How big is the global candle business?

But is it only the distribution channels for CPG categories that offer opportunities for such micro-entrepreneurship? I don’t think so.

Most lifestyle retailers today sell candles. And one of their major business challenges is gross margin.

If Federated focuses on putting in a supply chain that taps into the 4 Billion potential suppliers, and offers micro-finance to small groups of women in villages in third world nations to produce candles at extremely affordable prices, and offers the funding necessary for the villagers to buy their raw materials, the gross margin problem could easily be solved. The villagers would take the designs / specs, and since making candles is not exactly rocket science, they can, with reasonable degrees of certainty, deliver.