the cost of being stocked

There are parts of running a business that you understand intellectually before you understand them in practice.

Consignment has been one of those things for me.

Over the years, I’ve placed my work in several shared retail spaces. The arrangement is usually some variation of the same model: I pay a monthly fee for the space, the shop takes a percentage of everything I sell, and I remain responsible for making the product, packaging it, transporting it, displaying it and replacing whatever sells.

For a long time, that seemed like a reasonable exchange for having a physical retail presence without having to operate a store of my own.

And in some ways, it was.

Consignment gave August Moon Rise places to exist outside of my studio. It allowed someone to discover a candle while wandering through a shop on a Saturday afternoon. It introduced my work to people who may never have encountered it otherwise.

I’m grateful for that.

But I’m also slowly leaving consignment behind.

Not because I’ve had some terrible experience. Not because I think these spaces shouldn’t exist. And certainly not because I think every maker should do the same.

I’m leaving because I’ve become much more interested in understanding where the risk sits inside a business relationship.

And in most consignment arrangements, most of it sits with the maker.

The economics are stranger than they first appear

Imagine I make a candle and place it in a consignment shop.

Before it ever reaches the shelf, I have purchased the vessel, wax, fragrance, wick, label and packaging. I have spent the time producing it. I have transported it to the store.

Then I pay for the privilege of putting it on the shelf.

If it sells, the shop takes a commission.

If it doesn’t sell, I take it home.

The retailer has provided something valuable: space, staffing, a transaction system and access to their customers.

But the inventory risk remains mine.

That distinction has become increasingly important to me.

In a traditional wholesale relationship, something quite different happens.

The retailer makes a decision:

I believe I can sell this.

And then they put money behind that decision.

They purchase the inventory. I receive payment for my work. The product becomes theirs to merchandise and sell.

They have invested in my business.

And I have a responsibility to make that investment worthwhile.

Wholesale businesses have limited money and limited space. Every product they purchase is money that cannot be spent somewhere else. Every shelf given to one object is a shelf unavailable to another.

They have to choose.

That choice is part of the value of wholesale.

Consignment changes that equation.

A store can offer a much larger assortment because it doesn’t necessarily have to choose which inventory is worth purchasing. Makers can fill the shelves while retaining the financial risk themselves.

And when the arrangement includes both rent and commission, the maker is effectively paying once for access to the space and again when that access successfully produces a sale.

That doesn’t automatically make the arrangement unfair.

There are businesses and makers for whom that model works very well.

But it does mean I have to ask whether it makes sense for me.

Increasingly, the answer has been no.

What does it mean to support a local business?

This is where my thinking about wholesale has changed most.

We talk a lot about supporting local businesses.

Usually we mean customers buying from them.

But businesses can support other businesses too.

Wholesale is one of the ways that happens.

When a retailer purchases from an independent maker, they are doing more than giving that maker shelf space.

They are investing actual capital in another business.

That money allows the maker to purchase materials, pay suppliers, invest in equipment, hire photographers, develop new products, pay themselves and continue making the work the retailer wants to sell.

Then the retailer takes those products and uses them to build something of their own: a shop with a particular point of view, an assortment their customers trust and a reason for people to return.

The investment moves in both directions.

The retailer is not simply supporting my business.

My work needs to contribute something to theirs.

It needs to sell. It needs to make sense beside the other things they have chosen. It needs to help create an environment their customers want to return to.

That mutual investment is important to me.

Because there is a meaningful difference between providing a local maker with an opportunity to sell something and actually purchasing their work.

Both can be useful.

But they are not economically equivalent.

And I think that distinction gets lost sometimes when we talk about what it means to “support local.”

A store filled with work from local makers can look like an enormous investment in the local creative community.

Sometimes it is.

Sometimes the makers themselves have financed much of the inventory sitting on those shelves.

Those are two very different business structures, even if they look remarkably similar from the customer side of the counter.

There is another cost that is harder to put on a spreadsheet

The financial model is only part of what has changed my thinking.

The other part is the environment itself.

Many shared retail spaces are built around discovery.

There is always something new.

A new maker. A new shelf. A seasonal collection. A different display. Another object to pick up and examine.

That can be delightful.

It can also create a particular kind of relationship with objects: novelty becomes the primary reason to pay attention.

And I don’t think that is the relationship I want to build with my work.

I make fragrance slowly.

Scents return.

Ideas develop across collections.

Objects are intended to become part of the atmosphere of a home rather than simply something interesting encountered once on a shelf.

I want someone to burn a candle, live with it for a while, finish it and think:

I want that in my house again.

That is a very different kind of commerce.

It depends less on constant discovery and more on recognition.

Less what’s new?

More I know this.

And increasingly, I think the businesses I want to build relationships with are the ones that operate that way too.

Wholesale asks both of us to choose

Wholesale requires discernment from both sides.

A retailer has to decide what belongs in their store.

I have to decide where my work belongs.

When a shop purchases August Moon Rise, they aren’t simply renting me access to their customers. They are making an actual commitment to the work.

And I am making one to them.

I need to make something worth stocking.

They need to create a business worth stocking it in.

Neither of us is guaranteed that the customer will ultimately choose it.

There is risk on both sides.

And there is something else I’ve come to value: accountability.

A retailer who has purchased twelve candles has twelve reasons to understand what they bought.

To display them thoughtfully.

To notice which scents people pick up.

To answer questions.

To tell me what sells.

To decide whether they want twelve more.

And I have twelve reasons to care about what happens in their store.

Did the product work for their customer?

Was the price right?

What did people return for?

What sat untouched?

What are they asking me for next?

Over time, the relationship can become less about occupying a shelf and more about two businesses learning how to do business together.

That is the kind of retail relationship I find myself wanting more of.

This is also about becoming more specific

There is a temptation when you run a small product business to believe that more places must always be better.

More shelves.

More markets.

More stockists.

More opportunities for someone to stumble across you.

I believed some version of that for a long time.

Now I’m less convinced.

Presence is not necessarily the same thing as progress.

Sometimes being everywhere simply means maintaining inventory everywhere.

It means driving around restocking shelves, paying monthly fees, tracking small amounts of inventory across multiple locations and hoping enough people happen to encounter the work to make the arrangement worthwhile.

That is activity.

It isn’t automatically a good business model.

And perhaps more importantly, I no longer think every opportunity to be seen deserves an investment from me.

I’m becoming much more interested in choosing fewer places with greater intention.

Places where the customer makes sense.

Places where the work makes sense.

Places where the economics make sense.

And places where another business has looked at what I make and decided:

Yes. I want to invest in having this here.

Because I want to be able to make the same decision about them.

Leaving slowly

I’m not pulling everything from every consignment space tomorrow.

Businesses rarely need dramatic declarations.

Sometimes you simply learn something and begin making different decisions.

So I’m letting agreements end.

I’m being more selective about the ones I continue.

And when new opportunities arrive, I’m asking different questions than I used to.

Not simply:

Can I get my work in there?

But:

Why should my work be there?

Who shops there?

What kind of relationship does the store have with them?

Who is investing in the inventory?

Who carries the risk if it doesn’t sell?

What is each business contributing to the relationship?

And does this arrangement help both of us build the businesses we actually want to have?

Those questions have made the answer much clearer.

I don’t need August Moon Rise to occupy as many shelves as possible.

I want it to occupy the right ones.

Not simply places willing to make room for my work.

Places willing to choose it.

And I’m increasingly willing to leave the others empty.