A resident of Kursk, Sergei Mauser, was going to take the veil as a monk, but could not stand the worldly temptations: other novices posted his photo on a dating site to test the seriousness of his intentions, he met a woman and left. To support his family, he became an entrepreneur. At first he sold candles to temples, then equipment for their casting and production. Having provided customers with products for years to come, he almost ruined his business, but teamed up with competitors, reformatted the business and plans to expand the range. His company, the Preobrazhenskoe Candle Brotherhood, produces from 200 to 500 kg of candles per day, with revenue for 2016 of 13 million rubles. The entrepreneur told Inc. how he bypassed the monopoly of the official suppliers of the Russian Orthodox Church, what digital marketing skills helped him find clients in rural parishes, and why chocolates with Orthodox symbols are needed.

Sergei Mauser (Kargopoltsev) learned how to make church candles at the Prophet Elijah Monastery in Bashkortostan, where he spent almost ten years. In 2010, he left the monastery and settled in Belgorod, worked as a storekeeper, forwarder in the Ignatia-Stavropol sisterhood - traveled around Russia with icons, candles and other church goods. There was enough money for himself, but when Sergey decided to get married, he realized that in order to feed his family, you need to create a business.

He decided to pour and sell church candles - he ordered a form from the Ukrainian company Sirius for 30 thousand rubles, bought wax and paraffin and started the business right from his mother-in-law in the barn.

I decided: I will become number one in this topic - or perish. To stay afloat and feed the family, it was necessary to have 500-1000 rubles a day. I started selling candles for 300 rubles for a two-kilogram pack, Sergey recalls.

"Preobrazhensky Candle Brotherhood" in numbers

source: company data

200–500

kg candles per day is produced by the company.

15–20

thousand rubles a month the company spends on promotion in social networks.

13

million rubles - revenue for 2016.

90–100

rubles - cost of 2 kg of candles.

350

rubles temples pay for 2 kg of candles.

Ingratiate yourself with believers

The market for goods for the ROC has always been closed and it was extremely difficult to enter it. Sergei offered his candles in the surrounding churches - but he was refused. I had to develop a special methodology:

I understood that I would live comfortably for the next five years if 12 temples regularly buy candles from me. It remained to find these temples and become "one's own" for them.

Sergey traveled to the nearest cities, lived in hotels at pilgrimage centers and became a parishioner of local churches: he went to services, talked with abbots, and helped collect donations.

He manifested himself wherever he could - and in a few weeks he was going to leave, and the rector asked me: “Sergius, why are you leaving?” I said, they say, family, you need to earn money. "And what are you doing?" - candles. This is how you get a loyal customer.

More and more loyal customers. Sergey sold 2-4 packs of 2.5 kg each (the standard measure for church candles), or 5-10 kg of candles per day. In order to increase sales, he began to study - he watched videos of business coach Andrei Parabellum on Internet promotion on the Internet and even underwent training in Moscow. After the training, he took the sonorous pseudonym Mauser and began to apply his knowledge in the conservative environment of the Russian Orthodox Church.

You cannot personally visit all the temples, and Sergey came up with a more effective way of promotion. At the training, he learned how to create landing pages - one-page sites with a form where there were only three fields: "Name", "Phone" and "E-mail" - and sent them to the monasteries to collect contacts of potential clients. According to Sergei, he created more than 50 such sites at once in order to score search results with them.

On these sites, I mentioned free shipping and put my name everywhere so that it would become known in the church environment - this helped to overcome distrust, he says.

So Mauser created a database of potential clients - now there are almost 5 thousand churches in it - to whom he could offer his services.

Rise and fall

In 2012, a familiar rector of the temple from Belarus suggested that Mauser make aluminum molds for candles. Having studied the market, Mauser found out that the main manufacturer is the Ukrainian private design bureau Sirius. Their forms are quite expensive - one piece costs from $135 to $900 depending on the design - and Sergey saw a niche: he decided to make a product accessible to rural parishes.

