Crafting Candle Empires | Cindy Novack from Candles and Supplies

Kevin Shirley: Pathmonk is the AI for website conversions. With increasing online competition, over 98% of website visitors don’t convert. The ability to successfully show your value proposition and support visitors in their buying journey separates you from the competition online. Pathmonk qualifies and converts leads on your website by figuring out where they are in the buying journey and influencing them in key decision moments with relevant micro-experiences like case studies, intro videos, and much more.

Stay relevant to your visitors and increase conversions by 50% by adding Pathmonk to your website in seconds, letting the artificial intelligence do all the work. Check us out on pathmonk.com.

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Pathmonk Presents. I’m really excited for today’s episode. We’ve got Cindy from Candles and Supplies. How are you doing today, Cindy?

Cindy Novack: Good, how are you?

Kevin: Doing quite well, thanks for asking. Today, I’m really interested to talk to you. Obviously, this is a podcast about growth and digital marketing. Being a business that has both a brick-and-mortar store and an e-commerce presence, I’m looking forward to learning more about what you do from a digital marketing perspective and how you grow your presence and e-commerce success.

To get started, maybe you can give our audience a little background about who your clients are, who your audience is, and what kind of problems you solve for them.

Cindy: Sure. We are Candles and Supplies, as you said. We sell all kinds of candle-making supplies, soap-making supplies—think DIY, people starting their own business in candle or soap making.

We help everyone who wants to get started. We give classes, have all kinds of blog information, and the best staff. Everyone here can help anyone make candles or soaps. You can’t work here without getting involved in making them yourself. It’s very creative and fun.

A lot of our clients have grown into their own small businesses, selling at shows, on their own sites, or through Etsy stores. We’ve seen great things happen—people supporting their families, quitting their corporate jobs, traveling, or putting their kids through college, all from their candle side hustle or main business. It’s really a pretty cool thing.

Kevin: That’s awesome. It’s not just buying a single candle here or there, but helping people create their own businesses and grow from there. Maybe you can tell me a little more about your audience. I know you have a physical store, but also an e-commerce website. How far and wide do people come from? How much reach does the website have? How far do people drive to visit the store?

Cindy: Great question. We primarily serve the continental United States. We don’t export because wax and fragrances are chemicals with different regulations in each country, and we can’t keep up with that. But we do have a lot of people visiting our site from other countries. We have a YouTube channel where people watch from all over the world—and then complain that we don’t export!

We have a showroom where people can come in, and some travel long distances. We’ve even had people fly in from Hong Kong just to take our classes, which is very flattering. We moved into our current location about 11 years ago because we had so many people driving long distances to visit.

Generally, our customers are concentrated within a 200-mile radius. Driving 200 miles to visit us or pick up orders isn’t uncommon. Freight is also expensive, so some customers place their orders online and pick them up in-store to avoid shipping costs.

Kevin: Can you remind our audience where they can find you?

Cindy: We are in Quakertown, Pennsylvania—about 50 miles north of Philadelphia or an hour and a half west of New York City. It’s centrally located and easy to get to.

Kevin: Let’s talk more about your audience. How do they typically find out about you? Do you have any top acquisition channels? From a digital marketing perspective, how do new customers discover you?

Cindy: Google is our best acquisition method. We run Google Ads and do a lot of SEO work. Google is the top driver for new customers, but email is our best channel for customer retention.

Kevin: What kind of email marketing do you do for client retention? Is it newsletters, promotions, or something else?

Cindy: We have a wide variety of customers, from cosmetic chemists to candle makers to people making air fresheners. Since our audience is so diverse, we try to target them individually.

We send out three sales emails a week. I don’t like companies that email every day—it’s too much. Monday’s email is focused on fragrance oils, featuring a “scent of the week” with related products, sales, and coupons for free samples. Wednesday’s email is either new product launches or blog content. Friday’s email is for trends, new product announcements, and brand awareness.

Kevin: Makes total sense. I need to get on that newsletter! Let’s talk about the website. Since SEO is a big driver of traffic and you also run Google Ads, how do you ensure that visitors convert?

Cindy: Honestly, that’s a black hole for us. Our software doesn’t give us clear insights into where customers drop off, and even Google Analytics doesn’t always provide the information we need. So we don’t have a great way of tracking conversion issues. We try to optimize, but it’s something we need to work on.

Kevin: You’re not alone in that—many businesses struggle with it. There are tools that can help, and we can chat about that after the show. Now, I want to switch gears and focus on you. What does your day-to-day work look like as the owner of this business?

Cindy: It’s chaotic! I wear a lot of different hats. In my ideal world, I’d focus only on marketing, email, brand awareness, and helping customers through classes. That’s what I love.

But in reality, I also have to deal with salespeople, insurance, software problems, employee issues, and everything else that comes up. Marketing and sales are my passion, but I end up filling in wherever I’m needed.

Kevin: Makes sense. You do whatever needs to be done. Where do you go to stay up to date and keep learning?

Cindy: I never went to college, so I’ve always learned from the best in each field. If I want to learn about SEO, I follow Neil Patel. For sales, I love Dan Kennedy—he’s direct and to the point. Right now, I’m reading a lot about content management because I have years’ worth of content that I haven’t organized properly.

Kevin: Sounds like you’re sitting on a goldmine of content. That’s something you could monetize.

Cindy: Exactly! That’s my focus for the next couple of years—getting all of that content out there instead of sitting in filing cabinets.

Kevin: That brings me to my next question—what’s the last book you read?

Cindy: The Antoinette Zettel Castin Method. It’s about organizing notes and ideas in a structured way, kind of like a Dewey Decimal system for personal knowledge.

Kevin: Sounds fascinating. Okay, let’s do a rapid-fire round. If there were no boundaries in technology, what’s one thing you’d want fixed for your role?

Cindy: I’d love a tool that consolidates all marketing data—Google Analytics, Meta, trends—into one easy-to-read summary so I know what’s working and what’s not.

Kevin: If you could automate one repetitive task, what would it be?

Cindy: Tracking marketing performance across different platforms. It takes too much time to go into each system separately.

Kevin: What’s one piece of advice you’d give yourself if you were starting your marketing journey today?

Cindy: Be a better storyteller. People connect with stories, and I’d focus more on storytelling in marketing.

Kevin: That’s a great one. Now, the final question—if our audience forgets everything they just heard, what’s the one thing they should remember about Candles and Supplies?

Cindy: We have the best people and the best customers. We love what we do, we’re fun, and we’re always learning and evolving.

Kevin: That’s awesome. Cindy, thank you for joining us today. Everyone, go check out Candles and Supplies.

Cindy: Thanks for having me!