Susan Wenograd

@nick_eubanks Been there. Living it constantly.

I honestly can't with these kids guys... I've been building for ~19 years, from my bootstraps, there are no shortcuts... now I have literally millions of dollars to deploy in spend... and these kids who've never even paid a single bill are trying to teach me something... little man, do some research

@danavirsarria @MehtabKarta Hit me up if you need advice. There’s more to consider than what’s in this brief note.

@MehtabKarta My manufacturer owns his own candle brand and told me he's in 400+ stores because of Faire. All he did was upload and do basic SEO. Suffice to say, I'm working on doing the same lol

If you're not on Faire, you absolutely should be. Dump your product feed on it and enjoy free money. Great place to send small mom & pop retailers. You can usually run with fairly high margins on it too because the retailers on there are used to sourcing from distributors and relatively small. We've had good retail partnerships come out of it too.

I’ve always been an independent, so I have no dog in political party infighting. But it’s truly mind-blowing to me the side who vehemently preaches 2A rights is now “well, but…” over Alex Pretti. He followed every rule 2A folks claim responsible gun owners do.

The news cycle is exhausting, but I got to be on it for 5 mins today about something happy.

@dave_stickland @BillBrewsterTBB I live here and can give you list.

@BillBrewsterTBB What did you like about it? What did I miss?

Richmond really kicks a lot of ass.

I finally started launching a line I’ve worked on for months and months and months. It has so may scents, it’ll take a full year to drop them out every month. Surreal to see it exist, finally.

Twice in the last month, 2 people eached out LinkedIn with the ol’ “hey! I see we are both connected to such and such,!” They each referred to a different person, neither of whom I had a good experience with. I simply didn’t reply, but whew, landmine outreach tactic, folks.

I made my plans and forecasting for 2026 on the candle biz. Purely driven by what the data is telling me. Still scary as hell. And I can’t wait to see what it does.

@decadentquill @ThatChristinaG So funny to see this, I thought to myself yesterday, “I love seeing people delight in the redemption of Edmond!”

Every six months or so, there is a new Darling of literary twitter. It was Brothers Karamazov for a while (felt like everyone on my TL was reading it) and now it's The Count of Monte Cristo. I love seeing people delight in the classics 😌

@MenachemAni @AaronOrendorff Safest answer.

@AaronOrendorff “I work on the computer”

It finally happened. My in-laws asked what I do. WHAT SHOULD I TELL THEM? Real question. There may be prizes.

@dave_stickland I forgot about Mr. Destiny!

Watched Family Man, Cage is a wall streeter who missed out on the girl, glimpses middle class life with her/family, learns his lesson. Then Mr. Destiny, the reverse movie w/ Belushi, middle class guy gets offered his what if as a rich well-to-do to realize how good he had it. Talk about movies they couldn't make today, hustle culture and whatever 10X of Greed Is Good we're in...

Maybe I should ditch candles and go all-in on making challah. I think I perfected it this year.

Mentally I'm here.

Oh you know, just wrapping up the holiday season, minding your business when you get a DM from a reporter who was gifted one of your candles and wants to interview you live. Totally normal day.

@danavirsarria Yep. This. It’s showing up in different ways depending on pack size/price but a consistent pattern. I had a super aggressive 2 candle bundle at this show this week - almost no one took it except for my diehard regulars. They still only bought 1.

@SusanEDub I saw something similar this year. Less people buying my 7 packs. More buying my 3 packs, even though 7 packs are my best selling SKUs.

Year over year sales at in-person shows are crazy. It’s tough out there, y’all.

@danavirsarria Yep, there’s economic fear. People are buying, but AIV is smaller and bundles aren’t swaying them.

@SusanEDub That's really interesting. Probably due to the overall economy. I'd imagine that means a bigger emphasis on non-candle SKUs!

@danavirsarria I wondered if it was just me, but vendors I’m friend with who have totally different things from me were all down 20-30% YoY. Name of the game: under $20 and volume.

@SusanEDub Damn, that's a big drop :/ Excited to see what you do in 2026 to deal with it!

@humankind_place I’m profitable, but not as much as I was last year. I’m sorry, I know how hard it is ❤️❤️

@SusanEDub I went to a few shows this year and it’s the same way for me. I usually just breakeven on table fee. Trade shows or farmers markets etc :(

@danavirsarria Nope. It’s there, but it’s not making up for show revenue. But my biggest show of the year was this week and it was down 25.7% YoY. In sales by hour it ended up being my worst show for the year. Crazy. I’m making big decisions for 2026 with the patterns I am seeing.

@SusanEDub Has ecommerce been able to pick up the slack?

@BryantGarvin Bad.

@SusanEDub Good crazy or bad crazy?