At that time, a mold cost 25-30 thousand rubles, and a rural temple could spend no more than 10-15 thousand on it. I set myself the task of making such equipment half the price, - says the entrepreneur.

He found a way: to make forms not from aluminum, but from wood (this is how candles were poured in the old days). Sergey registered an individual entrepreneur, rented a room in Belgorod for 15 thousand rubles a month and bought a milling machine for 1.2 million rubles. To raise money, he sold the inherited room in Ufa for 900 thousand rubles, borrowed 200 thousand rubles from friends, another 100 thousand rubles were savings from the candle trade. He hired a milling machine operator (for 1,000 rubles a day), and he himself became a process manager (later he hired an assistant for 15,000 rubles a month).

The quality of candles made from wooden molds was lower, but Mauser sold them for an average of 15-20 thousand rubles (at a cost of 4-5 thousand rubles). To make churches more willing to make orders, he was ready to send forms without prepayment throughout Russia, give 100 m of wick and open access to a training video course on starting candle production.

I immediately came up with this promotion - to make my offer hard to refuse and to be head and shoulders above the competition if they appear, Mauser says.

Familiar abbots and temples from the database collected earlier became clients. Northern monasteries (Nikolo-Korelsky Monastery in Severodvinsk, Arkhangelsk region) began to order wooden forms for the sake of tourist excursions: the inhabitants in bast shoes demonstrated the way of the monastery in the old days - including candle production.

Due to the low price, the demand was high - 4-5 forms were ordered daily, the revenue was about 100 thousand rubles per working day. At that time, Mauser moved away from the production of candles - it was much more profitable to sell molds:

If we sold candles at a maximum price twice as high as the cost, then the molds were 3-4 times more expensive.

According to Mauser, as a manufacturer of candles or molds, he did not meet the resistance of the monopolist in this market - the Sofrino art and production enterprise, for which small producers were "like a fry against a whale." However, in 2014, he faced an unforeseen difficulty - the patriarchate "strongly advised" churches to buy candles and molds only from certified manufacturers (that is, Sofrino). However, temples buy candles where it is cheaper, so the market lives, Sergey explains:

Batiushka is also a person, he also, as a rule, has 4-5 children at home, and he has to turn around. It is more profitable for him to buy from small manufacturers.

But in 2015, mold sales plummeted. After analyzing the situation, Sergey realized that there are many competitors on the market, in addition, the equipment for casting candles is designed for 15-20 years and has not exhausted its resource for those who purchased it:

I began calling my base, asking if they still needed uniforms, and the priests said: “Sergius, where do we need them, salt, or what?”

As a result, in 2015, Mauser sold his equipment for 350 thousand rubles and refused to rent a workshop.

nikolay mitrokhin

sociologist of religion, researcher at the University of Bremen:

The sale of candles brings temples 70% of the income, and the margin on candles can reach up to 5 thousand%. This is hundreds of kilograms of candles per year for one temple. A candle is a form of monetary contribution of believers to the temple, so that it is heated, illuminated and something goes to the priest and workers. In Russia, people in churches are not very willing to donate money, but they are happy to buy candles. Within the framework of the church system, the value of a candle is well understood, so there is a serious struggle for people to put only candles bought in the temple, and not buy them in a hardware store for a penny, depriving the temple of self-sufficiency.

At the same time, the production of candles is a narrow and high-risk market, in order to get there, one must be strictly Orthodox with the appropriate acquaintances. It is almost impossible for an outsider to enter here and do business.

"Preobrazhensky Candle Brotherhood"

How to start candle production

Depending on the scale, the production of candles can be of three types:

mini block

Initial investment (the cost of equipment, along with the cost of wax and wick, forms, consumables) - from 10 thousand to 100 thousand rubles. For this money, you can buy 3-4 aluminum molds for the production of church candles - and pour them even in the kitchen.

middle block

From 100 thousand to 300 thousand rubles. This is an average production for people with minimal business experience and connections in the church market to negotiate sales.

large block

from 300 thousand to 2 million rubles. This is a drum line, where the machine itself pours wax, disassembles and cuts candles, human participation is minimal.

