The Chandler Guild Handbook is a collaborative document used to capture the spirit, values, and knowledge of the community.
Preface, introduction and frontmatters...
The Village Chandler Handbook is a collaborative book authored by the members and masters of The Chandler Guild. Through this collaborative authorship, the Chandler Guild's business model, on-line community model and candlemaking best practices will be documented.
What is The Chandler Guild community? What roles are needed to support a productive and enjoyable business/craft community? How will the ChandlerGuild.com web site support the Chandler Guild?
Hear, ye! Hear, ye! Let it be known that The Chandler Guild will hold its first Continental Congress sometime in the next few months on dates and at a place to be determined! All Chandler Guild members with ideas, comments and questions about this upcoming revolutionary event are encouraged to contribute your two or more cents' worth as a comment below.
The Chandler Guild Continental Congress will be the monumental kick-off event of the guild's Formative Year. During this all-important first year, we'll be envisioning what we want the Chandler Guild to be, how it will work, and how we'll each fit in and can make a truly valuable contribution to this first-of-a-kind microenterprise network.
Why call it a Continental Congress?
Much like the original colonies that were destined to become the United States, the Chandler Guild is currently a loose association of craft-oriented business folk who share some revolutionary ideas. We are independent business people who want to be part of something truly remarkable. But we don't want to sacrifice our individuality and freedom to be part of it. We want to revolutionize the candle industry. But in doing so, we don't want to simply become the latest nameless, faceless megacorp to dominate a highly consolidated industry.
The revolutionary founders of the U.S. didn't create our country overnight on a whim. They gathered, in secret at first, for the first and second Continental Congresses of 1774 and 1775. Eventually these revolutionary folks had a Declaration that everyone cold get behind that led to the creation of a new and radically different nation.
This is what we'll be aiming for at the Chandler Guild Continental Congress as we launch our Formative Year of business discovery. The Congress will be the ceremonial initiation of the deliberate and shared commitment of a group of folks who together want to create and grow a business that is unlike any we've been part of before.
Where will the Congress be held?
Like the U.S. founders trying to build a nation, we're on a tight budget. Revolutions are historically underfunded. So there is a very good chance that the first Chandler Guild Continental Congress will be held in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Mike and Lynette Richards' neighborhood is a vital and lively place with some pretty funky spaces in the various art studios and galleries that surround their Soyawax and Village Chandler headquarters building. We're in the process of evaluating the availability and capacities of these locations.
When will the Chandler Guild Continental Congress take place?
Soon, but not too soon. We know that many of the Founding 100 Village Chandlers are family-based. You are hoping that we can have this kick-off organizing event sometime before school starts. This means sometime in the early-to-mid August timeframe. In the event that we can't pull everything together by then, our 'Plan B' would be to shoot for dates during a Fall school break time such as around the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. Obviously, scheduling during the school year gets tricky. So you can be assured that we are going to do everything possible to make an August date work for us.
What about?...
Yes, this announcement opens more questions than it supplies answers. We will be doing our best to organize this exciting and important event as soon as possible. At this point, we simply want the Guild members to have an advance warning of what's shaping up. If nothing else, we're giving you a guesstimate of when and where we hope to hold this event. This should help you with shaping up your Summer schedules.
Please feel free to post comments and questions below about the Congress. Also, don't hesitate to post ideas about what meetings, activities and events you'd like to see incorporated into the Congress' agenda.
Lights! Camera!... Action! Start making your plans now to be in the Bohemian Commercial District of Cedar Rapids, Iowa on August 22nd-24th. Come be part of the revolution that will change the candle industry.
See this page for the Village Chandler Guild First Continental Congress Event Agenda and Delegate Participation Guide.
In order for you to start making travel plans, the dates have been set for our first Continental Congress. We will have an optional social gathering on August 22, 2003 from 6pm until 11pm. The actual proceedings of the Congress will take place from 8:30 AM Saturday until 6:00 PM Sunday on August 23rd and 24th, 2003.
Lodging can be booked with the special Village Chandler Guild discount room rate at the Crowne Plaza Five Seasons Hotel. Phone # is 319-363-8161. The Crowne Plaza is downtown, 10 blocks from the Village Chandler building. This is a pleasant walk during the summer months.
This will be one of the most important events that will ever take place in the development of The Village Chandler Guild. We will have key work sessions on the day to day skills of operating a successful candle business. At the Congress we will determine, as a community, the purpose and objectives of the Guild. This Congress will also be where we have our first board election as we take the Village Chandler Guild from a growing concept to a productive reality.
We look forward to the involvement of all Village Chandlers in this important process.To be a successful Village Chandler, you will need to be accomplished at both the art of candlemaking and the art of doing business. In this section of The Village Chandler Handbook Guild members and masters will capture and share the techniques that produce the finest quality soy wax candles.
Your goal is to be a Village Chandler, not the Village Idiot! ;-) Success as a microenterprise businessperson is more than just making beautiful and environmentally-friendly candles. You need to be able to run a successful craft business. In this section of the handbook, community members document and share their lessons of hard knocks learned along the way to becoming an independent and creative Village Chandler.
Everything you've ever wanted to know about soybeans and soy wax... but were afraid to ask! And if we don't know the answer, we'll gladly point you to the Iowa Soybean Association where they have a passion for everything soybean and soybean-use related.
