currency and foreign economic agreements.
I guess the big thing is that you dont have a "leader" within the EU that governs all of the member states/nations, so I suppose that means each member has more autonomy than a US State does?
@@Nazuiko 7 out of the 27 countries in the EU don't use the Euro as their currency. Our laws can also differ greatly, much more so than state laws in the US. And lastly that's just not how EU citizens see each other - even the most pro-EU Europeans wouldn't call us one nation.
@@Nazuiko The EU is not a sovereign state like the US is. It's a union of countries, also called Member States (ME). Maybe the confusion comes from the fact that there isn't another example of a union of sovereign states as intricate as the EU. The closest in North America would be NAFTA. But the EU is not a federation of states, ME are still independent on several areas which the EU does not have any saying, like national budget, defense, foreign affairs, fiscal policy, welfare. On the other side, monetary policy is overseen by the EU institutions for ME that use the Euro as currency, e.g the interest rate is set by the European Central Bank, not the National Banks of the ME that adhered to the Euro.
Bought a candle 😎 Usually don't go for expensive things, but it's nice having a thing with a backstory. Especially seeing the packing process, holy hell that looked tedious.
Finally got it, smells so nice. Actually worried about it burning out.
And if a candle costs $40 for the candle company to make, you can be sure they'll sell it for at least $80, if not more, as they need enough mark-up to pay all their staff and other costs, and make a decent profit on top...
These kinds of videos are always so interesting and I feel like I always learn so much, and leave me wanting to go off into the world and learn more. Love your channel
Wanted the candle but my wife got home from work so we debriefed... Aaaand then the candle sold out. Of course. Please make more!
are these people scientists 🤔....... or are they criminals 👁👄👁
If the problem lays with the fragrance oil, find another supplier for it that's not part of the 60% group or, maybe, make your own oil. Of course, I am talking about an "economy of scale" situation, not a small 144 candles experimental batch but a 100 thousand pieces deal or something like that.
Thank you Melissa for the interesting topic and thank you Taha for the econ lesson!
So we've discovered a problem with Capitalism anyway here's shopify
Theoretically platforms like Shopify move industries closer to being free markets
It's so real.
Yes, buuuut also consider that Shopify legit helps small businesses scale and I think ('local') small businesses are much more preferable than megacorps. You're right that it's ironic, but there's another layer to it.
the jazz, lo-fi hip hop in another room spoke to me haha. Great video!
Such a beautifully done video. Even without actually smelling the candles the concept comes across very well. So relaxing as well.
I grew up in a tiny town with a vintage candle factory. Best candles ever, and affordable.
Bought a candle!! I hope I love it haha. Your channel is the only one I support on Patreon- really believe in what y’all do here! :)
this is a really cool video, the whole idea of mixing your own fragrance appeals to me and this got me started in my fragrance journey
i started off by just making iso e super and ambroxan(molecule 01 and 02) and now I'm moving on to actually making my own fragrances
Notice how labor was not counted in the 42 dollars price tag.
As said at the end, many hours were put in making those candles, elaborating the sent, etc, etc, etc.
This was incredible! Tons of market reserach in under 20 minutes. Great work you all, greatly appreciate the insight into the industry!
Wait, the candle is actually listed for 45 USD, and you didn't even mention the cost of your work to make it...
She said in the video it cost 42.69 to make it, she's turning like a two dollar profit
@@mikey9373 My phrasing was a bit off there, what I'm getting at is that 2 dollars seems very small to cover the cost of her labor, and that's even before adding in transaction overhead. I guess it's an indicator that the candles aren't intended as actual merch, but still, she could have easily justified 60 bucks when you add in the additional costs that weren't specifically accounted for
@@bosstowndynamics5488 I think the idea must be that the cost of labor is covered by the revenue of this video, along with its sponsor and the traffic it brings to their patreon and newsletter and such.
Shes making her labor costs back through Shopify and youtube tbf. If I were making those candles, I'd have to charge ~$60 (USD) minimum
I assume her calculations of 42.69 was in CAD not USD, no? So that's like $30 USD. So a profit of $11CAD per candle?
I’m so sad that I missed this video until now bc this candle actually sounds exactly like what I’d love 😢
my candle arrived today! just wanted to say that melissa ready nailed the scent, it smells so freakin good
I used to work in the cosmetics industry, and yes, the scent oils are the top cost. You named 2 of the companies that we worked with. Also for perfumes and such the other top cost is the fixative you have to include so that the perfume scent can stay for longer in your skin. Really good video. Just saw you in From the Workshop Floor with the Sorry Girls, and you mentioned this video.
Excellent work. Even though you couldn't make a cheap candle, the information is almost more valuable.
I miss my parma violet cented candle. it was like £4.
As a chemistry student, I can say that you will need A LOT of a plant to extract its Essencial Oil, so I think a really tiny jar of 50 mL (like 2 Fl Oz) with a price of 10 dollars is actually really cheap, you can find Oregano Oil at that price. BUT, we are talking about FRAGANCE oils, If you are gonna make a perfume or a candle, I'm 98% sure you will need to dilute the Essenecial Oil or your Raw product to not kill someone's nose, so you can actually just use a few drops and a lot of of your solvent and it will smell good. When I extract Oregano Oil in the lab I'm pretty sure that I only had like a militer with also water impurities cuz my destilation was not that great, I put my nose near that thing to make sure it was Oregano Oil and that was the most intense smell I've experence. So, In conclusion, Essential oils (even the ones that not came from big companies) should be expensive, but fragance oils are just a scam.
Sorry for my bad English :)
You should patent your smell before the fragrance mafia does lol
This is so interesting, who knew theres a cartel like entity behind it, it reminded me of the Diamond documentary where diamond is actually so common
Properly browned onions and garlic smell divine. Greasy smelly, not so much. Maybe you need to collab with Helen Rennie. 🙂
I love when my house smells like caramelized onions, OMG.
