Small business owners face countless challenges, and manufacturers face even greater levels of complexity. These companies must quickly become adept at scaling up production, managing inventory, and going head-to-head with larger brands. On top of that, they must somehow find the money they need to expand while dealing with rising operational costs.
For The Dancing Wick, an Oklahoma candle business, these challenges were frustrating and slowed their progress, making day-to-day operations more complicated than they needed to be.
The Dancing Wick Ignites: A Journey to Success
Soon after receiving candle-making supplies as a gift from her mother, Monika MacDonald’s hobby quickly grew into a deep passion as she began sharing her handmade creations with friends. This laid the foundation for what would eventually become The Dancing Wick, a family-run candle business based in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Despite this passion and dedication, running the business wasn’t without its challenges. With over 25,000 SKUs to manage, the family had far more on their plate than the typical business and managing inventory related operations proved to be more difficult than anticipated.
As they were making all of their products in-house and selling them on Etsy and Shopify, the business was stuck in a tedious process of sorting orders, printing out paperwork, and manually tracking what needed to be produced. This inefficient system was not only time-consuming — eating up 30–50 hours each week — but also prone to errors that added stress to an already busy team.
The team decided to ditch sorting orders by hand and start looking for an inventory and order management solution. They tried to adopt one of today’s leading inventory management systems, but even after spending eight frustrating months getting it to work right, it was only marginally better than doing it manually.
What finally made a difference was the adoption of Kaizntree, a platform that streamlined their entire operations into a single point of truth.
How The Dancing Wick Turned Challenges into Growth with Kaizntree
One of the biggest challenges The Dancing Wick faced was figuring out what candles needed to be poured every day — a task that could easily take up hours before any actual work even began. They were able to completely automate this process with Kaizntree, which generates their manufacturing lists in minutes as opposed to hours. By freeing up valuable time, The Dancing Wick is able to focus more on what they do best: creating beautiful, handcrafted candles.
The Dancing Wick’s team also leveraged Kaizntree to gain a complete overview of their entire operations. Having a real-time pulse of their inventory, production and SKU level demand has been incredibly valuable. Now, it’s much simpler for them to track every aspect of the business, giving them insights they didn’t have before while saving up to 50 hours each week.
“It’s helped us stay competitive in a market where data is the new lifeblood,” says The Dancing Wick’s executive vice president, Micah MacDonald.
A Platform that Has Your Back
These features were only one piece of the puzzle for The Dancing Wick.
The previous solution they used wasn’t just time-consuming — it also came with terrible customer service. “They treated us so poorly that finding and working with Kaizntree felt like a breath of fresh air,” MacDonald says.
“Most companies have an attitude that’s, like, ‘This is our system, be glad you can sign up.’ But not Kaizntree,” MacDonald points out. “They actually listen to what I want in a system and keep building toward that vision — often with even better features than I imagined.”
“It’s not just that our operations have improved,” MacDonald says. “It’s the exceptional customer service that has made us feel like true partners.”
Fanning the Flames of Success
The Dancing Wick was saddled with time-consuming tasks and inefficient systems that took time away from growing the business. Kaizntree simplified the business’ inventory operations, cut out hours of manual work, and gave them the insights needed to grow. Now, The Dancing Wick is free to focus on making excellent products and growing the business.
About Kaizntree
Kaizntree was started by Marcos Brisson and Benoît Van Keer, who initially began working with manufacturers as consultants. “We decided to build Kaizntree after seeing one too many businesses pour their heart into scaling their operations and get bogged down by inventory management problems,” Brisson says.
link