Getting Candle Jars

I thought back to when I called the glass jar vendor for our soy candles and found out it could be January or February before we got more jars. We had finally gotten coconut oil and here were again, trying to navigate another shortage. Tired, but undeterred, I thought about the boys and girls on the other side of the mountain who wanted to burn applejack candles in October and Balsam candles at Christmas.

“Do you think we can get more glass jars??” Katy asked.

“I think I can,” I said.

Days later with every candle vendor in the country sold out of our style of jar, I located an obscure listing five or six pages deep into google from a generic box store that sold it as a tumbler instead of a candle jar, which is why no one had found it. I dared to hope.

We ordered four jars and tested them to make sure the glass quality was the same. It was. Minutes matter in these sorts of transactions, so I jumped online to order 1800 jars when Katy told me lunch was hot and ready. It was going to cost over $1000 just to ship the jars, more than we’d ever paid from our other vendor, so I wanted to crunch some numbers before confirming. I looked at Katy imploringly, and she looked back. Eating meals and being business owners is a thing, something you can probably relate to. It’s hard not to check email at breakfast and respond to important messages. I hesitated but relented, and sat down for lunch, hoping the jars would still be in stock when we finished.

Twenty minutes later, I returned to check the shipping. To my surprise, there was a free ship to store option this time, because their local warehouse had updated its inventory while we were eating. “See? You should always sit and have lunch,” Katy said.

A week or two later they arrived, and I went to the store. “We thought maybe it was for a wedding,” said the manager, looking relieved not to have to process returning 1800 jars. “We’re not really supposed to have customers out back, but why don’t you pull your car around.”

There’re no pallets when you ship to a store, so she helped me load our car floor to ceiling with candle jars, and I tried not to think about the sound it would make if we got in a car accident. I unloaded them at the mill and returned for another floor to ceiling carload, stopping in between to have dinner with Katy and the girls because, who knows, maybe we’d save another thousand dollars. Before I left the store, I gave the manager a candle as a thank you for the service and let out a huge sigh of relief that we have enough jars for applejack candles in October and Balsam candles at Christmas.

Joel and Katy