The most expensive mistake I've made in six years of wholesale Voluspa orders wasn't choosing the wrong scent or missing a delivery window. It was treating the Voluspa Classic Candle and the Voluspa 3-Wick Tin Candle as close enough substitutes. They're not. That one assumption cost us roughly $1,200 in return shipping, repackaging, and a very unhappy client.
If you're ordering Voluspa candles for corporate gifts, event favors, or store shelves, the product names are specifications. The Classic is a modest 6-ounce single-wick jar. The 3-Wick Tin is an 18-ounce triple-wick burn. And the language you use around them—candlestick holders, crystal gifts, tea light holders—determines whether your customers can actually find your products. The words matter as much as the candles. Bottom line: get the terminology right, get the specs right, and get everything in writing.
Here's what you need to know before you place that purchase order.
Why you can trust this
I've been handling wholesale accounts for a gift supplier that carries Voluspa, crystal gifts, and scented candles for six years. I've personally made—and meticulously documented—17 significant mistakes, totaling roughly $8,500 in wasted budget. That's a painful number to write out. But it's why I now maintain our team's purchasing checklist, and it's why I notice things most people overlook.
My very first mistake, back in 2019, was ordering scented candles without verifying whether the quoted price was per unit or per case. I approved what I thought was a 300-piece order for $2,100. What arrived was 300 candles short. That caused a 3-day production delay, an uncomfortable client call, and a lesson I've never forgotten: the details in the product name and spec sheet are the contract.
Over the years, the patterns became clear. Different clients, different products, but the same four categories of mistakes kept appearing: product confusion, terminology issues, print and packaging oversights, and hidden costs. I started a master checklist in 2022, and we've caught 47 potential errors with it in the past 18 months. That's 47 mistakes we didn't have to make.
The four mistakes that actually cost me
Mistake 1: Confusing the Classic with the 3-Wick
A client asked for 250 Voluspa candles for their annual appreciation event. They needed something that would sit on a conference table and last through the entire evening. I knew I should verify the product dimensions—it was a large order, and the client was new to us. But we'd been carrying Voluspa for three years, and I thought, honestly, "how different can the product lines be?"
Very different, it turns out.
The Voluspa Classic Candle is a 6-ounce single-wick jar. Elegant, compact, perfect for gift boxes. The Voluspa 3-Wick Tin Candle is an 18-ounce tin with triple wicks and about double the burn time. It's a centerpiece product, not a box insert.
I ordered 250 3-Wick tins thinking they were the premium version of the Classic. The client's custom gift boxes were sized for the 6-ounce jars. Nothing fit. We spent $890 on expedited shipping for replacement Classics, absorbed a 1-week delay, and had to apologize through a very uncomfortable phone call.
And here's the part that still bothers me: my gut had flagged this earlier. I'd seen the client's gift box dimensions in the proposal, and something felt off. But the spreadsheet said 3-Wicks had better margins, so I talked myself out of the gut feeling. The data was right about margins and wrong about everything else that mattered.
The lesson: the spec is in the name. "3-wick" isn't a style descriptor—it's a physical fact.
Mistake 2: Using the wrong terminology for candle accessories
This one still stings because the fix was embarrassingly simple. We had a product category called "Candle Stick Holders" on our website—spelled as two words—because that's how it felt natural to write it. Customers kept emailing us asking if we carried "candlestick holders." They were searching for the exact product we sold. Our listings just didn't match their search terms.
If you've ever wondered what is a candle stick holder called, the answer is "candlestick holder." One word. That's the industry term and the search term. For taper candles specifically, it's a candlestick holder. For tea lights, it's a tea light holder. And for the crystal candle holders we pair with Voluspa jars and tins, "crystal candle holder" is the phrasing customers actually type into Google.
For our corporate clients, we often bundle a Voluspa Classic or 3-Wick with a crystal gift—a molded crystal candle holder or a crystal votive—and the terminology on the invoice matters as much as the one on the website. If your paperwork doesn't match what the client's procurement team is searching for, you create confusion that no amount of customer service fully fixes.
Renaming our category, rewriting product titles, and adjusting our internal email templates boosted that category's sales by about 20% in the next quarter. No new inventory. No discounting. Just using the words our customers use instead of the words we assumed were right.
Mistake 3: Ignoring print specs on custom labels
We decided to add custom labels to our Voluspa gift set boxes—our logo, the client's logo, a generic "Thank You" message. The designer sent artwork. I approved it on screen. It looked great. The printed result came back with our brand blue looking purple. Not a subtle hue shift. A visible, embarrassing mismatch.
That's when I learned about Delta E, the standard measurement for color difference. Industry best practice is a Delta E of less than 2 for brand-critical colors—virtually indistinguishable from the reference. Our label measured around 5, which is visible to anyone who's ever seen our logo before. Reference: Pantone Color Matching System guidelines.
We'd approved a CMYK conversion instead of specifying a Pantone spot color. The printer followed the file, the ink hit the paper, and we got a purple-ish blue on 400 boxes. $450 straight to the trash, plus a 5-day delay.
The fix: get a Pantone guide, specify actual spot colors, and request a physical proof before approving a full run. Also, check your image resolution. Logos need to be 300 DPI at final print size for commercial offset printing. If your designer sends a 72 DPI file that "looks fine on screen," it won't look fine on paper.
Mistake 4: Underestimating rush fees and hidden print costs
In December 2022, a client needed 500 custom-printed gift tags within 48 hours. The standard quote from a month earlier was around $350. The rush quote came back at $600—a surge of about 60%—because the printer had to shift production, expedite shipping, and allocate a dedicated operator.
The same pattern shows up in most print and packaging categories. Business cards: $20-35 for budget tier, up to $120 for premium. Flyers: $80-150 for 1,000 at standard turnaround. But rush requests add 50-100% on top of standard pricing, especially in Q4 when every gift company in the country is trying to order at once.
And don't forget setup fees. Plate making runs $15-50 per color for offset, die cutting $50-200, custom Pantone colors $25-75. Many online printers include these in the quoted price; local shops often don't. Ask before you commit, not after.
The policy we adopted: standard timelines for the initial quote, a 3-day buffer in every project plan, and rush fees only as the exception. It's saved us thousands since.
Where my experience might not apply
I've only worked with US-based vendors and corporate clients in tech and finance. If you're in luxury hospitality, international sourcing, or mass retail distribution, your numbers will look different. The principles hold, but the dollar figures won't.
I don't have hard data on Voluspa's industry-wide defect rates either. What I can say anecdotally is that about 5% of our orders arrived with cosmetic issues—usually a jar that shifted in transit. That's a shipping issue, not a Voluspa issue, but it's worth factoring into your breakage budget.
The industry has evolved a lot since 2019. What was acceptable then—approving colors from a monitor, relying on verbal order confirmations, using casual product language—doesn't cut it in 2025. Digital proofing, Pantone matching, and precise terminology are now baseline expectations. The fundamentals haven't changed: verify specs, get physical proofs, build in time buffers. But the execution has been transformed. Keep up, or pay the difference.
Hope this saves you the $8,500 it cost me to learn.
Jane Smith
I’m Jane Smith, a senior content writer with over 15 years of experience in the packaging and printing industry. I specialize in writing about the latest trends, technologies, and best practices in packaging design, sustainability, and printing techniques. My goal is to help businesses understand complex printing processes and design solutions that enhance both product packaging and brand visibility.
Send a comment or sourcing question