I'd hate to mix that smell with those candles as they'd likely collide badly.
I like the candles to remove that "moldy" smell we have when the air is a bit wet or when neighbors are feeding their plants. 💩💩
loved the cinematography and the vibe of this video! very calming and a really interesting experience 😁😁
Clicking at the speed of the life
Yeah that’s (3.0*10^8 + 1) m/s
That’s an AIP video waiting to happen: we quantified life!
Bath and body work candles are my jam 😂❤ if I’m paying that much for a luxury candle, it better not tunnel, have great throw and not have too much soot
what about labor cost???
Though this video is about pleasing the sense of smell, I can't get over how pleasing to my ears Melissa's voice is. I'd love a playlist of just videos where she is the main narrator.
HOld up the Yankee Candle IS the expensive candle, the cheap candle is the Walmart candle aka the one I can afford. I saw a candle at Target the other day that was like $20 or $30 and I was like "WHO do you guys THINK you ARE??!!!" 😂
I think the most expensive candle I've ever owned was like 25 bucks and even then it was a Christmas gift, every time I went to Walmart I had to stop in the candle isle to smell that candle so my mom surprised me with it
Nooooo, please make a part 2! I just did some research, and you should use fragrance BASES, NOT oils!!! I found a site where every base is only 4 bucks! Graaaaanted, idk HOW to do this. I just did 10 minute research, and I got other things to do. But I'd happily watch/listen to a nicely edited video about it.
omg it's thisstoryaint over 👀
Love to see the other AIP peeps instantly transported by the scent!
Why did i keep trying to smell the video LOL-
I loved this video. Learning about candles if truly fun. Its like WONKA and the chocolate cartel
Why has no one commented on the single blue stripe of paint in Taha's room?
I can literally see another video brewing up titled "why does manual labor feel good?" (just kidding xD). But it's fascinating how a tedious/laborous process can end up being so satisfying if you are really invested into the nitty-gritty of it.
brilliant video as always!
Now add your own time to produce one candle at a decent hourly rate and break down your R&D costs to a per-candle-cost and you know where the difference comes from. Also, don't forget to add that one ingredient to the price tag that you mentioned: experience.
Damn this video production is so high quality
New merch? I’m so down to stare at the image and forget to buy it…
My favourite candle I ever had I knew was pricy- but I remember finding the candle again in a shop and seeing it was $80. I was surprised I had ever paid that much for a candle. But I am so sensitive to scents and like so few, I think it will be worth it to buy it again. Plus it comes in a very nice vessel.
But you didn’t factor in labour costs! I understand that technically this video pays for the time you took to make all of the things but if we’re comparing prices your single handed labour cost would make this much more expensive. What would your time x minimum wage / 144 be? And I would assume that this is not going to qualify as minimum wage work… at least not the fragrance choosing bit.
I always love the dedication put into the research, the editing, the research, the story, the research,
and all that hard work AIP puts into their videos.
That thumbnail is wild af 😂
I just found this video and I want to smell the candle! Please make more!!!
Short answer: Yes
why are all of this channel's videos so good, please help, I'm stuck, I can't stop watching
Can't wait for the follow-up video where you go over the process of patenting the scent so more candles or the fragrance blend can be produced in bulk and available for purchase to the large part of the audience who is disappointed it sold out so quickly.
more like scamdles, am i right folks...
Thanks for teaching me the term "oligopoly".
She's just genuinely talented.
Oligopolies are more common than you think. Here in Australia, the two main supermarket companies, Coles and Woolworths, have a large control of the market and extort food prices during a cost of living crisis (bars)
Hi! Candle shop owner here, and not in a hobbyist way. It’s my only job, I have employees, and we sell in over 20 stores across the us.
I would love to know how you got your fragrance oils to be $45 a candle. You show off makesy in your video and they are on the expensive side of oils. Most candle makers do not even buy from them because of how expensive they are. They’re at $80 a pound. You have a 7 oz candle which means at most you should be using .9 oz of oil. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and say 1 oz. But that’s $8 for the most expensive oils. Most big named and expensive candles are expensive because of just the brand they are and not the oils.
On top of that we also get MAJOR discounts for buying in bulk. I buy 25 lbs at a time which takes my cost of fragrance oil down 30% usually than what it is at just a pound.
We also are able to go directly to those manufacturers and buy straight from them. One of the biggest is AFI. AFI will dupe any oil they don’t have if you send it to them as well.
So even if these expensive candle companies are spending more on oils, they’re getting cost saving because 1. They’re going straight to the manufacturer and 2. They’re buying in bulk.
And actually my math is wrong. It would be $5 not $8
Well those didn’t stick around long. I hope you will make another batch available, I’d love to try it.
Love the content you guys put out. Always incredibly informative.
Perfume is affected by this too. Fragrance oils are ridiculously expensive.
Some aren't even difficult to make, but would require a lab (meaning it's cheap to create for the cartel, not cheap for an average person) Some have some legitimacy in being very expensive, because of distillation and how expensive flowers are (which could also probably be a cartel for all we know. There are so so many things that are oligopolies or outright monopolies. Concert tickets, glasses, food) vs how many you need to actually get scent out of it, but generally speaking, even with wanting to make a profit, very few things are at reasonable cost. Also, the idea that exclusivity is a positive thing can shove that idea where the sun don't shine. It's that kind of backwards argument that encourages the burning of precious gems and metals in order to keep rarity, when both of those could be used in useful applications as well as fashion statements.
Supply and demand is fine. Influencing supply to be less and fortifying demand is not.
I already know why! It’s because I keep buying avocado toast & Starbucks! Duhhhh