I agree with all that has been written to date about this company. The candles although promised to be of high quality were from an appearance standard high quality, but the ingredients were below average. I too have had numerous cases of the peach, blue berry and cherry pies melt in my store on display. I have spent the last two weeks restocking my stores with new candles to replace the melting ones. I have another 10 cases in my basement which need to be returned.
I was also a victim of Steve Jeffers in SC and although he had sent a locator to my area by luck after 2 months, I was only able to get into 25 of my 40 locations and as of today I have 16 stores up and running and bi-weekly sales of less than $500. After substracting gas etc. I make about $200/week. A far cry from the ad in the paper, BUY A CANDLE ROUTE MAKE $100K.
As stated in all of the complaints all of the materials from the company a full of inconsistencies and deceiptful statements. Shipping costs per candle $. 25 or less, depending were you live, my first shippment cost me $. 60 per small candle and I live on the East Coast within the same shipping zone as the factory. Then let's get back to the product issue, when I was forced to re-order small pies, just to get my stores set-up, since the company ships more large than you need and not enough small candles.
I opened the cases to set-up the stores and found a different looking candle than the first shippment, it looked machine made instead of handmade as promised. Of course we market them as handmade in the US, which helps to justify the price. I let that slide, but when I exchanged some peach candles for apple after much discussion with the company, even though they promise to exchange slow movers, I opened the large apple pies and they look like the new small candles and are machine made as well. One of my few stores looked at them and thought they may not sell now, since the look is alot cheaper and they contain fewer apple slices than the first batch.
I have run on, but I am with the crowd if there are successful distributors out there and I have not found any, then just settle with the few disgruntled and we will go away. I made an offer to buyback my unsold inventory and unopened displays and I would go away and I never received a response from Mr Antonelli.
0 comments