We have worked hard over the past 12 months to find some improved packaging solutions.  We are please to announce that today we are launching the first of these new designs.

Our Lexington Glass Candle (5-154) 7oz candle has been updated to include an elegant black lid and full colour labels!  The colour label will be placed on the lid and comes in 5 different colour varieties.  The colour is chosen based on the fragrance on the candle.

This candle also features our new fragrance labels.  These new labels are larger than our old oval ones and much more noticeable.  The text is clear and allows the colour of the candle to show through creating a wonderful effect.  These fragrance labels are be placed on all of our products effective immediately.

We are working on bringing in lids for the Frosted Jar Candle and the Vaso Jar candle and hope to launch them in January.

Finally – stay tuned for some updates on our private label programs in the next month or two!

Here are some photos of the new packaging.

Vaso Gift Box with Vaso Candle

You asked for it!

We are pleased to announce the release of the long anticipated Gift Boxes for our Vaso Candle.

The Vaso Glass Candle is already one of our all time most popular candles and now it comes in a gift box!

We decided to create 4 separate boxes.  1 each of the 4 categories of fragrances.

The categories are: Fruits, Flowers, Foods, and General.

The gift boxes are not available blank or in private label format, unless you are interested in ordering 5000+ boxes.

Here are some photos!  Click the photos to see the full size image.

Each box includes a bar code for easy scanning at checkout on the bottom and basic burning instructions inside the flaps.  The fragrance will be applied with our regular fragrance sticker to both the box and the candle!

Also available is a box for the 50 Pack of Tealites.  Effective today you may choose to order your tealites in a box or our traditional bag.  Prices for both are the same.

Each year have a set of Christmas Fragrances that are only available for a limited time.  The fragrances have been chosen and ordered and will be ready for production before Oct 1st 2010!

Back by popular demand are:

Holiday Memories (Green) and
Mistletoe

New for this year:

Cinnabuns
Twigs o Spruce
Eggnog
Candy Cane

All Christmas Fragrances except Holiday Memories are the natural colour of the wax with no dye or whitener added.

The fragrances will be available to order on our website as soon as they have arrived so check back soon!

We look forward to meeting many of you for the first time, and seeing old friends again.

**Please note that our customer service department will be open during the show, however, our service manager, and lead candle maker will be at the show.  As such some customer service issues may be delayed until we return.  We will also have limited production during this time for the same reason.  Full customer service and production will resume on Friday August 20th.

All departments, including customer service and production will be closed from August 1st until August 15th.  You will be able to place orders by fax, email or online during the shutdown, however, the orders will not processed until we return.  Orders received during the closure will be processed in the order that they are received and confirmed with you when we reopen.  Please allow a few days for the order to be confirmed as we may have a large number of orders to process.

EcoSoya

We are extremely please to announce that Granville Island Candle Company is now an authorized distributor for EcoSoya Waxes from Nature’s Gifts International!  We have received many requests over the years for EcoSoya in addition to the Enchanted Lites Wax that we already carry.  Each brand of wax has its own unique characteristics and we feel that by providing both we offer complimenting products.

As of today we now have three EcoSoya Waxes in Stock.  We currently have CB-Advanced, PB Pillar, and the New CB-Xcel.

We encourage you to try the CB-Xcel.  It is 100% Soy, and is extremely easy to work with.  It resist frosting and rarely forms wet spots (air bubbles).

All three waxes are now available on our bulk supplies order system at bulk.granvilleislandcandles.com .

We look forward to providing you with this excellent product in addition to all of our existing products and services.

We have however, located a replacement product (item 2285) which will be available in the next couple of days.  The new frosted holder is a little larger, but candles still burn beautifully within this new container.  A new bonus is that the new product ships in a case of 15 with a simple black retail ready display tray.  The price will be little higher than our old product, but hopefully not by much.  We will be posting the price when the product becomes available.

You may have also noticed that the VC and VC-100 polycarbonate cup products have been unavailable in the clear colour for a couple of weeks.  Unfortunately, the manufacturer had an issue with the production equipment and was unable to send new stock.  However, this issue has now been resolved and new stock has been loaded onto a truck and is expected late next week.  As soon as they arrive they will be marked as available again on the website.

Have a great first weekend in May!

Have a great Earth Day everyone!

A special note on passwords!!  Due to differences in the encryption methods used in the old and new systems some passwords may no longer work.  If your password does not appear to work please use the Forgotten Password link and enter your email address.  Your password will then be reset and a new password emailed to you immediately.  After you have logged in with your new password you may change it to another password of your choosing by Clicking on My Account at the top of any page.

If you can still not log in please give us a call and we would be happy to assist you.

Also while we have extensively tested the new system there is bound to be a bug or two so please bear with us and let us know of any problems that you encounter so that we can correct them as soon as possible.

Give the new system a try and place an order today!

shop.granvilleislandcandles.com

We felt that these issues were less important than the overhaul of our main corporate site (www.granvilleislandcandles.com) and the launch of a separate website for the purchase of bulk supplies (one of the most common complaints was that having both candles and supplies on the same site made things to complicated).  However, now both of those projects are complete and we will be proceeding to completely replace the current wholesale ordering system.

This new system will be easier to use and read.  It will provide more ease in tracking your orders and allow you to reorder items that you have ordered in the past.  All user names and passwords should be transferred from the old to the new, however, it is possible that a few accounts may have issues after the transition.  If you find that you can not log into the new site please just give us a call or drop us an email and we will manually correct the issue.  We will attempt to identify these accounts before you log in, but it is possible that we will not spot a problem.  Most issues would relate to user names that use special characters that were acceptable in the old system but not in the new.

We plan on making the actual switch over the Easter Break.  As such our wholesale order system will be unavailable from approximately Thursday April 1 until Tuesday April 6th.  We apologize in advance for any inconvenience that this may cause but we must disable access to the data base server while the transfer process in happening in order to transfer the price lists, user accounts, and other important information.  After the transfer is complete our developers must review every product for proper pricing, and reprogram the fragrance selection options for each.  This will hopefully only take a day or two.

We make another post this blog when the upgrade is complete.

Have a happy Easter!