Wax costs an average of 200 to 750 rubles per 1 kg (from beekeepers). But the cost of a two-kilogram pack of pure wax candles will be at least 400-500 rubles - this is unprofitable, since temples buy such packages for 350 rubles. To reduce the cost, candles are made from paraffin (it costs from 130 to 150 rubles per 1 kg, wholesale from 100 kg - 150 rubles / kg, 20-30 tons - 30 rubles / kg), and pure wax in the composition - only 10%. Taking into account additives, the cost of a pack of candles is 90-100 rubles.

There are two ways to sell candles to a temple, says Sergey Mauser: to register an individual entrepreneur or LLC, or to informally agree with the metropolitan on opening a shop on the territory of a temple. The second way is illegal, but it is chosen by many entrepreneurs: there are tax breaks in the Russian Orthodox Church, the absence of tax audits is guaranteed. You can try to quietly negotiate directly with the rector of a particular church, but this is “at your own peril and risk,” Mauser warns: the metropolitan can find out and close the shop. In any case, it will not be possible to sell candles to temples without his approval. But if there is a blessing, there will always be a demand:

Candles are like printer cartridges: necessary consumables, which are also wildly popular, because the mentality of the Russian people is this - the more candles you put in the church, the more good you will get.

Today the company is engaged in the manufacture of candles and candle equipment, and candles and drums (machine tools) are produced in Kursk by Gedakyan, and molds are made in Ivanovo by Vladimirov. On the day, "Brotherhood" produces from 200 to 500 kg of candles on an automatic line and 40 kg of hand-cast candles. The largest part of the proceeds comes from the sale of production lines - the company sells 7-8 such machines per year at a price of 350 thousand to 2.5 million rubles (it takes up to 45 days to manufacture each). The total revenue of the project for 2016 amounted to 13 million rubles (Mauser does not disclose the profit, but notes that the margin from forms is 50-70% and is now declining).

Irina Kramarenko has always been ambitious. When she was looking for a job in her last years at the Faculty of Psychology at Moscow State University, she considered offers only with a high salary. So, through a newspaper ad, she became an assistant to the general director at the Auto-Maximum automobile company. True, among the requirements was a confident command of a computer and English. Kramarenko got the job without these skills. On the first day, her boss gave her the task of making a Word tablet with the data on all employees the size of a cigarette pack - so that it would fit in her wallet. She did it for a week. “We have the whole department aligned the borders to get the exact size. Even the boss joined the case, ”Kramarenko laughs. As a result, she had excellent computer skills. The second test - English - she overcame after the boss began to give her tasks by e-mail in English, despite the fact that it was 1995 in the yard. Every evening, finishing the main work, she translated his questions and her answers with a dictionary, sometimes until eleven at night. Six months later, English was mastered at a decent level.

But the main achievement of those times, Irina considers the very work with the chef - Svyatoslav Raikov, of whom she has the warmest memories. He arrived from the States in 1985 with a $20 case of auto supplies and started building his business out of a garage. On the repair of auto glass, which then no one knew how to repair, he built an entire empire. Kramarenko speaks of his former leader with admiration. “The most important thing is a personal example,” says Irina. - I used to think that you need a lot of money for your business. And then I saw a real case of how you can build a business from scratch, and a diversified one at that.” According to Kramarenko, Raikov chose only unique ideas - something that did not exist before. And then, when the business was launched and began to generate income, he taught others to do this by selling starter kits to the regions.

Then chance intervened. Kramarenko was going to the next automobile exhibition in the USA, and the officer slapped her a six-month visa. At that time it was luck, and Irina decided not to miss the moment - she was already writing a diploma in America. The company had an apartment in Seattle, enough money to live on, and Irina took up English.