The humble soybean is fast becoming a source of product innovations that touches all our lives in many, many ways. Soy... it's not just for tofu anymore! ;-)
In this section of our Soy FAQ, you'll find our favorite soybean or soy-based industry resources on the web.
The Iowa Soybean Association and Iowa Soybean Promotion Board love soy candles! It's not too surprising when you think about it. Iowa soy wax chandlers collectively bought over 800,000 pounds of soybean-based candle wax. That represents about 10,000 bushels of additional Iowa soybeans going to a new and growing market.
| The History of Soy Candles | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1991 | In 1991 Michael Richards founded Candleworks to manufacture beeswax candles. As he entered the candle industry with beeswax products he realized there was a growing demand for natural wax candles. However, there was a huge economic barrier. Namely, the cost of beeswax was 10 times the cost of petroleum candle wax (paraffin). In July, Michael Richards started experimenting with a wide range of plant waxes and vegetable oils to find a natural wax that could be cost-competitive with petroleum wax. He completed thousands of hours of tests with tropical plant waxes such as carnauba and candelilla waxes, plus domestic oils such as corn and soybean oil. | ||
| 1992-1994 | In 1992, this testing resulted in the first vegetable wax candle, made from a blend of vegetable oils and natural waxes. At that stage of development, the vegetable wax was hard and brittle. To obtain a softer, more pliable wax, Michael started to acquire and test a wider range of tropical and domestic plant oils. This included partially hydrogenated coconut, palm, and soybean oils. Michael Richards continued working on two parallel tracks: | ||
| | Manufacturing beeswax candles | ||
| | Research and development for other vegetable wax candles. In 1994 Michael started blending beeswax with soybean oil to achieve an economical natural wax candle. | ||
| 1995 | The Body Shop, a national chain of stores that was Candleworks main beeswax candle customer, issued the first purchase orders for a line of natural wax aromatherapy candles from Candleworks. For the first three months, the content of the Body Shop candle wax was a blend of beeswax and almond oil. Because of the increasingly high cost of almond oil, Michael then started blending soybean oil with the beeswax. He completely replaced almond oil with soybean oil in all commercial production of candles in May of 1995. | ||
| 1996 | Michael then experimented with various ranges of hydrogenated soybean oil to eliminate the costly beeswax in his natural wax formula. In the fall of 1996, beeswax was no longer used. Instead, the candle wax developed and utilized by Candleworks featured hydrogenated soybean oil as the majority percentage of the candle formula. Other vegetable oils were then added in minority portions to achieve specific cosmetic characteristics, such as a smooth even surface and scent projection. Michael created low-melt soy wax for container candles and a high-melt point wax for freestanding pillar candles in 1996. | ||
| 1996 | With the goal of creating an edible birthday cake candle, Purdue University students developed their own candle formula using soybean oil. The candles won first place in a competition sponsored by the Indiana Soybean Development Council and Purdue's Department of Agronomy. | ||
| 1997 | Candleworks negotiated with the University of Iowa to provide a chemical engineering intern to test and document the new soy waxes developed by Michael Richards. This resulted in a report prepared for the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship titled: "Increasing the Use of Soybeans in the Manufacturing of Candles". | ||
| 1998 | The Indiana Soybean Board unveiled a brand of candles called Harvest Lights made from soybeans at the Farm Progress Show. The development of these candles was completely farmer-funded through the Soybean Checkoff program. This formula has since been patented. | ||
| 1999-2000 | Documentation of Michaels research process on the development of natural plant-based waxes from 1991 through 1999 was submitted to a patent law firm in Des Moines, Iowa (Mc Kee, Vorhees and Sease). Formal application for patent pending status was presented to the U.S. patent office the following year. | ||
| 2001 | Cargill purchased intellectual property rights in Michael's soy wax innovation. Cargill now manufactures soybean wax formulas developed by Michael. MIchael continues to market the soy wax in the industry and provide technical training for other candle manufacturers in the use of soy wax. | ||
| 2002 | Michael Richards launched a nationwide guild of candle manufacturers called Village Chandler. This guild is committed to the use of soy wax in candle production. (At present there are more than 62 Village Chandlers in 17 states and Canada). | ||
| 2003 | This soy wax innovation is fast-becoming a new national industry. Today, soy candles manufacturers range from numerous entrepreneurs to major manufacturers like Hanna's Candle Company (one of the five largest candle companies in the U.S.). | ||
Here we'll address the software technologies and design requirements to implement an on-line collaborative community to resembles a 21st century version of the craft guild. Of particular interest is who we implement the 'story-driven, game-oriented' design requirements for the e-commerce engine that will power the business side of the Chandler Guild community.
The Open Source content management system, Drupal, has been selected by Sohodojo as the platform for the Chandler Guild community web site. The Drupal development framework's outstanding community 'plumbing' features are ideally suited to the requirements for building an on-line Guild to support the decentralized and distributed network of our Village Chandlers.
A hearty thank you to Sohodojo Advisory Board member Gary Lawrence Murphy for bringing Drupal to our attention. Gary recently rebuilt his Teledynamics nanocorp-orate web site using Drupal after 'kissing too many frogs'.
We'll have more to say about this excellent and powerful Open Source software as we gain experience and insights into it. So far, it is great!