How Tiana from Winding Wick Candles uses Craftybase to automate and organize her inventory
Tiana from Winding Wick Candles shares how she uses Craftybase to keep track of her inventory levels, recipes and physical stock locations.
Tiana Coats is the owner and creator of Winding Wick Candles, a Texas based handmade candle business.
In 2015, Tiana was feeling unfulfilled working in the insurance industry and was looking for a more creative way to make a living. Quitting her job, she decided to try making candles. She had never made them before, but she liked using them - after many experiments with different waxes, wicks and fragrances she created a range of products she felt were ready to sell to the public.
She now has a successful candle making business, and opened her first physical storefront in Ferris, TX in 2021. She also runs a popular YouTube channel, making videos for others learning how to make their own candles.
Tiana was initially using spreadsheets to keep track of her inventory, but soon found it to be a very manual process. She started to realize that she needed something more automated so she could spend more time on other aspects of her business.
...the spreadsheets were just not working out. They seemed good in theory, it seemed really organized...but it's very manual. Having to still make the product and then at the end of the day go in the spreadsheet and update everything manually, it just really didn't make sense."
Tiana realised she was double and sometimes triple ordering fragrances from her suppliers due to not knowing where they were buried in her workshop storage, wasting money and time in the process.
Once her inventory started to get bigger, it required a different strategy for keeping on top of stock levels. She started to find she was running out of materials and was continuously having to mark popular products as "out of stock" on her sales channels - this was a hugely frustrating situation for Tiana.
...it's frustrating because then you can't make sales and you're running behind on sales. And also when you oversell something, you think you have the material and then now you're rushing around because you actually don't."
Tiana decided to try Craftybase and found that it was exactly what she needed to solve her inventory woes.
When I found Craftybase it really did help solve a lot of problems."
Tiana was taken by the fact that Craftybase was created specifically for small makers like her, unlike other solutions like Quickbooks. Positive reviews on social media amongst other candlemakers also prompted the candlemaker to give CB a try.
The gamechanger for Tiana's business is the automation - having stock levels automatically update when checking in inventory, and being able to instantly share real-time information across to her team has been a massive timesaver.
So having a system that helps you automate things is a lot cheaper than having a person do all of that for you."
Tiana also loves the recipe feature - being able to have her recipes in a single, accessible place means she can onboard new team members easily and have all her important information together.
Craftybase has also given Tiana the tools to implement a bin location system for her shop area - making it possible for her to know the exact physical position of her materials and products.
So now I can go into Craftybase and I have all of my bins that are labeled, and I can say, "Okay, where is my apple fragrance?" And it's really easy to locate, whereas when I was using spreadsheets, it just... That wasn't a thing."
Overall, Craftybase has been a revelation for Tiana and her candle business. It's helped her to save time and money via smart automation, and to get her stock under control and organized.
See Tiana discuss Craftybase in her videos below, and visit her
Winding Wicks Candle store here!