Once her neighbor brought home a kilogram of paraffin and in a saucepan, adding a little dye, right before Ira's eyes, made a beautiful candle in an hour - as a gift to her boyfriend's parents. “I admired her work,” says Kramarenko, recalling that moment as “a real revolution in the mind.” Previously, candles seemed to her only in two forms: thin church and small stubs, which were kept in the house in case the electricity was turned off. She then discovered many specialty candle shops. As it turned out, the Americans used candles in all homes and were considered a good gift. “And what could we give at that time? For a woman - only perfume and tights, for a man - a belt. That's the whole set of gifts, ”she recalls. Everything came together: ease of manufacture and uniqueness of the idea - a candle as a gift for a Russian consumer. The chef approved the initiative of the assistant, and for the next three months in the States she was preparing the future candle production: she studied the market, bought molds, subscribed to catalogs, completed an internship at one of the candle factories and a training course in Florida, where she learned how to sculpt a variety of candles, even the most complex ones are carved, and joined the American Candle Makers Association. She returned to Moscow with a suitcase full of props for the candle shop. “Then in our country there were no problems with paraffin,” Irina recalls. Raikov allocated a 20-meter garage, where she made her first batch of carved candles in one day - 20 pieces. And then she called a lot of stores with an offer to take them for sale. The product has gone. Six months later, the staff of the "candle factory" was already 5-6 craftsmen, and Irina decided to separate: in May 1998, she became the owner of her own company. “Back then, I could already afford to rent a room and pay for accounting,” says Kramarenko, estimating his investment in “independent sailing” at $1,000. The default of 1998 did not greatly crippled the business - it happened exactly on the eve of the start of the season, and for two years of work, Irina already knew that from April to September there was a “dead season”, during which workers also need to be paid wages, so money to maintain production she had. Kramarenko assesses the damage from that default as "a transition from super-profits to just profits." But the crisis of 2008 turned out to be more severe - the bank in which the account was opened collapsed, the number of corporate orders decreased (and candles as a gift or as a corporate souvenir are very popular). I had to work very hard to stay afloat. Now "Svechnoy Dvor" is appreciated both by corporate clients and chain stores.

Production is growing: now Kramarenko has three workshops and 45 people in the state, 25 of them directly cast candles. Moreover, all work - both on the ebb and on the painting - is still carried out only by hand. Which does not prevent the "Candle Yard" from producing about 150,000 candles of all colors and sizes a year. But they started with 2500. True, the growth did not have much effect on income: now, instead of the starting margin of 150%, the profitability of production has fallen to 30-40%. The reason is simple: competition - especially from Chinese products - is increasing every day. But this does not prevent Irina from developing her business. For several years in a row, she has been creating new collections four times a year: thematic (for example, wedding, oriental collections), functional ones - for example, large candles that give a high fire to country houses. According to her, this season it is fashionable to burn candles in a paraffin vessel filled with wax sand. Well, Kramarenko still follows the rules of his first boss, teaching the organization of candle production to those who would like to start the same business. There are results: more than 70 companies across the country have built their "candle factories".

We were born to make a joke come true...

The well-known joke about how nice it is to have your own candle factory is not a joke at all, if you look at it from the standpoint of modern business. Not only is this a quite profitable area of ​​the petrochemical business (since candles are made from paraffin, and paraffin is a product of oil refining and petrochemical production), in principle, candle production in its original form is a very, very science-intensive production, that is, it is quite suitable for very relevant now the parameters of venture funds.
If we take the above seriously, then it is not surprising that the largest candle factory in our country is located in Tatarstan. The fact is that in the century before last, the Moscow manufacturers, the Krestovnikov brothers, choosing a place to build their own candle factory, considered it useful for their future business to have a university in Kazan with a world-famous galaxy of chemists. Yes, no matter how strange it may seem now, but 150 years ago a large candle factory was quite seriously taken to serious chemical production, one might even say, to science-intensive, for those times, of course, production.
Generally speaking, the technology of candle production has not undergone radical changes over the past 100 years, and the former plant of the Krestovnikov brothers can still produce more than 700 tons of candles per month.

