Why I stopped ordering Voluspa from a 'one-stop-shop' supplier (and why you should think twice too)

Here’s what I’ve learned: that supplier who claims they can handle everything—your branded pens, your t-shirts, even your holiday candles for the office party—usually isn’t the best option for any of it.

I’m an office administrator for a mid-sized firm. I manage all our gifting and promotional merchandise—roughly $30k annually spread across 4 or 5 different vendors. When I took over purchasing in 2020, I inherited a system. One of those inherited vendors was a classic generalist: they could print your logo on just about anything. Mugs, stress balls, you name it. And they offered Voluspa candles.

That arrangement lasted exactly one holiday season before I realized I was paying for convenience in all the wrong ways. Here’s the thing: a vendor who says they can do it all usually doesn’t do any of it particularly well. Especially not with an intricate, hand-poured product like luxury fragrance.

The first warning sign: the 'best price' only existed on paper

We needed 400 Voluspa votive candles as client gifts for Q4. The generalist’s quote looked competitive—until I broke down the details. Their discount on Voluspa’s Baltic Amber? It was barely above the retail price I could see on the Voluspa website’s wholesale portal. They weren’t a Voluspa partner, they were a middleman buying at retail and squeezing their own margin.

Here’s something vendors won’t tell you: the price they quote isn’t always the price from the source. If you’re buying a specialized product from a generalist, you’re almost certainly paying a markup that goes to their overhead—not to the quality of what you receive. The numbers said the generalist was cheaper than ordering direct from Voluspa on a per-unit basis. But when I factored in the setup fees they’d added? That 15% savings disappeared. And that’s not even counting the headache of expedited shipping when the order was delayed.

(According to USPS pricing effective January 2025: a First-Class Mail letter is $0.73, a large envelope is $1.50. We ended up paying for express delivery on the candles because the generalist missed their own promised deadline. That one shipping upgrade wiped out any nominal savings.)

Consider two scenarios from my experience

Let me lay them out simply:

• Scenario A (the old way): One order to a generalist. I tick the box. “Voluspa candles” is a line item in a quote full of other stuff. I trust them because it’s easy. I stress about quality because I have no idea if they have a relationship with the brand.
• Scenario B (what I do now): I manage two separate purchase orders. One for the brochures and promotional pens (from a print specialist who’s fast and understands our specs). Another from a verified Voluspa wholesale partner (or direct from Voluspa’s B2B program). It’s one extra email chain. That’s it.

The difference? In Scenario B, the candles arrived on time, in perfect condition, with the correct fragrances. In Scenario A, I got an email three business days before the event saying, “We’re out of French Cade Lavender, can we substitute?” No. We cannot.

I knew I should have checked the stock situation two weeks prior. I thought, “what are the odds?” The odds caught up with me. That was the year the VP of Sales gave a handshake and a candle that smelled like “warm generic floral” instead of the sophisticated, complex notes we’d promised in the card. It’s a small thing, but it looked sloppy.

Why the 'expertise boundary' argument works for B2B

I’ve come to appreciate the vendors who say no. The Voluspa specialist who told me, “We don’t do custom labels on the glass—that’s not our strength. Here’s who does it better.” That honesty earned my trust for everything else they said they could do. The vendor who said, “We only sell Voluspa Wicked candles and the votive line. For the large jar candles, you’d need to go to this other partner.” They earned my business for life.

We had a vendor consolidation project in 2024. Management wanted to reduce our vendor list from 12 to 6. The generalist argued they could cover three categories. But when I looked at their actual performance data? Their Voluspa orders had a 15% error rate (wrong fragrance, wrong quantity). Their print orders were fine. The generalist wasn’t bad—they were stretched. And I’m responsible for the budget.

Look, I get the appeal of one-stop-shopping. It feels efficient. It feels modern. But it’s a false economy. You’re trading a little bit of internal complexity for a much higher risk of failure on the products that matter most. Your clients don’t care that the invoice was easy; they care that the gift smells incredible.

What about the argument that it’s ‘just candles’?

I hear this sometimes from colleagues. “It’s just a candle. How different can they be?” Pretty different, it turns out. A cheap candle has thin walls and a weak scent throw. A Voluspa candle uses proprietary coconut wax blend and 100% natural essential oils in many of their best-selling fragrances. The difference in quality is obvious. Per FTC advertising guidelines (ftc.gov), claims like “premium scent” need substantiation. Voluspa can back it up; a generalist selling a generic candle in a burnished glass jar usually cannot.

So no, it’s not “just a candle.” It’s an experience. And your process for sourcing it should reflect that.

True story: In 2023, I tested a generalist’s version of a “luxury” votive for a small internal event. The glass felt cheaper. The wax pooled unevenly. The scent was gone in 10 minutes. That was the last test. I won’t risk the client gift budget on something that’s “basically the same.” It isn’t.

Intentional constraints on supplier scope

So here’s my current philosophy: choose vendor specialization over vague promises.

I now process about 60-80 orders annually. Of those, 15 are fragrance-related. Those 15 orders go to exactly one supplier: the one who does Voluspa and little else. They’re not the cheapest. But their failure rate is 0%. My time spent managing those orders? Less. Because we have a standing relationship where I don’t have to re-explain “no, I specifically need the Voluspa Wicked collection, not the ‘inspired by’ version.” Every single time.

Looking back, I should have made this switch sooner. At the time, adding a second vendor felt like extra work. It’s not. It’s clarity. It’s knowing my boundaries—and my supplier’s boundaries—so we can both do our best work.

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.