Up to 20 thousand tons of candles are produced annually in Russia. And by the way, the market demand confirms that the production of candles can be increased. Any experienced sales manager will quickly realize that the shelf life of candles is practically unlimited (unless, of course, they are stored in a room that is too warm), and the candles themselves are among the highly liquid goods that are also sold quite well for cash. . You just need to know where to sell. One can, for example, analyze the activities of RAO EU, or the Ministry of Emergency Situations, or at least inquire about the technical condition of local power networks. There is another area of ​​sales - the design of premises (we are talking not only and not so much about apartments, but about restaurants and other establishments that seek to attract the public with original furnishings) and business in the field of gift and souvenir products. Very popular now, especially among the romantically minded and at the same time financially prosperous public, are all kinds of carved and figured candles made from high-quality paraffin using special dyes and flavoring additives or foamed paraffin candles. Oddly enough, candles can also act as a very attractive export item. There is information that from the 19th century to the present, Russian candles are highly valued in England.
The main raw material for the production of candles is the products of oil refineries - a mixture of petroleum paraffins with stearic acid and ceresin. The volume of the Russian market of paraffins and wax compositions is estimated at the level of about 60 thousand tons. About 30% of petroleum paraffins are used for the production of candles. Almost the entire raw material base for the production of candles is domestic. The cost of candles is 95% determined by the cost of paraffin. So practically every oil refinery or petrochemical plant, in principle, could have its own candle factory. True, it can be disappointing that you have to worry about the packaging of the candles, which can be more expensive than the candles themselves. But a creative approach and the search for hidden opportunities of our chemical enterprises, for sure, will minimize these costs.

Now about science intensity and venture potential. Like 150 years ago, highly qualified chemical scientists are constantly working on improving candles. The main task of the research is to ensure that the candles burn even longer, do not smoke, and smell pleasant. The frontal mechanism of burning a candle, by the way, is described by a very complex mathematical apparatus, and the process itself, from a scientific point of view, is similar to the frontal processes that occur, for example, in some facilities that ensure the defense of our country. In addition, the chain nature of the combustion process fits well into the theory of chain reactions, for which the famous Soviet scientist, academician N.N. Semenov received the Nobel Prize. Constant work is underway on the formulations of new household candles, and on the formulations of decorative candles.

And, finally, about the most pleasant - about income. Enterprises operating in the field of industry in the sense that we usually understand it, almost never can accurately indicate the financial and economic indicators of the production of candles. But another segment of candle manufacturers, which usually remains outside the scope of marketing research - factories for the production of church candles, are more frank in their reporting. Candle production, by the way, is an integral part of the economic activity of the church, along with movable and immovable property and payments for services. According to official reports, in the total income of the dioceses of central Russia, up to 55% are income from the sale of candles, and for a rural church, candle sales bring up to 80% of income. The traceable data allows us to estimate the profitability of the sale of candles of 5000%. And this despite the fact that the candle factory itself is usually a small room in which electric stoves are installed, containers for kindling paraffin, a machine for the production of candles, which consists of two rotating drums, between which wicks are stretched. Sometimes a special worker is engaged in weaving the wick and preparing it for production, because a properly selected wick is a high-quality candle. The wicks first pass through a container of molten paraffin, then through dies that regulate the thickness of the candle, and finally through a cooling system, that is, simply put, through a bath of water. It turns out a paraffin rod, which is cut into candles of the desired length with a special cutter. About ten people are employed at such a candle factory. It would seem that everything is simple, but what dividends!
Maybe your business is much more attractive and more profitable than you think? Perhaps the time is coming when success in business will be achieved not only thanks to intuition, combined with accurate calculation, but also thanks to a creative approach to business, a new, unconventional look at seemingly familiar things.

I wish you to realize your creative plans in the New Year, including in business. Let the flight of fantasy, supported by financial opportunities, with the active assistance of the navigation service represented by marketing, take you to the planet of Happiness and Prosperity!

L.R. Guseva, independent expert